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Apple-Cranberry Salsa This "salsa" is very Woodland/East Coast and is delicious served with roast pork, duck , pheasant, or even chicken. 2 large, sweet apples (Macintosh or Granny Smith), cored and cut into 1-inch chunks 1 ½ cups fresh cranberries 6 tablespoons lime juice 4 tablespoons olive oil 4 tablespoons honey 2 cups onion, chopped 1 ½ cups bell pepper (red, yellow and/or green) 2/3 cup fresh cilantro 2 cloves garlic, minced 1–2 small cans chopped j...
This Abenaki food writer Dale Carson's recipe from her New Native American Cooking (Random House, 1996). The majority of the food words in the book are in the Wampanoag language. The Wampanoag are often referred to as the "Thanksgiving Indians." The "good to eat" squash here is the yummy and readily available butternut. 1 medium onion 2 tbsp. butter 1 large butternut squash, seeded, roasted and scrapped from skin 2 cups or more chicken stock 1 cup sweet apple cider (my note:...
Brown Wusswaquatomineug (Walnut) Bread Walnuts, both black walnuts and butternuts, were prized by the Narragansetts in the Northeast for their oils. While growing, the black walnut is covered with a green pulp that turns black soon after it drops off the tree. The black pulp is used as a dye for plant fabrics and leather. The nuts themselves are valuable foodstuffs. 2 1/4 cups whole wheat flour 1 3/4 cups white flour 2 teaspoons baking soda 1 teaspoon salt 2 eggs, slightly...
Dear Friends and maybe a few relatives, this year is so different and not much fun being locked indoors since March in a self-quarantine. Hope things are easier for you. I'm sure we all love summer and summer foods so I think it might be good to share some ideas from my "neck of the woods'" to yours. Berries are "in" just about everywhere to make fruit salads sparkle. Blueberries, strawberries, pineapple, chunky watermelon make a delicious happy salad-a little on the sweet...
Here's a nice early summer treat for you to enjoy! Wild Mushroom Appetizer 3 cups sliced assorted wild mushrooms (morels, cepes, oyster or imported varieties) Fresh lemon juice Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste Bread sliced into ovals 1/2-inch thick 1. Heat oil in a skillet over medium heat and add the mushrooms. Cook until the mushrooms are soft but not soggy, about 5 minutes. 2. Sprinkle the mushrooms with lemon juice as they saute. (Lemon juice helps set the...
Dear Friends, Now that the craziness of the holidays is behind us we can take a big breath and consider what lies ahead-a great year I hope. Every year at this time I peruse cookbooks and magazines for ideas and hope to come up with something new and interesting to make. Sometimes a new combination of an old dish is the right thing. If you think of pastas, flour tortillas or split baguettes as a canvas, half the work is done. I like to have some cooked pasta (elbows,...
Rabbit, known as Mahtigwessin the Micmac language, is one of the small game that has been a staple of the Native diet. In rural areas, even today, beaver, ground hog, squirrel, raccoon and porcupine are hunted for food. They-along with their game bird cousins: wild turkey, pheasant, duck, quail, goose and others-still provide tasty dining. Many of these are available in commercial form at your market or butcher. Rabbit is one type of game now raised domestically. This is a...
Maple sap is dripping from a tree as the days turn warm and the nights are still freezing. When collected, sap is boiled down into syrup and is bottled at various stages of reduction as it darkens. Forty gallons of sap has to boil down to 1 gallon to give us the rich sweet syrup we pour on our pancakes! If you ever wondered why it's so expensive, that's why. Maple syrup is a key ingredient in great baked beans. Sorry Boston, but this was our dish first! Native baked beans are...
Brown Wusswaquatomineug (Walnut) Bread Walnuts, both black walnuts and butternuts, were prized by the Narragansetts in the Northeast for their oils. While growing, the black walnut is covered with a green pulp that turns black soon after it drops off the tree. The black pulp is used as a dye for plant fabrics and leather. The nuts themselves are valuable foodstuffs. 2 1/4 cups whole wheat flour 1 3/4 cups white flour 2 teaspoons baking soda 1 teaspoon salt 2 eggs, slightly...
Dear Friends, When visiting friends, I usually like to bring along a bean or other type of salad. It can be made the day before you need it and dressed with a simple vinaigrette and put in the fridge overnight until you're ready to go. You can also bring the dressing separately to travel. A hearty salad, crusty bread, refreshing drink, and chunk of cheese is a more than decent meal. I don't know why I like to give you salad recipes in the summer, but it just seems so...
May and June are the most beautiful months of the year. May always makes me think of my mother because her birthday is in May and so is Mother's Day. Then there is Cinco de Mayo and all that Mexican food to prepare and eat. May brings flowers everywhere and happy faces. June is major strawberry time. School's out for summer and lots of romances begin and start to flourish. Graduations, parties, visits and the best party of all: pow wow! For these events and others we usually...
Dear Alnobak (friends), I am sitting in front of my computer screen and watching the snow fall out the window just behind it. It is so beautiful but only because it is the first accumulation we have seen since last year. There is so much to be thankful for in winter/spring. The word "balmy" has been used some, yet I hardly think it is. A few days over 40 degrees did make it seem that way when it was sunny. Now, my taste in food can go either way, light and airy or thick and...
