Some of Pat Klos’ cookbook collection at her Reno home. Photo by Andy Barron

Blast from the Past

The bag of vintage cookbooks sat on my office shelf for a year. Pat Ferraro Klos, local historian, author, and longtime friend, gave it to me. She was cleaning out her own shelves and thought the contents might be useful to me in my ongoing search for local food history.

Lithograph by the Stecher-Traung Corp., Rochester, N.Y., to support the war garden effort. Photo courtesy of Library of Congress

Home Garden Victory

Uncovering local food-growing efforts during World War II. Our country under stress. A clear danger. Efforts, on a personal and national level, to deal with the emergency. Do these phrases remind you of the recent Covid-19 pandemic? As a food historian, I go back further, to the 1940s and the crisis of World War II….

Collage from the 1940 film Virginia City, featuring Sazerac Saloon, and actors Errol Flynn and Humphrey Bogart. Unfortunately, the movie was shot in Arizona. It received a gala premiere in Reno and Virginia City. Photo courtesy of The Blonde at the Film

More Than a Cocktail

On a culinary-inspired trip to New Orleans, I first encountered the powerful and historic drink called the Sazerac, at the aptly named Sazerac Bar in the Roosevelt Hotel. The memory lingered, and I discovered, to my surprise, that Nevada had numerous connections to this cocktail — or, at least, to its name, which appeared in almost a dozen saloons in Northern Nevada’s early days.