One of the things I love about living in Fort Davis is being near the Fort Davis National Historic Site. If ever you feel like modern life is weighing you down, take a step back to a simpler time with a visit to the fort. If you’ve never strolled around the grounds and peeked in the windows to catch a glimpse of life in the 1800s, you’re missing out. It’s truly my No. 1 favorite place to visit.

At the visitor center, I found a cookbook I’d never seen before, “An Army Wife’s Cookbook,” filled with the recipes of Alice Kirk Grierson, the wife of Col. Benjamin H. Grierson of the 10th Cavalry at Fort Davis, in the late 1860s or thereabouts.

The cookbook is a pleasure to read. It has stories of the Grierson family’s 19th century lives, as well as some of the 600-plus recipes that Alice collected in her personal cookbook. There are household hints and tips from back in the olden days as well.

The original cookbook was donated to the National Park Service at the Fort Davis National Historic Site in

1968. It spent nearly three decades in Marfa after being donated to a secondhand store by the Griersons’ youngest son in 1935 when he was cleaning out the family properties in Fort Davis.

According to the new cookbook, the National Park Service wives and their friends tested over 100 of the handwritten recipes, and made any necessary changes to bring them up to date, while staying as true as possible to the original recipe. Adding to the charm of the cookbook is that Alice’s original recipe as she wrote it is printed first, followed by the modernized and tested recipe.

Frontier wives faced many challenges when it came to cooking. Not only were they living without refrigeration, they also used wood burning stoves that required the proper amount of attention to keep the temperatures just right.

Alice had a cushier lifestyle than most frontier wives of her time. She came from a wealthy family, and was able to have at least two full-time servants. She was the colonel’s wife, after all.

The cookbook has relatively few recipes for main dishes because army rations weren’t very varied, and the main meat available was beef. Unless you had chickens or access to chickens, eggs were hard to come by, and several recipes were for baked goods without eggs.

Head on over to the Fort Davis National Historic Site for a tour and to pick up your own copy of this sweet taste of 1800s frontier life.