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Lots has changed. I don't bother with adjusting recipes for high altitude because just following the recipe works fine for all baked good, even cakes that you want to be light and fluffy. I do add a little baking soda to the soak for dried beans though, otherwise it takes forever to cook them tender. But other than increasing the time a bit for stuff cooked in water--water at our altitude boils roughly 10 degrees f lower than at sea level--the altitude isn't a problem at all.In the mile-high basin of Casper, and Natrona County, Wyoming, the Indians called the place "the Valley of Fever." Strep throats untreated with antibiotics can leave the victim susceptible to early heart attacks if lucky enough to survive the disease. My husband's secretary, a lifelong Wyomingite, was 50 years old when she went in for a heart surgery, without which she would have died. Yes, she had a strep throat in the 30s, and she told us it was also because of having a strep throat when young when it wasn't clear whether she had a decent antibiotic back then, before they found out what the real problem was, and that the Indians weren't wrong for going around the entire area if they had to walk 100 miles to avoid everything about the large basin and mountainous area. In the 1800s, Mormons headed for Utah wound up passing Bessemer's Bend, and a few miles up the road, many, many of them died. They may call the place Mormon Pass, but I can't remember for sure. There is still an area the Mormons built as a remembrances of the colony of travelers whose last day on this planet was spent with heinous fever, dehydration by a river's side (I think it was the Sweetwater River), but no matter what religion people are, they cry when they hear of the sufferings of the group that got wiped out by illness. Maybe they thought the Indians were just trying to scare them or they had no warning. It was a sad day for pioneers going west. Strep throat was and is a ruthless disease when not treated with penicillin or natural remedy, if there was one. The Indian people of the general vicinity solved the problem by simply staying away from the areas where the strep germs ruled.
Mile high is the area where cakes flop down if Eastern Board, Gulf Coast, or West Coast cake recipes are used and is considered high altitude throughout the Rocky Mountains from Durango up. I learned that in the 35 years I mussed up my fair share of cakes the first year until someone told a once-subtropical Houstonian whose baking skills were near sea level the tricks of the cake trade at mile-high altitude.Seems it had to do with adding a couple of tablespoons of flour, lowering the temp and possibly adding time of cooking, or was it the other way around? Who cares! I don't have to think about it anymore at only about 320' above sea level.
