That first issue, a 16-page pamphlet touting the glories of Yosemite and the charms of Los Angeles, is still on file in Sunset's archives. (Under the same name, the route remains as part of Amtrak's Western service.)Īs one of the largest landowners in the West, Southern Pacific wanted to promote not just Western travel but Western living, hoping to entice restless Midwesterners and Easterners into buying property and putting down new roots. According to True, it began as a promotional pamphlet for Southern Pacific's luxurious Sunset Limited rail line, which curved like a smile from New Orleans through Texas and Arizona and up to Los Angeles and San Francisco. Lured by the promise of everything from gold and orange groves to movie stardom and high-tech promise, newcomers have been flooding westward for decades on end-and since 1898, Sunset magazine has been there to tell them how to live. Turns out my 21-year-old self was hardly the first to be stunned by the glories of California living. Margo True, the magazine's food editor since 2006, stopped by Omnivore Books last week to talk about the history of Sunset and the creation of the book. I'm really here!Īs you might expect, there are plenty of avocado recipes (22, in fact, including Coconut-Avocado Ice Cream and Sake-Soy Guacomole) in The Sunset Cookbook, a five-pound, 800-page compilation of the best of Sunset. Fruit was cherry Jell-O, piled in cubes and topped with a squirt of cream from a can. Where I came from, diners counted parsley as a vegetable. Avocado omelet! Avocado & Jack cheese burger! BLT with avocado!Īvocados, at a diner! I marveled. I sat down a stool at It's Tops Coffee Shop and looked up at the board of daily specials. I'd never been further west than Minneapolis, never seen fresh lemons dangling over the sidewalk or palm trees flanking a city block. It was August of 1990, and I was fresh out of college and ready to start a life here. I can still remember the moment I truly arrived in California.
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