‘America the Bountiful’ covers colonial food history and USA independence
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A new documentary examining Revolutionary-era food gave host Capri Cafaro a firsthand look at the ingenuity that helped colonial Americans adapt, survive and ultimately break away from Great Britain.
As Americans celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary, Cafaro said the biggest lesson from making “Generous America: America’s 250th Anniversary Special” is to see how colonists turned local crops, livestock and wild game into a self-sustaining food system when imports from Europe were no longer reliable.
“Food is a really interesting cultural anchor,” Cafaro told Fox News Digital. “From economics to agriculture, from the environment to science, there are endless storytelling opportunities.”
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Cafaro, who is planning the show’s 250th anniversary special, said he was “really trying to determine how colonial settlers could adapt to North America without depending on European imports.”
He traveled to landmarks of colonial America to trace the roots of foods that are an integral part of the country’s palate today, including cheese and whiskey.
A new documentary hosted by Capri Cafaro shows that American colonists had to be creative and resourceful to achieve food independence from Great Britain. (Generous America)
Since fresh milk spoiled quickly, the colonists turned the milk into cheese. Cafaro said they use the byproducts of the grain they mill for many different things, including making alcohol.
In the documentary, Cafaro is shown tasting whiskeys produced as if they were produced on George Washington’s estate, Mount Vernon, in Virginia. He laughingly described it as “alcohol-forward” and compared it to a whiskey “more for today’s palate”.
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Cafaro said the most challenging experience he had while doing the show was hunting and eating small game.
Squirrel pie and casserole were popular in 18th- and 19th-century America, he said, and are something people can still find today, especially in the Appalachian regions of the United States.
Grain and dairy were two of the foods that colonists innovated to create the American culinary legacy. (Generous America)
“It was hard for me to be a part of the process of hunting the squirrel and then having to eat it,” Cafaro said. “I joked at the time that I might have been an 18th-century vegetarian who had to rely on small game like a squirrel.”
Cafaro said many U.S. presidents, including James A. Garfield, were fans of squirrel stew and squirrel pie.
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While making the documentary, Cafaro said colonists diversified crops, developed preservation techniques for meat and dairy products, and diversified their methods of hunting and trapping small game.
He added that the documentary also explores the roles indigenous peoples, European settlers and enslaved people played in growing, harvesting and preparing food.
In a new documentary, Capri Cafaro (right) shows how American colonists used the grain to make many things, including whiskey. (Generous America)
For example, indigenous people shared their knowledge of making tea from local plants and herbs with the colonists. In the documentary, it is stated that after American patriots organized the Boston Tea Party, these Freedom Teas turned “an everyday drink into a symbol of independence.”
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Cafaro said he was most impressed by the “innovation and creativity employed by the settlers, which became a hallmark of the American identity.”
He said he hopes the documentary will amplify the voices of farmers, ranchers, fishermen and “everyone who works to put food on our table.”
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“The American identity would not be possible without their resourcefulness and hard work,” he said.
