In the Northwoods, the seasons dictate the menu. We do not eat out of preference; we eat out of necessity.

When the ground freezes four feet deep and the growing season ends abruptly in September, you cook differently than you do in the south. Loggers, miners, and farmers working in sub-zero temperatures required meals that provided sustained warmth and endurance.

Our regional cuisine was engineered by people who had to outlast a six-month winter. That is why our food leans toward the rich and the hearty. It represents the art of preservation—smoking, curing, pickling, and casing. We eat the way we do because, for a century, the only way to see March was to preserve the harvest in October.

This book is a map of that adaptation. Every dish here tells a story of a specific immigrant wave that brought a technique, or a quirk of our soil that we learned to cultivate. This is how the Northwoods eats, and why.