Samoa Cookhouse – Eat like a Lumberjack
The Samoa Cookhouse, at 908 Vance Avenue, Samoa (CA), is the last surviving cookhouse in the West. It continues to serve well-cooked “all-you-can-eat” food in the family or, as they called it “lumber camp,” style.
Dining room on this side, museum on other, and dormitory on second story
Entrance to dining room
Check the little museum and dining room walls for culinary items from the past and historical mementos from the area’s logging and lumber industries. Even the red and white checkered oil tablecloths used to cover the long tables today harken back to those begone days.
Strangers and family all eat together
The three most important people at any logging camp were the “Boss,” the “Foreman,” and “Cook.” (This order doesn’t reflect the importance of each individual.) Depending on the size of the camp, the Cook could have a staff of two or dozens. Staff helped to prepare meals, serve those meals, and clean up.
The aftermath of a hearty breakfast.
Bakers were popular with lumberjacks, loggers, and the children of a logging camp. Desserts ended both lunch and dinner meals so bakers would have to make things like doughnuts, cakes, cookies, and pies in quantities. They say it any less than perfect offerings would to passed on to the children. Imagine the work required to produce enough bread or pies for, say, one-hundred hungry lumberjacks. Since one loaf of bread has 12 slices and a pie only six, which would mean at least nine loaves and 16 pies had to be baked!
If you are having French Toast for breakfast you got to start with bread.
In 1922, loggers paid 60 cents a day for three meals. Today it is a bit more to eat at the Samoa Cookhouse.
Good deal?!?!?!
Variety wasn’t big on the Cookhouse menu. A lumberjack could tell the day of the week by what they were served. The main part of any meal was to be beef with potatoes and gravy, plenty of vegetables and always some fruit and a big piece of dessert.
french toast – it must be Monday
A favorite story: “When ‘quitting’ whistles blew, the men were more than ready to sit down to a big meal. Even the big, white horses, which drew the three-wheeled lumber carts around the yards were wise to the meaning of the whistles. At the sound of the whistles, they stopped in the their tracks, refusing to make another move until their harnesses were unbuckled, allowing them to head for the big barn down below the cookhouse for their oats.”
An interesting touch: Dozens of coat hooks hanging from the hall in the Cookhouse’s entry hall.
No wet coats allowed!
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