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| The Lookout Cookbook Region One, Forest History Society |
In the current world situation, with quarantines and social distancing to limit the spread of the COVID-19 virus, it might be interesting to look at how people have managed food and cooking in other isolated circumstances. In the early 20th century the U.S. Forest Service developed a system of fire lookouts to help with early forest fire detection. During the summer fire season young men and women manned the lookout towers. When these locations were often miles from the nearest road, pack horses were needed to bring, including drinking water.
To help the forest lookouts the Region One staff published The Lookout Cookbook in 1937. From the Introduction:
“The idea back of this book is to furnish tried and approved recipes in amounts suitable for one or two men which can be prepared from the food furnished the lookouts. The persons who furnished recipes were requested to refrain from calling for any food supplies not furnished. The book was tried out by nearly a hundred lookouts, smokechasers, small crews, etc., during the 1937 season and their comments and suggestions are included.”
Cooking facilities in the one-room lookouts varied. These often included some combination of a wood stove, two-burner cooktop, and propane refrigerator. The foods were primarily things with a long shelf life: canned goods (meat, soup, vegetables, fruit) and dry goods (flour, salt, sugar, baking mixes, dried foods). When the idea of Some lookout supplemented these rations with fish from nearby streams, small game, and foraged fruit.
Lookout Kjell Peterson explained the importance of canned foods in his diet in an oral history interview:
“Back in '68, of course, I went in on that assignment and I stayed in all summer, so I was tasked to make sure that I took enough food in that I wouldn't need to be resupplied. So I took in lots of canned stuff. I remember I almost lived exclusively on Spam. Oh, my god, I ate a lot of Spam. I had a special breakfast that I called Spam Delight, and I would fry two pieces of Spam— course fried Spam is so awesome because it's just so salty—and then I would put those two pieces between graham crackers and make kind of like a graham cracker sandwich, and I'd have it with a bowl of sweetened applesauce. That was always my breakfast. So I called that Spam Delight. Just a couple years ago, Libby Langston, if you heard about [her], she published a lookout cookbook, and I submitted my Spam Delight recipe to her, and she included it in there. But there is kind of like a disclaimer on my recipe. It said, "After you have Spam Delight for breakfast a few times, you need to really maintain your exercise program so you don't have cardiac arrest.
And then I probably ate a record setting amount of Dinty Moore beef stew that summer, too. I mean, I can't remember how many cans of Dinty Moore beef stew I went through, but every time I see it on the shelf in the grocery store I have a little gag reflex.”
Various editions of The Lookout Cookbook are available online at the Forest History Society and the U.S. National Archives
1938 Cookbook
1939 Supplement
1954 Cookbook
1966 Cookbook
undated Region 4 Cookbook
A great place to learn more about the daily lives and cooking experiences of forest lookouts is the Northwest Montana Chapter of the Forest Fire Lookout Association Oral History Project at the University of Montana. You can listen to audio of the interviews or download the transcripts.
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