Donner Party Cookbook Provides Sustenance to Cannibal Rights Group

BERKELEY, California.  Like many non-profits, the Cannibal Rights Association has tried a variety of fund-raising tactics over the years to keep itself afloat.  “We’ve had raffles, bake sales and car washes,” laughs Executive Director Wilson Donovan.  “Anything to keep the lights on and get our message out.”  That group’s mission is a simple one, he says. “To paraphrase Barbra Streisand, cannibals are people–people who need people.  It’s what we need them for that makes us unique.”

Donner Party-Goers:  “These hors d’oeuvres are great!  What’s in them?”

The group’s financial problems came to an end in December, however, when it published The Donner Party Fun Food Recipe Book just in time for the holiday shopping season.  “People buy cookbooks when they can’t think of anything else to give, and everybody needs finger food recipes for their holiday parties,” Donovan notes.  “In hindsight, it was a stroke of genius.”

Throw your own Donner Party!

Sales were fueled by word-of-mouth advertising as buyers ranging from housewives to historians of the American West to ghoulish Goth teens responded favorably to the taboo-breaking tome.  “I was looking for some new finger food recipes for our annual Christmas party,” says Marci Levenson of Downer’s Grove, Illinois.  “The Donners really knew how to throw a festive affair.”

The Donner Party:  “What’s for dinner?”

The Donner Party was a group of California-bound settlers who became stranded in the Sierra Nevada mountains during the winter of 1846-47.  Survivors ate members of the group who had succumbed to freezing temperatures or food poisoning from consuming undercooked oxen.

“Look, it’s getting late and we’re all kinda hungry.  Can you, like, hurry up and die?”

Cannibalism is generally frowned on among civilized peoples unless a best-selling book can be written about a particular incident.  “Alive”, the story of a Uruguayan rugby team that resorted to the edgy cuisine after a plane crash left them snowbound in a remote area of the Andes, was a best-seller for Piers Paul Reid in the 1970’s and was turned into a Hollywood movie in 1993.  The film grossed $36 million dollars, and numerous weak-stomached viewers who had purchased Goobers at theatre refreshment stands.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has criticized the Donner Party’s diet, saying it is lacking in grains, vegetables and fruits and is heavy in fatty meats.  “It’s no wonder so many of those people died,” noted Lynn Ostrowski, a USDA nutritionist.  “They had the eating habits of a 15 year-old skateboarder.”

“I’ll have a tuna on wheat, hold the mayo.”

Anti-cannibal sentiment is blamed by some for declining consumption of fish among U.S. households as consumers realize that canned tuna that is not certified dolphin-free may contain meat from highly-evolved, intelligent beings.  “I switched to egg salad,” says Mary Kate Snyder, a legal secretary in Boston.  “I went to Sea World and the dolphins in the show were smarter than most of the kids in my high school class.”