Well, I haven't kept to a very good schedule with this, but then there haven't been many recipes to record. I decided to treat purchasing food as if I was visiting forts or saloons as I slowly made my way West. I haven't bought any food in apart from a single block of cheese since I started, with my diet essentially being reduced to one or two stodgy meals a day, occasionally enlivened with a meal at the pub, which usually can last me a whole day as my body doesn't seem to want to accomodate a lot of food these days.
Dishes I have attempted prior to being reduced to flatbreads with cheese and onion, have been:
Trout. I cooked the trout in the oven with oil, and had it with some carrots and potatoes. It wasn't very flashy but damn was it tasty.
Pemmican. I actually managed to make beef jerky by cooking finely sliced beef at a very low heat in the oven for an hour and a half. I then ground up the hardened meat and added it to an equal mass of fat (the rendered dripping from the bacon and kidneys) and used as a spread on flatbreads. When you aren't eating much protein, this stuff very quickly becomes very addictive. While making the pemmican I also had a meal of uncooked vegetables and raw beef, as many mountain men didn't cook their meat at all. I found the beef excellent, and when I had a steak when my flat went to the pub recently, even though it was rare I found it rather dry in comparison to the moist rich flesh I had enjoyed before.
I tried combining mashed potato with a flatbread and made a thick stodgy meal.
Something I've noticed as the weeks have gone on is that my appetite is less and less satisfied. I haven't lost weight (or at least I haven't noticed) but I am certain the restriction of food, and the monotony has been wearing. In March I am going to try another historical diet, and I'm going to buy ingredients this weekend.
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