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Book

Picnics and porcupines : eating in the wilderness of Michigan's Upper Peninsula

Call Number

  • H 977.49 G688 (CEN)

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Publication Information

Detroit, Michigan : Wayne State University Press, [2024]

Physical Description

xiv, 260 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Summary

"This stunning venture into the American picnic explores how innovation, exploitation, and the changing wilderness of Michigan's Upper Peninsula have shaped the experience of eating outdoors. From a photo of her grandmother picnicking in 1911, to the outdoor lunches of miners and loggers, to the picnics of vacationing celebrities like Henry Ford and Ernest Hemingway, author Candice Goucher opens an aperture into historic memories of picnics past. With the inclusion of recipes from Indigenous and immigrant traditions, this work navigates an entangled environmental and culinary history, tracing the transformation and loss of the forest to the creation of a modern notion of wilderness as it emerged in the North American imagination and popular culture of the picnic meal."--Back cover.

Notes

Includes recipes.

Contents

  • List of recipes
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • The picnic
  • The porcupine
  • The floating picnic
  • The picnic train
  • Vagabond politics
  • The politics of picnics and porcupines
  • Notes
  • Index.
  • List of recipes: Preserving picnic memories
  • The 1911 picnic
  • The porcupine's picnic
  • An environmentalist's picnic (1909-31)
  • Picnic with pirates
  • Picnic breakfast on the dock with a brass band
  • Floating islands
  • Hemingway's two-hearted picnic (1919)
  • All aboard for roasting marshmallows
  • A quartet of vagabond sandwiches (c. 1923)
  • The picnic hotdog
  • The picnic potato salad
  • Berry-picking pick-nicking (1935)
  • Some more picnics (1927-1930s)
  • Governor's picnic (1953)
  • Midcentury modern beached picnic (1960s)
  • Church picnic (1960s)
  • Yoopers vs. Fudgies picnic (c. 1977).

Subjects