![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/101926-treehill1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
OK, the challenge this morning was to get everyone settled down and ready for another week of what passes for normal human activity these days.<\/p>\n
Some of us had taken Sunday off with Pastor Frank, who led a non-denominational sojourn through memories of a trip he once made to a lovely old church town in France. It was back in the news yesterday with reports of a fire at the Cath\u00e9drale Saint-\u00c9tienne de Limoges, accompanied by dramatic images of flames and smoke.<\/p>\n
The accompanying account reminded us that construction on the sacred precinct began in Anno Domini 1273 and continued, with interruptions, for more than five centuries before completion in the late nineteenth century.<\/p>\n
That is a considerable investment in something intended to last.<\/p>\n
You can see some of the problems confronting the new week. Old Europe appears to be on fire, at least figuratively, while the even older Middle East is alight with conflicts that seem determined to spread beyond their traditional boundaries.<\/p>\n
France is in a state of internal fury, and reports are circulating about President Macron considering additional military commitments involving Saudi Arabia and the Iranian-backed Houthi fighters. Egypt is reportedly considering its own response to the regional commotion.<\/p>\n
There is plenty of uncertainty in those reports, which naturally has not discouraged anyone from shouting about them.<\/p>\n
Section Leader Miles finally told the Boomers to sort through the overseas noise and leave Deirdre and her Galley staff alone long enough to figure out what might be served at shift change late this afternoon.<\/p>\n
That seemed reasonable. We had enough excitement of our own.<\/p>\n
One of the more improbable conversations around the Conference Table involved finding a couple hundred million dollars to see whether we could purchase the 500-plus-acre Tree Hill property just east of Richmond.<\/p>\n
It is reportedly being considered for a development involving some 2,300 new housing units, a prospect that has stirred considerable resentment among people who would prefer to keep looking at the grass.<\/p>\n
We understand that sentiment. Grass is generally quieter than people, requires fewer lawyers, and has a fairly predictable annual schedule.<\/p>\n
Tree Hill, however, is not just another attractive stretch of Virginia real estate.<\/p>\n
The property lies in a landscape whose history reaches back beyond the English settlement at Jamestown in 1607, to the Indigenous peoples of the James River and the powerful Powhatan paramount chiefdom.<\/p>\n
The great Chief Powhatan, also known as Wahunsenacawh, exercised authority over a network of communities and villages across Tidewater Virginia. He was a formidable political leader and warrior whose influence shaped the earliest encounters between the English colonists and the people who already lived there.<\/p>\n
He was also the father of Pocahontas, whose story became one of the most familiar, romanticized, and frequently misunderstood chapters in early American history.<\/p>\n
The English arrived with ambitious plans for land that was already occupied. Four centuries later, the ambitions are somewhat different, but the arguments about what should happen to the land have a familiar ring.<\/p>\n
You can see how all that led us to the Pow Wow Chow business.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/101926-treehill2.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Holly was looking particularly smug this morning.<\/p>\n
She had located an affordable used copy of the 1984 edition of Pow Wow Chow, the cookbook associated with the Five Civilized Tribes Museum in Muskogee, Oklahoma.<\/p>\n
It was the old plastic-ring-bound version, the sort of practical cookbook that opens flat on a kitchen counter and stays there while somebody measures flour, chops onions, or wipes an unfortunate quantity of sauce off the page.<\/p>\n
It is a wonderfully useful design, even if the copy has accumulated a few decades of honest wear.<\/p>\n
The book has become something of a collector’s item. Some surviving copies are offered for astonishing prices, which had us wondering whether the Socotra Galley ought to be in the rare-book business instead of the food business.<\/p>\n
Holly found a cheaper one, which was probably just as well.<\/p>\n
The original publication brought together recipes and contributions associated with Native American food traditions, preserving material that might otherwise have disappeared into family kitchens and fading memories.<\/p>\n
We intend to give the original contributors, editors, and museum full credit as we explore some of those recipes for Cooking for the Crowd. Our own Galley experiments, adaptations, illustrations, and occasional culinary disasters will receive their own attribution.<\/p>\n
Fast Eddie from the Socotra Legal Shop arrived shortly afterward with a familiar caution.<\/p>\n
There had been a political controversy some years ago involving Senator Elizabeth Warren and a recipe contributed under her name to the cookbook. The dispute involved claims about family ancestry and a crab-and-tomato dish that bore a striking resemblance to a recipe published elsewhere some years earlier.<\/p>\n
The story had become one of those peculiar American arguments in which a perfectly innocent bowl of seafood was dragged into national politics.<\/p>\n
Eddie suggested we leave the political accusations to the people who enjoy that sort of thing and concentrate on the actual food, the publishing history, and the people who put the cookbook together.
\nThat suited us.<\/p>\n
The cookbook appeared in 1984, and its subsequent publishing history, later editions, and connections to Native American cooking programs provide plenty of interesting material without reopening every argument from forty years ago.<\/p>\n
Besides, the recipe attributed to Warren had a predecessor that appeared remarkably similar.<\/p>\n
That seemed a more useful place to begin.<\/p>\n
We had a piece of Virginia land whose history stretched back before Jamestown, an old cookbook from Oklahoma, a French cathedral reminding us how long civilizations can take to build something, and another noisy Monday full of people apparently determined to tear things apart.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Holly had a cookbook coming, Deirdre had a shift to feed, and Miles was trying to keep the Boomers from shouting over one another about the latest overseas developments.<\/p>\n
Somewhere east of Richmond, the grass at Tree Hill was still growing.<\/p>\n
We thought that was enough history to get the week started.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/101926-treehill3.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
And we have a crab-and-tomato recipe to examine before the afternoon Dance-Off.<\/p>\n
More from the Galley at shift change.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 Vic Socotra<\/p>\n
www.vicsocotra.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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