The Family Table: Tales From the Trail: Starry Nights, Close Calls, and Mama’s Cowboy Breakfast

Readers share their treasured recipes

(Janet Gerber Weeks)

Submitted by Janet Gerber Weeks, Harmony, Florida

My Mama and Pa owned and operated a deer hunting camp, pack outfit, and guest ranch in the beautiful Ruby Mountains of northeastern Nevada. Mama did all the cooking for everybody. Our family and guests all ate meals together family-style in a big rock-walled room that had been one of the original pioneer homes in the valley. The rest of our house was attached to that room later, but even our house was very old.

We had a lot of famous guests (movie stars and politicians). They would come to stay with us just to hide out from the hubbub of the world. We weren’t impressed with them at the time because we didn’t have television and rarely went to the movies.

(Janet Gerber Weeks)

I think it was Mama’s good cooking that made our place famous. Pa said he was the one who taught her how to cook and I believe that must have been true. Mama was born a cowgirl and hardly ever stepped a foot inside the house to learn cooking from Grandma when she was a girl. As a result, Mama was Pa’s right-hand man. She always went along on the mountain pack trips to serve as the camp cook. She was a great conversationalist and entertainer. Pa was also a good storyteller. Both were hard workers, so they made a great team together.

A typical pack trip would start off with Pa trying to get the panniers evenly weighted on both sides of the pack saddles. This process took a long, tedious time and everybody, horses included, would get so tired and antsy. One time, one old horse, who had been a rodeo bucking bronc in his younger days, got spooked and started bucking before Pa could get everything tied down. Everything Mama had planned to cook for our cowboy breakfast, like eggs, bacon, potatoes, and onions, even the knives and forks, came flying out of the panniers.

We got everything gathered back up and Mama got the broken eggs replenished from the house. Then we were off for the pack trip. About halfway up the mountain, we were hit with a cloudburst. We arrived at Boulder Lake camp soaked but were able to get dried off and eat one of Mama’s delicious dinners. Then as Pa unpacked the sleeping bags, he found that Mama’s bag was the only one that had gotten wet. Poor Mama.

It was always freezing cold at night on the mountain, but there was nothing that could be done. Everybody else got into their dry sleeping bags, but Mama was left by the fire. Pa might have planned to switch off with her through the night, but she sure looked sad sitting there by herself. Then, a genius thought came to her. She pulled her wet sleeping bag over by the fire, took the hot rocks from around the fire pit, and placed them around her bag. And, voilà, her bag became toasty warm.

In the morning when Mama got up, she said she felt so refreshed. It was like she had slept in a warm sauna and had taken a steam bath all night. The next night, her bag was totally dried out, and we all got bedded down. We never took tents unless guests specifically asked for one. We just slept under the open, nighttime sky. That was such a beautiful experience, laying up there on the mountain, watching the shooting stars and learning the constellations from Pa.

(Janet Gerber Weeks)

The next morning, Pa had already gotten up before sunrise to catch the horses and get the coffee boiling. Everyone was peacefully sleeping when a gentle clanking sound woke Mama, and there, straddled over Mama and me both, was the ol’ hobbled boss mare.

Mama was looking straight up to her underbelly. She reached over and gave me a nudge, and my eyes opened to our awful situation. Mama whispered, “Roll over and crawl out as fast as you can.”

I did, just in the nick of time. Buttermilk Bess made another lunge and her hobbled hind feet came right down in the middle of my sleeping bag.

I was pretty shaken up for a few minutes. I could have been a “dead duck”—but the thought of getting to eat Mama’s Cowboy’s Breakfast really helped me rally around.

Cowboy’s Breakfast

• Potatoes, with skins
• Bacon
• Onions
• Eggs
• Grated cheddar cheese
• Salt and pepper

Boil or bake the potatoes, then dice.

Fry the bacon and cut into pieces. Dice the onions and fry in the bacon drippings.

Stir the above ingredients together in the frying pan. Beat the eggs with a fork and add to mixture. Add grated cheddar cheese after the eggs have begun to set up. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Mm-mm good. This recipe still brings back those wonderful pack trip memories, even after all these years, and I’m three-quarters of a century old.

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How have you kept the recipe alive, and why is it important to you to do so?

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