At Mesa's Edge: Cooking and Ranching in Colorado's North Fork Valley
by Eugenia Bone
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Although Eugenia Bone was perfectly happy with her life as a New York City food writer, she knew that her husband, a transplanted westerner, was filled with a discontent he couldn't explain. So when he returned from a fishing trip in the Rockies one day and announced that he wanted to buy a forty-five-acre ranch in Crawford, Colorado (population 404), she reluctantly said yes. She then loaded imported pasta, artichokes in oil, and cured Italian salami into her duffle bag, and headed west show more with her two young children. At Mesa's Edge is a witty, often moving story of ranch restoration and of struggles with defiant skunks, barbed wire, marauding cows, and loneliness. Eugenia learns to garden in the drought, to fly-fish, and to forage, all the while discovering the bounty of the region. She fries zucchini flowers in batter and dips them in cilantro-flavored mayonnaise, grills flavorful T-bones from the local ranchers' grass-fed beef, pan-fries trout, fills crepes with wild mushrooms, and makes cherry pies with thick, sugary crusts. Gradually, she begins to adjust to the rhythms of the land. Partly a memoir, partly a cookbook with more than one hundred appealing recipes, At Mesa's Edge is a transporting tale of rejuvenation, a celebration of everything local, and a reminder that the best food is to be found in our own backyards. show lessTags
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At Mesa's Edge: Cooking and Ranching in Colorado's North Fork Valley by Eugenia Bone is about one hundred pages of memoir with around one hundred recipes tacked on at the end, which works out to a bit more food than story, but that's okay. The first half tells how her husband decided to buy a rather remote ranch in Colorado and how Eugenia deals with having to spend summers there.
At first she has a hard time, because the creature comforts she expects from living in the City are non-existent in her part of Colorado. She's so hapless that she even gets demoted to beta-female of the house by a skunk. Gradually, however, Eugenia comes to terms with and even grows to love their little stretch of valley and the food they can grow there.
I show more wanted to try some of the recipes, but they are mostly summer food (go figure), and since buying fresh zucchini in January is highly questionable in more ways than one, I guess I'll just have to wait.
Adapted from my 75 in 2013 thread: here show less
At first she has a hard time, because the creature comforts she expects from living in the City are non-existent in her part of Colorado. She's so hapless that she even gets demoted to beta-female of the house by a skunk. Gradually, however, Eugenia comes to terms with and even grows to love their little stretch of valley and the food they can grow there.
I show more wanted to try some of the recipes, but they are mostly summer food (go figure), and since buying fresh zucchini in January is highly questionable in more ways than one, I guess I'll just have to wait.
Adapted from my 75 in 2013 thread: here show less
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Food Memoirs
97 works; 9 members
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7+ Works 632 Members
Eugenia Bone is a nationally known nature and food writer, former president of the New York Mycological Society, and member of the National Association of Science Writers. She has published over six books, and her work has appeared in many outlets and publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Saveur, and Food Wine, as show more well as the tie-in book to the hit documentary, Fantastic Fungi. You can see Eugenia in Fantastic Fungi and in the children's food program Waffles + Mochi (the mushroom episode, of course). show less
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- Original publication date
- 2004
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- 32
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- 877,589
- Reviews
- 1
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- (4.00)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 2
- UPCs
- 1
