TRAIL TALK
Food often outlasts the culture that created it. Milkcan supper, for example, originated as a way of feeding cowhands after a long day of work. It is still popular in parts of the West and upper Midwest, but the food lingo of the cowboys who once ate this dish has faded away. Some names for individual dishes, such as calf slobber (for meringue), reflected the coarseness of trail language. Perhaps most revealing was the name for the 5- or 10-gallon can that served as an all-purpose cooking utensil throughout a thousand-mile cattle drive: It was called the squirrel can, the uncomplimentary moniker coming from the idea that it was never emptied during the course of the entire drive but instead became the receptacle for whatever the cook found to add to it. In her 1933 article “Ranch Diction of the Texas Panhandle,” author Mary Dale Buckner declared, “It is true that when a spoon, cup, dipper or some small object was dropped into [the squirrel can], usually no one bothered to remove it.” We’ll stick with the milk can.