Dear Friends Nidobak, Seasons are changing again, they keep doing that! I have to say that fall is my favorite. Spring gives us the pink, yellow, white and purple lovely flowers, but fall's blaze is red, orange, deeper yellows and is more intense than spring. Such variety that I don't know how nature keeps it straight! The colorful produce starts with corn in many colors, we have red tomatoes, squash in all shades of yellow and orange, greens and even purples. Growing seasons...
I love strawberries, both wild and cultivated. Wild ones are small but contain more flavor than those big, beautiful ones in the market. Fragaria chiloensis is a coastal strawberry that grows from California north to Alaska. The most common meadow berry east of the Mississippi is fragaria virginiana. In the 20th century, this variety and other wild native berries were pushed out of the commercial market and replaced with oversized, tasteless, modern hybrids. There are over...
What does "Indian Life" mean anymore? To me it means "best life," which I try to live and know that others do too. It means living in harmony in all ways with nature and other humans. In that regard I try to be totally kind, and I find listening more than talking is the key. A benefit of this is you usually learn something. For example, I recently learned that there is a new chocolate shop in a nearby town. It is adorable, and I bought many of my Christmas presents there this...
Here comes another year, another cycle, a clean slate and a new chance to feel happy. In Abenaki, happy is alamizwidahomgwad. As an admitted “foodie,” each year I search and hope to find new taste sensations. Sometimes I find this at a friend’s house, or a restaurant, often by accident having read about a new way to fix something familiar. If it comes out successfully it becomes a new part of my culinary crazy quilt. As we approach “hunker down time” in the chill of winter, co...
Dear Nidobak (friends), another year is slipping by, this time dropping changes left and right, both good and not so good. Even apple and pumpkin time is flying into eggnog and candy cane territory so fast. It begins again. This year I plan to embrace the joy that comes with the season. A chance to catch up with myself and others. This is the perfect time to get a lot of baking done. I know now that I have no talent for making fudge or penuche with walnuts, like my mom made. P...
Summer was so lovely with visits from lots of old and new friends. My mind is still dreaming about new ways to fix lobster and other seafood. However, with boxes and baskets of tomatoes, squash, and corn surrounding us, it will be better to get on with “harvest” thoughts. GREEN SQUASH/CORN & GROUND BISON 2 green summer squash 1 pound ground bison-buffalo (or ground veal) 1 10-oz. package of frozen yellow corn 1/2 large red bell pepper, chopped 1 onion, chopped 4 mus...
Dear Nidobak(friends), Whenever the sun is out and you are, too, it is time for a party. You can be as formal and fancy as you’d like or keep it totally simple. I put some ideas below so you aren’t so busy. As with all things, organizing is the key. Some dishes go with everything, others don’t. If you are having more than six people, it’s a good idea to have a card table size table to keep drinks separate from food. In summer, we all sort of mix our ethnicity by prepari...
The old adage "the more things change, the more they remain the same" has rarely been truer. So many ways to prepare things, all trying to be so different. Okay, so we give this a try and that a try yet somehow come back to the original way we had it the first time. Spring is always good for showing us what is good and classic. Asparagus, for example, is just fine and delicious as is, but even better with a new sauce. We try it and sometimes the 'new' is better and sometimes n...
You may feel differently but I think this winter went quite fast and was so mild. It was a good year for zogalosobonek (maple sugar, sap or syrup). Even just a little in a recipe or box cake can stir up a new taste sensation. Here is where I like to say just 'play'. This spring weather brings renewal, a chance to rewind and do over whatever you didn't like about last year. Almost ready to give up on a big garden, well I am ready. It would be nice to have a small raised garden...
On cold winter days I always think of how hard it must have been for our ancestors who lived in inhospitable lands, how they struggled to keep warm and find food. I dare say they were strong and hearty souls who handled discomfort far better than we do. They taught themselves to make foods with endurance, things like Buffalo jerky, dried corn made into pemmican with dried fruit, nuts and oils, flat breads, thick soups and stews. Comfort foods are just that: food we can have...
Greetings Nidobak! I hope life is going well for you. Harvest should be in, the kids happily back to school and everyone who likes to cook is in their kitchen. I like to stay outside as much as possible when the weather cooperates. It has lately and we’ve had lots of sun. Time to go through all the recipes, old and new. The first ‘old’ one I have for you is from a tribal reunion I attended a few years ago in a park on Lake Champlain in northern New England. I’m not a big fan...
Dear Nidobak, The glorious time of year we wait for is here and we can revel and play in this warmth and sunshine! So many foods we grow are now ready for us to pick, prepare and enjoy. The first one that comes to mind for July and into August is CORN, the sacred Mother Corn followed closely by TOMATO. When I went to find the Abenaki word for corn, not surprisingly I found 38 variations! There are 98 words for water so I was not astonished. Because maize is not self-sowing it...
Nidobak (Friends), Spring makes me happy and I dare guess most of you readers as well. Foraging is an ongoing endeavor so it is time to focus on planting so foraging can always be in the background for a while. A big round planter with several herbs is more than useful, it is pretty, easy, and aromatic. Oh, did I mention economical? The way prices of everything are going up we can use all the help we can get. Some herbs I can just go and scoop up with a spoon in the yard to...
