The title of Terry Del Bene's Donner Party Cookbook begs for belly laughs, but Wild West scholar Del Bene has a commendable goal: to put real names and faces on those unlucky travelers -- Truckee Lake was no place to be in the blizzardy winter of 1846 -- and reprieve them from their status as perennial joke fodder.

He does this via careful descriptions of the setting in which the story unfolded. For better or worse, hundreds of thousands headed westward on emigrant trails, walking twelve to twenty miles a day alongside the covered wagons that, contrary to Hollywood myth, served to transport goods, not passengers. "A wagon train was its own society," Del Bene writes. One in ten emigrants died en route.

The lard-heavy recipes reprinted here bespeak hardship and resourcefulness: gruel, scrapple, hardtack, hash, roasted elk, buffalo tongue. This is what the Donner Party ate, and thus who they were, before they got snowed in, ran out of supplies, and began to cook each other's corpses. "Perhaps the fascination in this matter comes from our own lack of experience with what it is to be truly hungry," Del Bene muses. "The Donner Party certainly had no recipes for human flesh at the start of their journey." Nevertheless, given the culinary customs of the time, he allows that "organs, such as brains, probably were stewed or roasted."

A disease that rots lobsters' shells and can kill the crustaceans now affects 30 percent of lobsters along the New England coast, decimating the industry in many areas, scientists said Wednesday.

Yesterday Mom and I went to private pie-making class. This was something my mom had bid on at a silent charity auction.

It was at an elderly woman, Bev's, house. Bev, the "instructor" was adorable, although she didn't get around the kitchen too well (she has M.S.). She's the kind of cook, like Julia Child, that believes recipes are for breaking. That's all fine and good, except we all know that baking is a science, right? Well, it turns out, pie-making is not.

I almost died when she told us the first ingredient in her pie crust was what she called "salad oil". WHAT?! Everyone knows you need to use solid shortening or butter. Supposedly, it's the solid nature of the fat that creates the flakiness. When the crust bakes and the butter/shortening melt into the flour, the air-pockets are what create the crispness. Well, I can debunk that myth.

Anyway, the secret ingredient in Bev's crust is heavy cream. I know it sounds awful. But let me tell you! I can now whip up a world-class apple pie in under 30 minutes. Forty-five minutes in the oven and I swear you will beg me to make another. I can't wait to make pies for you guys!