Inspirational Report #01

Each idea presents a simple, self-contained concept rooted in authentic cowboy history, American food culture, and hands-on cooking.
Variations are ordered by difficulty:

1. Easy → minimal setup, single cook or explanation
2. Medium → multiple recipes, historical comparison, or testing assumptions
3. Advanced → immersive storytelling, experiments, or multi-day prep

---

1. The Farewell of the Farmers’ Almanac

2026 will be the last year the Farmers’ Almanac will be printed. That’s why, for this video, I thought you could take a look at t’s history, the way it shaped American homes, and of course cook recipes and use tips and tricks from the almanac.

Variations

1. Easy: Get different almanacs from different decades and follow some of the cooking tips and recipes written down.
2. Medium: Use the almanac’s seasonal advice (planting dates, weather predictions, or food preservation tips) to plan and cook a meal exactly when and how the book recommends.
3. Medium: Compare a Farmers’ Almanac recipe or kitchen tip to a modern cookbook or online recipe and see which one performs better in taste, effort, and results.
4. Advanced: Live by the Farmers’ Almanac for a full week—cook only almanac-based recipes, follow its food-related advice, and reflect on whether an old American guidebook can still run a modern kitchen.

2. What Cowboys Actually Ate for Breakfast

Break down the most important meal of the day on the trail, explaining and showing what it was, why it mattered, and how it fueled long workdays. The goal is to share easy and realistic breakfast ideas that can be done in the rush of the morning and fuels you for a long work day.

Variations

1. Easy: Cook and compare a cowboy breakfast to a modern American breakfast side by side.
2. Medium: Compare how much time and money it costs to cook a cowboy breakfast vs. getting breakfast from a fast food drive thru during the morning rush hour. What is cheaper, quicker and healthier?
3. Medium: Cook the entire breakfast as the sun rises and have it ready for the ranch as they head off to start their day.
4. Advanced: Eat only a cowboy-style breakfast for a full week and track energy, hunger, and fatigue. Do this along with your wife to compare the impact on men vs. women.

3. I Ate Like a Real Cowboy for 24 Hours

Inspired by this article, for this video I thought you could follow a historically accurate cowboy eating schedule for an entire day, based on real accounts of working cowboys.

Variations

1. Easy: Rank each meal from one to ten in terms of practicality, flavor, time consumed, nutrientes, and overall experience.
2. Medium: Follow the cowboy diet while doing physical work or spending the day outdoors to better match the lifestyle it was designed for.
3. Medium: Take the cowboy regular diet and adapt it to different budgets and lifestyles, keeping in mind most people count with a more sedentary lifestyle and don’t need to consume that many calories.
4. Advanced: Make Shannon follow a regular modern American diet for a day while Kent follows the cowboy diet for a day. Both will keep track of their hunger, energy, calories consumed and overall sensations to see the impact. How much does it differ in terms of calories, nutrients and time?

4. What Did People Eat in Old West Saloons?

Inspire by this article for this video tackle a classic of the old west, saloons! For this, cook different meals, snacks, beverages and appetizes that were actually served in Old West saloons, debunking movie myths and explaining the history of these places as you cook.

Variations

1. Easy: Cook 3 common saloon dish and explain their origins.
2. Medium: Recreate a full saloon menu using historically accurate recipes, beverages included!
3. Medium: Compare “fancy” vs. cheap saloon food, exploring the range these places had.
4. Advanced: Host a full saloon-style meal experience with period-accurate food, rules, and atmosphere (and perhaps even film inside a real life saloon).

5. One Cast Iron, Five Recipes

Inspired by this article, share in this video five different meals that can be cooked just with a cast iron, from appetizers, to full meals, to deserts. The goal is to show the versality of the cast iron, proving you don’t need much else to cook.

Variations

1. Easy: Use a wheel or a random number generator to pick the order in which you’ll cook the recipes.
2. Medium: Hit the dollar store and purchase all the ingredients needed for the 5 recipes with under $50 USD, showing the practicality not only relies on the cast iron itself but on the recipes as well.
3. Medium: Compare cast iron cooking vs. modern cookware for the same recipes (with Kent cooking outside with the cast iron and Shannon cooking inside with regular appliances.) Compare the amount of time it took, the mess it made and how much clean up you need to do afterwards.
4. Advanced: Cook all five meals in under 2 hours, using the same cast iron and never turning the heat off.

6. From the British to KFC: How Fried Chicken Changed Over Time

Inspired by this article, for this video, cook a classic American dish using four different recipes from different decades, starting with the original British recipes, moving on to old west and cowboy/southern ways of cooking it, to modern recipes, all while you go through its history and explain how fried chicken became a staple in American comfort food.

Variations

1. Easy: Compare scratch-made vs. store-bought ingredients to prepare this dish.
2. Medium: Make Shannon or other family members blind taste all four recipes and make her guess which one is the oldest and the newest.
3. Medium: Cook each recipe with period accurate utensils, from cast irons to air friers.
4. Advanced: Keep track of ingredients, time and effort each recipe takes to cook to determine which one is the most convenient one.

7. Salisbury Steak: A Forgotten American Delicacy

Inspired by this article, for this video explore the rise, popularity, and disappearance of the Salisbury steak and explain why it fell out of favor as you cook your own version.

Variations

1. Easy: Cook an original Salisbury steak recipe and give tips to enhance the flavor and make it unique and more modern/practical.
2. Medium: Challenge yourself to cook a Salisbury steak within a budget and only with items from the dollar store.
3. Medium: Get 3 different recipes and cook them side by side, showing the versatility of the dish.
4. Advanced: Serve Salisbury steak to guests without telling them what it is and record their reactions as they try to guess.

8. How To Use Your Food Scraps The Way Cowboys Did

For this video, inspired by this article, tackle different ways to reuse food scraps and waste in sustainable ways, showing different recipes and uses for food scraps and covering the historical aspects of life in the ranch, where money is scarce and everything must be used to its full advantage.

Variations

1. Easy: Share 5 tips for using food scraps, ranking them based on how easy these tips are to follow, keeping practicality in hand.
2. Medium: Debunk myths and lies people believe about food upcycling, showing what kinds of foods can be reused and which ones can’t, with alternatives for their uses.
3. Medium: Make Shannon or other family members taste test different meals and recipes cooked with food scraps and try to make them guess what they’re made of.
4. Advanced: Attempt to prepare a day’s worth of food (breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner and maybe even dessert!) without wasting anything. Any leftovers from one meal must be used in the other.