Hearty Midwest Ranch Recipes
A generous serving of best-of-the-West recipes lets you savor the same delicious cowboy tradition enjoyed by guests at South Dakota's Triangle Ranch.
Cowboy hospitality and heritage
Visitors at South Dakota's Triangle Ranch are treated not only to Lyndy Ireland's ranch cuisine, but also to the family's long tradition of hospitality.
"From homestead days, a guest was to be celebrated," Lyndy says. "You treat them as you would want to be treated, offering your best, however simple that may be."
As guests gather in the dining room, family tradition surrounds them. Generations of china sit in a sideboard. A family Bible rests beside a Nativity scene that's on display year-round. A hutch shows off arrowheads found in the ranch's streambeds.
When Lyndy and Kenny (pictured at left) mark the home's history, they count it in Christmas Eves--86 so far, including the year Lyndy's dad rode his horse through chest-deep snow to bring her and her sisters a red-seated saddle. All this heritage also shows in such details as wooden floors scuffed by countless cowboy boots.
"I've thought many times of refinishing the floors," Lyndy says, "but these are the marks of my family."
(A version of this story appeared in Midwest Living® July/August 2009.)
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