[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Fosfero *
**
Oh dear… I had to read this the day hubby is out of town…
:o
I don’t know how to quote yet, but **jab1 **said,
“What are you, a communist?!”
Actually, no, ** jab1 **, I’m a socialist, but I guess it’s close enough. Just to really cement your views, I don’t like waffles or French toast, either. We socialists are very anti-maple syrup. What’s bad for the trees is bad for the people.
Our official sweet breakfast food is the blintz. Delicious as well as reminiscent of our Slavic comrades-in-arms.
I have it on good authority that most cowboys don’t love blintzes.
Doesn’t go well with the hammy-cakes.
I went to a storytelling festival last night in Connecticut. One of the tellers there told a story relating her true experience a couple of years ago on a simulated cattle drive.
People actually went out to Wyoming and paid money to work themselves to the brink of exhaustion. Go figure. But it was designed to be a re-creation of 1800s-style cowboy life.
I asked her after the event if they ate ham pancakes and she said they didn’t.
I don’t want to cast any doubts on the information dono came up with (although it was from a sheep ranch, remember). And perhaps they were less pancake-literate in the 19th Century. I can’t say.
But it is obvious more research needs to be done.
I was a little premature putting out some of my preliminary findings. That was definitely not ready for publication yet.
As you note, the whole extrapolation from sheepherder to cowboy may be problematical. I really have no basis for it; it’s pure speculation. In fact, their main social interaction until recently was shooting at one another, not exchanging recipies.
Also, I can’t base an entire thesis on a single data point; ie., one exceedingly cheap camp cook.
I agree that more research is needed. And speaking of cheap, if I wasn’t so cheap myself, I’d offer to take the family out to breakfast and do a little menu research.
I find it hard to believe that we don’t have anyone around here with actual cowboy experience.
It doesn’t have to be a cowboy, really. It can be someone who knows a cowboy. It can be someone who cooks for cowboys. It can be someone who works for a Cowboy Culinary Outlet Center. It can be the Annie Oakley version of Martha Stewart.
Or, as dono suggested, someone who has traded recipes with a cowboy.
Right now all we have to support the theory (i.e. Ham Pancakes: Cowboys Love 'Em!) is the word of a Greek-family-owned diner in Rochester, NY, and the experience of the cheap cook and bottle washer at a sheep ranch, from which we extrapolated a parallel hypothesis for cowboys.
This needs exhaustive research, folks. I think it’s time we applied for a government grant.