American Frontier Inspiration- Food Scene + Recipe + Giveaway Opportunity

American Frontier Inspiration- Food Scene + Recipe + Giveaway Opportunity
Wednesday, July 15, 2026 by Sally Jo Pitts

Categories: Books & Food / Recommended Books

Investigating Food Used in Novels

This month’s food scene and recipe come from Jonita Mullins’ Journey to an Untamed Land. Jonita is offering a free book. Read on for details.

Here is the Scene:

Amanda shaded her eyes to look out to the west field where Stephen continued to push his plow. Most days, he did not come in from the fields to join the others for the noonday meal.

Everyone had tried to be considerate and respectful of his grief, but all were growing concerned as he drove himself relentlessly to finish breaking 40 acres of the land the mission owned. He rarely spoke and only picked at his food, if he didn’t skip the meal altogether.

Amanda tightened her jaw in determination. She had made a promise to his dying wife Lydia and she was going to do her best to keep it. She stepped into the cabin and took up one of the enamel plates and filled it with a generous portion of the pot pie she had baked in a flaky flour crust. She poured some steaming coffee into an empty sorghum tin and secured its tight fitting lid. Then grabbing a fork and napkin, she made her way to the door.

She walked across the mission compound toward the freshly turned earth where they would all work to plant corn soon. The mission had purchased a pair of oxen for plowing since the horses Chief Claremont had given them were untrained for such work.

As he turned the plow at the end of a row, the farm director noticed Amanda’s approach. He whoa’d the oxen and waited, prepared to politely decline her invitation to dinner.

“Since you won’t come to me food, I’ve brought the food to you,” she said with what she hoped was a disarming smile.

“Thank you, Miss Ingles,” he said, tugging at the knitted, wool cap he wore. Lydia had made it for him. “But I’m not really hungry. I’ll just keep at the plowing.”

“Oh, but I made so much,” Amanda said. “And this flaky crust won’t keep well; it will become soggy and I’ll just have to throw it to the sow. And as much as I like the old gal, I’d rather not be givin’ her me special meat pie.” And she smiled again appealingly, hopefully.

Stephen was torn between sending the Irish cook away and the fear that he would hurt her feelings if he did. He hesitated for a long moment and Amanda held the plate a little closer to him, hoping the fragrant steam would entice him.

He looked at the plate and then at the hopeful freckled face of the pretty cook. “I suppose I could eat a little something,” he sighed.

Amanda’s smile was genuine and bright. “I’ll keep you company while you do,” she said, wisely knowing that he would not eat more than a bite or two if she didn’t remain.

Stephen took the plate and forked a small bite into his mouth. To his surprise, it tasted good, not like sawdust as his own cooking had this morning. He found he was hungrier than he thought and while Amanda chattered on about the weather and her plans for a big kitchen garden, he finished every bit of her savory meat pie.

She was opening the sorghum tin for him when she looked up toward the Osage Trace off in the distant west. “Oh, me,” she said and Stephen turned to follow her gaze.

A long line of Osage warriors on horseback could be seen in the distance. They were coming south from the direction of Claremont’s town and were turning off from the trail and heading toward the mission.

Jonita shares this recipe for chicken pot pie. If interested in more frontier recipes, Jonita also has authored a cookbook, A Kitchen on the Frontier, featuring more frontier foods.

Chicken Pot Pie

For the recipe click here

More about Journey to an Untamed Land:

In 1820, Clarissa Johnson joins a group of young missionaries leaving New England and traveling by river to the Osage lands. Together they face disease and danger that tests their courage and fortitude along the months’ long journey into the untamed American West.Arriving in the Indian Country, the young missionaries struggle to build a mission and school on the prairie and work to bring education and the gospel to the Osages and Cherokees. Caught in the middle of a feud between tribal leaders, the missionaries must work to build trust with their Indian neighbors and members of the nearby fur trading community. Slowly their school grows and so does their relationships of friendship, Christian fellowship and love. But Clarissa must deal with a deeply wounded heart and the betrayal that caused her to flee her hometown to teach at the mission school. Will she ever learn to trust again? Will love find her in this untamed land?

Giveaway opportunity: Jonita is offering a free book to a commenter. Offer good through July 19, 2026.

Please comment below:

What meal would you prepare for a frontier man plowing out in the field?

Author Bio:

Jonita Mullins is an award-winning author and speaker. She has written over fifteen books, both fiction and non-fiction, and more than 1,000 articles focused on the history of Oklahoma and Arkansas with an emphasis on untold stories of the American Indian Nations. Reviewers have described her work as “refreshingly authentic.”

Mullins grew up in a small town in Oklahoma and currently lives in a 110-year-old fixer-upper in the Founders’ Place Historical District of Muskogee. For several years Jonita has written a newspaper column on local history. She has conducted tours for the National Trust for Historic Preservation and has presented numerous papers to the Oklahoma Historical Society. Preserving western history and its uniquely American stories is her passion.

When she is not writing or speaking, she enjoys gardening, cross stitching and quilting. Her favorite time of the day is in the evening when she can enjoy sitting on her porch swing, sipping sweet tea and watching the wind dance in the trees, grateful for all the blessings bestowed by God.

The Christmas in July Event is going on now. You can still sign up!