www.MontanasTrailhead.com

I celebrated my release from Saint Vincent Hospital last week with a pleasant walk around Costco. The oncoming storm prevented us from checking out Sam’s Club. It sounds like others were doing the same thing there. I like to look at where the food and merchandise comes from and am always amazed that good stuff from other places can be sold so cheaply in Billings Montana. There must be an Invisible Hand playing at least a part here, ‘cooperation without coercion’ the way Milton Friedman views this marvelous but complicated economic engine  for enriching us all.

Soft cover version of Seabring's Food Lovers' Guide to Montana

I always check out the book aisles, usually to find something that I paid more than I needed to a few weeks ago. Today I found this sleek little beauty just out from Globe Pequot Press.

Author Seabring Davis, is editor-in-chief of Big Sky Journal magazine, lives in Livingston with her family, and has a couple of other books to her credit, including one of my favorites—A Montana Table: Recipes from Chico Hot Springs Resort.

She divides the state into the traditional marketers’ regions or ‘countries’: Glacier, Russell, Missouri River, Gold West, Yellowstone, and Custer, which has some connection to geography or history or both.

For each of these regions she makes really good lists of useful and authentic places like dairies, butcher shops, useful stores, Angus beef ranches, condiment companies, and restaurants of course with some of the highlights of the menu, including an occasional recipe; farmers’ markets and food happenings by the month, and finally breweries and wineries. Yellowstone Country—Bozeman, Paradise Valley etc— and Gold West Country—Helena and Butte etc—get a little more ink than the rest of us, but that may simply be a function of Sutton’s Law.

Judging by the entries for Custer Country, the whole southeast part of the state including Billings, this is an accurate, felicitously phrased, and up-to-date compendium of almost anything a foody might need to know as he or she moves around the state. When I looked at the Billings restaurants I saw a few omissions like The Soup Place on Broadway, the Meat and Poultry Palace on 16th St, Caramel Cookie Waffles on 17th St, and the Mustard Seed on the corner of 15th & Grand; together with an occasional questionable inclusion, but for the most part author Davis displays very good taste in her choices. Maybe she will make some corrections and additions in the 2nd edition.

I would think both the long-time resident and the out-of-stater would benefit from having this little book in their library and glove compartment. Highly recommended. Nine bucks at CostCo. Better than any other guidebook to the state I’ve seen.