Hello all,

Though it's been a pleasure lurking on this helpful and energetic list,
I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself.  I'm a freelance writer
and novelist living in Berkeley (fortuitously close to the Mark Twain
Project).  A year or two ago, I became fascinated by the long menu
towards the end of A TRAMP ABROAD, where Twain lists about eighty of
his favorite American foods.  It struck me that many of these wild
foods are no longer widely eaten, either for cultural reasons
(raccoons) or because they simply don't exist anymore (San Francisco
mussels).   I've been working on what I hope will be a book-length
project about what the foods might have meant to Twain, what has become
of them in the years since he wrote his list, and what is being done to
restore the things that we no longer have.  It's been a great deal of
fun.

If anyone is aware of other food writing that has been done about
Twain, I'd very much appreciate the reference; what I'm working on is
not so much a cookbook as it is a food history, but anything you know
of would be great.

Finally, if anyone is interested, my first article on the subject,
"Twain's Feast," is out in the current GASTRONOMICA magazine (Spring
2007).

Best,

Andrew Beahrs