Saturday, September 30th | 2pm
Join us at the Peregrine on Saturday, September 30th at 2pm for a very special event. Community Leader Becky Ruffner will interview award-winning journalist and photographer Kathy McCraine, who grew up on a working cattle ranch at Walnut Grove, Arizona, about her latest book, The 7 Up Ranch Cookbook. Copies of the book will be available to buy at the event!
About The Book
For more than five decades, award-winning journalist and photographer Kathy McCraine has been documenting ranch life in the American West. For the past 25 years she has called the sprawling 7 Up Ranch in the mountains of northern Arizona home. In her new book, The 7 Up Ranch Cookbook, she combines her love of cooking with her love for ranching in a tribute to the traditional cowboy way of life.
The 7 Up Ranch Cookbook: The Story of Arizona’s Historic 7 Up Ranch with Recipes and Photos is equal parts cookbook, history lesson and photographic essay. The collection contains over 100 recipes from the many families and friends who have been associated with the ranch over the years, blending sophisticated techniques and ingredients with plain old, hearty, down home, ranch cooking. All seasoned throughout with anecdotes and tales from life on the range, and rich photography that captures the breathtaking beauty of the ranch and the traditional day to day work of its cowboys and families.
The 7 Up Ranch is a traditional working cattle ranch, its roots tracing back to the 1880s when Arizona’s ranching industry was in its infancy. The history of the 7 Up will introduce you to such fascinating characters as John Lovelace, a notorious cattle rustler who lived deep in Burro Creek Canyon; Harry Knight, who performed in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and turned part of the ranch into Arizona’s first dude ranch; and Bertha Schell, a lady miner who prospected for gem stones in the rugged canyons of the 7 Up and shared a tumbledown shack with her herd of goats.
A sampling of recipes that have been cooked on the ranch include Pot Roast With Port, The Fastest Pot of Beans in the West, Shrimp Stuffed Poblanos, Stewed Pork Chops with Butterbeans, Cowboy Hot Cakes, and Jack Daniels Pecan Pie. A few recipes even date back to the early 1900s on the ranch.
The 7 Up Ranch Cookbook has something for everyone: ranch history, cowboy tales, beautiful photography, and mouth watering recipes. It’s a one-of-a-kind book that belongs on the shelf of every cookbook collector and every student of Western culture and history.
Copies of the book will be available to buy at the event!
About Kathy McCraine
Kathy McCraine grew up on a working cattle ranch at Walnut Grove, Arizona, and has been involved with ranching, writing about it, and photographing it all of her life. After graduating from the University of Arizona with a degree in Journalism and minor in Art, she wrote for and edited several cattle and horse publications, then founded one of the first advertising agencies in the country to specialize in livestock.
As a journalist and photographer, Kathy’s photos have been published in such magazines as Cowboys & Indians, Arizona Highways, Ranch & Reata, Western Horseman, Range, American Cowboy, and Thunderbird Alumni Magazine. Her photos have been exhibited at the Trappings of the American West, Phippen Museum of Western Art, and Desert Caballeros Western Museum.
Kathy is also the author of Cow Country Cooking: Recipes and Tales from Northern Arizona’s Historic Ranches, which won the Will Rogers Medallion Award and was named an Arizona Historical Society 2011 “Southwest Book of the Year.” Her book, Orejana Outfit: Arizona’s Historic O RO Ranch 1993-2013, received an Independent Book Publishers Award for regional non-fiction, and a New Mexico-Arizona Book Award in non-fiction. Her first cookbook, Camouflage Cuisine, has been in print for almost 40 years.
Kathy owns and operates Campwood Cattle Company and the 7 Up Ranch near Prescott, Arizona, where she raises commercial cattle and registered Quarter Horses.
