Adapting to a Different World

      The people who came to the New World had a lot of adjustments to make.  They had to get used to an almost entirely different diet.  Some of them had to get used to new types of clothing, or at least new materials for their clothes.  They had to get used to a world that had very few roads, compared to all the roads they had in Europe, some of which dated back to the Roman times.  Actually there were roads here that predated the Roman roads by millennia.  These were the rivers, but that meant they had to get used to a new form of transportation; the canoe.  Oh sure they did build roads to and from their cities and towns, but these were nothing like what they were used to in the Old World. 
      Clothingwise, especially on the far reaches of the frontier these newcomers saw that their European style clothes didn't work the best out in the wild.  Many of them began to wear Breech cloths, leather leggings, and moccasins, while retaining their coats, weskits, and long shirts. 

 A Longhunter wearing Leather leggings, moccasins and a loin cloth

      Those of us whose ancestry here dates back to the arrival of the Solutreans during the last glacial maximum had a few things to get used to with their arrival too.  The Natives began to wear the traditional long shirts of the Europeans, and their wool jackets were quite coveted too.  Of course we like their guns, and their iron kettles and copper boilers.  There was also the need to get used to them putting in all those darn roads.  Among the native people there were a few sizable towns, especially among the Iroquois, Huron, Susquehanna, and Cherokee, in their walled villages.  These Europeans though, they were crazy.  They crowded their cities with so many people it was like they were stacking them in like cordwood.  Their diseases weren't too fun to get used to either.  Foodwise, there was milk and all of its products, such as cheese and butter.  That's not easy for a lactose intolerant people.  Whiskey, rum, and the other fire waters (Ishkode waboo) were a bad addition too.  Then there was wheat (bakwezhiganamin) and all that could be made from it. 
      For the European out in the deep woods they had to get used to eating what we had available out there.  They learned to eat manoomin (wild rice), mandanamin (corn/maize), zinziibaakwad (maple sugar), maskigamin (cranberries), miinan (blueberries) and lots of venison (waawaashkeshi-weyaas).  If they would have been caught eating deer meat in the Old country they could have been hung or at least imprisoned long enough to die from the dysentery in the prison.  Now they were eating it all the time.  They also learned how to eat squash and pumpkins, and while on the road they ate that horrid travel food, pemmican, just like the natives did.  Pemmican is such a horrible tasting travel food that it makes discount, generic Slim Jims seem like gourmet cuisine. 
      Sometimes they took the recipes from the native cooks just like they were, while at other times they mixed the new ingredients with some of their own foods.  The voyageurs and the long hunters did this the most often.  Unfortunately for those of us today, they had no imagination whatsoever when it came to naming their concoctions.  The simple recipe below was named by them "Corn & Grease."  It's actually really good, despite the unappetizing name.  If anyone has a better name to give it, then please leave a comment and do so. 

      Corn & Grease  

Fry up a pound of bacon.  Pull it from the pan and cut it up into smaller pieces (dice it). Remove some of the bacon grease if you want to. 
Chop up a medium onion and fry them till they are lightly carmelized.
Drain and add one can of hominy to the pan (no, the voyageurs and the Longhunters didn't have canned hominy, but unless you want to start with dried hominy and soak it overnight and boil it for a million hours, use the canned stuff). 
Add a bag of dried cranberries (your own or craisins). 
Put the bacon back and heat it all till it's hot. 
Dinner is served. 

      It's tasty, and hearty.  The cranberries kind of cut the grease and impart a little sweetness.  The ultra-bland hominy mellows it all out and takes on all the other flavors, and how can you go wrong with bacon?