Portland: A Food Biography by Heather Arndt Anderson

Abstract

 OHQ vol. 116, no. 3 and who is himself forgotten but for Nisbet’s thoughtful portrait, while the Tribes are still here. He tells of the Kalispel elder Victor and his son Masselow, who argued forcefully, in vain, for a reservation in their Pend Oreille Valley homeland. As in his 1994 book, Sources of the River, Nisbet interweaves historical accounts with his own closely observed experiences, moving back and forth through time on the same piece of ground. Sources of the River tethers its digressions to a strong narrative thread: the life of the explorer and fur trader David Thompson. The essays in Ancient Places, by contrast, are multi-threaded, and the tethers are sometimes a little loose. I found the first chapter a tough introduction — readers start with David Thompson’s hunting trip in 1792 and encounter,in rapid succession,the meteor, will-o’-the-wisps, the aurora borealis, and an International Space Station astronaut. I found myself wondering, “Where are we going here, and why?” In other places I would miss a spatial or temporal shift and feel momentarily unmoored. Yet as the essays unfolded, I came to trust Nisbet’s voice, friendly and knowledgeable and always showing me something interesting : an ice cave near downtown Spokane, an 1872 earthquake that dammed the Columbia for a time, a meteorite that became a scientific and popular sensation. His writing is always engaging and sometimes earthily beautiful, as when he is describing a dolomite quarry, or a solitary skate on rough ice. Reading Ancient Places is like hiking with a guide who knows the land like the back of his hand and who can tell you a hundred stories about it, and does, pausing only occasionally to ask himself, “Now, where was I . . . ?” The book will appeal to anyone interested in Northwest history and anyone who loves good, true stories. Gail Wells Corvallis, Oregon PORTLAND: A FOOD BIOGRAPHY by Heather Arndt Anderson Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, Boulder, New York, and London, 2015. Notes, bibliography, index. 326 pages. $38.00 cloth. With its brimming farmers markets, sumptuous restaurants, eclectic food carts, and locovore markets, Oregon’s Rose City has the reputation as a foodie mecca. In her book, Portland:A Food Biography,author and fourthgeneration Portlander Heather Arndt Anderson sets out to explore the history of Portland’s rich culinary identity. Anderson sets the stage by describing the ingredient-rich landscape at the confluence of the Columbia and Willamette rivers, a place where Chinook and Kalapuya people found salmon, lamprey, wapato, waterfowl, fungi, berries, and more. The indigenous culinary traditions of potlatch feasts derived from this remarkable local abundance. The book proceeds chronologically and topically asAnderson recounts how each group of newcomers added its own food traditions to the mix — starting with pioneering farmers and lumberjacks,and then covering immigrant groups, including Germans, Jews, Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, and eventually Southeast Asians — each adapting their own skills and recipes to the local scene. For example, earlytwentieth -century Jewish immigrants were making“pink gefilte fish,”using salmon rather than traditional whitefish (p. 253). Anderson then recounts the establishment of Portland’sfoodinfrastructureandbusinesses, describing the locations of old farm districts, ethnicenclaves,historicmarkets,andrenowned restaurants, and how these changed over time. Celebrity Chef James Beard, a Portland native who learned cooking skills from both his mom and a Chinese chef, makes several appearances. Thereisalsoachapterabouthistoriccookbooks that includes a handful of quintessential Portland recipes,including“Lumber Camp Dough-  OHQ vol. 116, no. 3 nuts”and“Huckleberry Breakfast Cake,”giving readers direct access to some of the primary materials that Anderson tapped and providing aspiring cooks with some culinary inspiration. The book is filled with tidbits that foodies will relish. For example, did you know that Portland has both the oldest tofu company and also the oldest craft brewing supply store in the United States? Or that The Web-Foot Cookbook, the Northwest’s first, was created by Portland’s First Presbyterian Church ladies? Or that a large, open-air market once perched right beside the river, downtown? The biggest challenge of writing food history is that sources are spotty and ephemeral: random accounts of travelers, old newspaper ads,memoirs,cookbooks,and trade literature. Anderson makes a significant contribution...