Food as a Maker of Memories in the Stories of Our Lives

 Survival Food by Thomas Pecore Weso

A review by Ben Furnish

Writers and readers of mysteries, and not just culinary mysteries, often enjoy using food as an element to move the plot forward in some way. Thomas Pecore Weso’s new book Survival Food: North Woods Stories from a Menominee Cook, gives brilliant insights into food, revealing motivations of character, powerfully evoking a sense of geographical and cultural place, and capturing the spirit of the times it depicts. Some readers may experience nostalgia on hearing about certain foods mentioned (those wax-paper-wrapped tamales in cans or jars, anyone?), while others might experience new historical understanding of bygone days.  

The word survival in the book’s title takes on several meanings—cultural, family, and individual survival. Weso calls this book “a backward food memoir…the stories appear first, with the characters, and then the food memories and recipes.” This memoir’s 21 stories document the adventures of Weso and his family through the changes that swept the Menominee Indian Reservation and the United States overall in the last several decades. Each story’s strong narrative captures a different scene of Weso’s coming of age, skillfully blending moments of danger (a snapping turtle that bites and won’t let go; a car sinking into the spring mud miles from anywhere), humor (skinny-dipping boys find they are not alone), and wonder (the ghosts that inhabit his grandfather’s house, which was once a tribal jail.)   

As Weso writes, “I cannot separate foods from the moments in my life when I first tasted them. Each meal triggers memories. Some create new memories.”  But in Weso’s hands, these memories about food and life create a vivid world for the reader—that of the Menominee and of rural Wisconsin and the changes that unfold in Weso’s youth and adulthood. Even though this book continues to describe some traditional Menominee dishes (bear stew, roast porcupine), for me some of Weso’s most evocative subjects appear when he describes such everyday items as boxed potatoes or Chef Boyardee SpaghettiOs, as these foods begin to take precedence over such traditional Menominee dishes as turtle, squirrel, and fry bread. For Weso, these common foods create memories also. Yet Weso shows us how all his food subjects are survival food in one form or another.  

Weso writes powerfully and unsentimentally about his family. His relationship with his mother was sometimes strained—at one point as adults, they went thirteen years without seeing each other. In his childhood, she spent long days commuting to finish her education. Yet by remembering the choices she made in foods she prepared and ate, we readers come to understand her much more: “It was the wrapper’s tagline, ‘Building strong bodies 8 ways,’ that hooked my mother, who considered it the healthy alternative. For her, buying Wonder Bread at the supermarket was visual proof to the outside, White world that she loved her family, despite her absences.” Tom’s mother had gone away to Indian boarding school in her own youth, an experience that changed her tastes and preferences. Back on the reservation, she came to equate the new, mass-produced commercial foods with sophistication. She eventually decided to pursue an advanced degree and a career, two things that limit her time and energy to cook and incline her further to choosing such as Wonder bread. 

The traditional Menominee recipes and foods described in the book emerge directly from the Menominee/Wisconsin landscape going back countless generations. In the 20^th century, the federal government started the commodities program (“commots” as the Menominee call them). As with many tribes, the Menominee made fry bread out of flour they were provided through the federal commodities program. Fry bread became a recent traditional food, even though it was derived from a program the government used to try to displace traditional tribal foods. Yet his mother usually refused to make it, although other relatives did.

Weso also fondly recalls some of the German and Swedish food traditions of Wisconsin that he also grew up with, including exquisite sausages and cheeses. Part of survival means taking advantage of the opportunities in front of you. Just as the traditional Menominee foods yield space to the new mass-produced commercial foods, so too do the old ethnic European cuisines.

Although most of these stories are not outwardly mysteries, they do--like a fun culinary mystery—come complete with vivid recipes at the end of each story. They include traditional, contemporary, and syncretistic delights, the last including such delights as grasshopper tacos (yes, with actual grasshoppers) and macaroni and cheese with tuna and milkweed buds.  

Sadly, Weso passed away just before the publication of this book, so we are all the more fortunate that his voice lives on in it and in his previous Menominee food memoir, Good Seeds. Weso can remind each of us how food can play a part in how we tell our own stories.

Ben Furnish is a teacher and editor in Lawrence, Kansas.