Survival Food: North Woods Storiesby a Menominee Cook
Thomas Pecore Weso
About the Book: An intimate and engaging Native food memoir
In these coming-of-age tales set on the Menominee Indian Reservation of the
1980s and 1990s, Thomas Pecore Weso explores the interrelated nature of meals
and memories. As he puts it, “I cannot separate foods from the moments in my
life when I first tasted them.” Weso’s stories recall the foods that influenced
his youth in northern Wisconsin: subsistence meals from hunted, fished, and
gathered sources; the culinary traditions of the German, Polish, and Swedish
settler descendants in the area; and the commodity foods distributed by the
government—like canned pork, dried beans, and powdered eggs—that made up the
bulk of his family’s pantry. His mom called this “survival food.”
These stories from the author’s teen and tween years—some serious, some
laugh-out-loud funny—will take readers from Catholic schoolyards to Native foot
trails to North Woods bowling alleys, while providing Weso’s perspective on the
political currents of the era. The book also contains dozens of recipes, from
turtle soup and gray squirrel stew to twice-baked cheesy potatoes. This
follow-up to Weso’s Good Seeds: A Menominee Indian Food Memoir is a
hybrid of modern foodways, Indigenous history, and creative nonfiction from a
singular storyteller
My Review:
I already experience of pang of wounded conscience reading
Weso’s preface listing foods he grew up eating in the generation of change when
food preparation sank to the bottom of the list of family activities. Allowing strangers
to create shelf-stable quick-prep eat-and-run food marched us another step away
from our identities. In twenty-one stories about life growing up Menominee,
Weso attempts to redirect us toward our own family memories as well as
encouraging us to forge new ones and pass them on to the next generation.
Weso lived mostly with his grandparents. “Grandma’s meals
always followed the basic Menominee food pyramid….sweet, salt, meat and water.”
Meal times were family times, stories and making plans, sharing news. The recipes
that follow each story are full of pithy comments, such as the one in Venison
Soup: “This is a relatively simple dish to make, after preparing the corn, and finding
a deer, dispatching it, and dressing it.” Some of the recipes I’m excited to
try, such as Winter Tamale Pie, many ingredients of which can be substituted
with canned goods. “These also work during pandemic quarantines when trips to
the grocery store are limited.” Other recipes…not so much. I do believe and
accept that grasshoppers have lots of protein, but I’m not quite so anxious to
make grasshopper tacos. Weso ate a grasshopper taco once in his “search for
authenticity” as a college student in Madison.
Every story is an opportunity to share a life lesson or
comment such as why Grandma encouraged them to drink coffee and tea, not
alcohol. The stories are generous memories of tick bites, porcupine rescues,
bear hunting, working on a road crew, felling trees, going to college, learning
family lore such as the history behind Grandma and Grandpa’s house. All the way
to the passing of Weso’s mother, Weso’s memories weave a loving and poignant, sometimes
funny, and always thought-provoking tale of the importance of family and memory
and how food is often the main ingredient of home.
About the Author: Thomas
Pecore Weso (1953–2023) was an author, educator, artist, and enrolled
member of the Menominee Indian Nation of Wisconsin. His book Good Seeds: A
Menominee Indian Food Memoir, published by the Wisconsin Historical Society
Press in 2016, was reviewed widely and won a national Gourmand Award. He also
wrote many articles and personal essays, a biography of Langston Hughes with
coauthor Denise Low, and the children’s book Native American Stories for
Kids (Rockridge Press, 2022), which was named a 2023 Kansas Notable Book.
Weso was an alumnus of Haskell Indian Nations University and the University of
Kansas, where he earned a master’s degree in Indigenous studies. He died in
Sonoma County, California, on July 14, 2023.
