Pine Nuts.

Johnny Bob, a spiritual leader from Yomba Shoshone Tribe, gathering pine cones in a mountain valley in central Nevada. (Photo by Joseph Zummo).

Johnny Bob, a spiritual leader from Yomba Shoshone Tribe, gathering pine cones in a mountain valley in central Nevada. (Photo by Joseph Zummo).

There’s a very good article at ICTMN about the Western Shoshone tribes and a staple of their diet, pine nuts. A staple, which is considered sacred, and is healthy, it also treated with utter disregard by non-natives, who have been using any excuse to destroy the trees.

“Everything depends on the water and the trees,” said spiritual leader Johnny Bob, from the Yomba Shoshone Tribe, as he prayed for the start of a Western Shoshone pine-nut gathering. In September, members of several bands came together in a steep-walled mountain valley in central Nevada to collect the protein- and nutrient-rich nuts that were once the mainstay of their diet.

Some people took hold of long sticks and began to knock the sticky green cones off the tops of the pinyon trees. Others gathered fallen branches to chop up for the fire in which they would later roast the cones to release the sweet, creamy nuts. These can be eaten out of hand, added to soups and stews or parched and ground for gravy or mush.

“As we collect, we are pruning the trees to ensure there are even more cones next year. We are also cleaning the forest,” explained Joseph Holley, former chairman and now council member of the Battle Mountain Band of Te-Moak Western Shoshone.

[…]

This critical food source, along with game living in the forest, began to disappear during the late 19th century, as newly arrived settlers chopped down trees for fuel over many square miles around towns and mining operations. Starting in the 20th century, these losses were amplified by the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service, which together have uprooted more than 3 million acres of pinyon-plus-juniper woodlands.

To destroy the forests, the federal agencies use tractors to drag gargantuan chains through them, ripping up everything in their path. The ruined landscapes look like the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust. Sometimes, the agencies eliminate woodlands in order to increase rangeland for grazing, an activity that further damages the fragile arid lands where pinyons flourish. Scientists estimate that soil in an erosion-prone “chained” landscape may take 10,000 years to recover.

The full story is at ICTMN.

Les Diners de Gala.

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Published only once in 1973, Les Diners de Gala was a dream fulfilled for surrealist artist Salvador Dali who claimed at the age of 6 that he wanted to be a chef. The  cookbook pairs 136 recipes over 12 chapters (the 10th of which is dedicated to aphrodisiacs) with the his exceptionally strange illustrations and collages created especially for the publication. The artworks depict towering mountains of crayfish, an unusual meeting of a swan and a toothbrush in a pastry case, and portraits of Dali himself mingling with chefs against decadent place settings. Recipes include such delicacies as “Thousand Year Old Eggs”, “Veal Cutlets Stuffed With Snails”, “Frog Pasties”, and “Toffee with Pine Cones”.

…Despite the unusual ingredients and preparation methods, many of the old school recipes in Les Diners de Gala originated in some of the top restaurants in Paris at the time including Lasserre, La Tour d’Argent, Maxim’s, and Le Train Bleu. Lest you think anything in the book might be remotely healthy, it offers a cautionary disclaimer at the outset:

We would like to state clearly that, beginning with the very first recipes, Les Diners de Gala, with its precepts and its illustrations, is uniquely devoted to the pleasures of Taste. Don’t look for dietetic formulas here.

We intend to ignore those charts and tables in which chemistry takes the place of gastronomy. If you are a disciple of one of those calorie-counters who turn the joys of eating into a form of punishment, close this book at once; it is too lively, too aggressive, and far too impertinent for you.

…Only around 400 copies of Les Diners de Gala are known to survive, most of which sell for hundreds of dollars. However Taschen has finally made this rare book available for the first time in 43 years as a new reprint currently available for pre-order.

Via Colossal Art.

Indigenous News Round-up.

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The Immortal Mr. Plastic.

Excerpts only, click links for full articles.

barack_obama On My Final White House Tribal Nations Conference, by President Barack Obama:

This week, I hosted my eighth and final White House Tribal Nations Conference as President, a tradition we started in 2009 to create a platform for people across many tribes to be heard. It was a remarkable testament to how far we’ve come.

It was just eight years ago when I visited the Crow Nation in Montana and made a promise to Indian country to be a partner in a true nation-to-nation relationship, so that we could give all of our children the future they deserve.

winonaladuke-e1336873224811  Slow, Clean, Good Food, by Winona LaDuke:

In an impressive fossil fuels travel day, I left the Standing Rock reservation and flew to Italy for the International Slow Food gathering known as Terra Madre. A world congress of harvesters, farmers, chefs and political leaders, this is basically the World Food Olympics. This is my fifth trip to Italy for Slow Food. I first went with Margaret Smith, when the White Earth Land Recovery Project won the Slow Food Award for Biodiversity in 2003, for our work to protect wild rice from genetic engineering. This year, I went as a part of the Turtle Island Slow Food Association- the first Indigenous Slow Food members in the world, a delegation over 30 representing Indigenous people from North American and the Pacific. We have some remarkable leaders, they are young and committed.

It is a moment in history for food, as we watch the largest corporate merger in history- Bayer Chemical’s purchase of Monsanto for $66 billion; with “crop protection chemicals” that kill weeds, bugs and fungus, seeds, and (likely to be banned in Europe) glyphosate, aka Roundup. Sometimes I just have to ask: ‘Just how big do you all need to be, to be happy?’

tribal_chairman_jeff_l-_grubbe_agua_caliente_band_of_cahuilla_indians_main_0  Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians Donates $250,000 to Standing Rock Legal Fund:

The Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians is donating $250,000 to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s legal fund, citing the need to keep pushing for proper consultation even after the Dakota Access oil pipeline issue is decided.

“We support the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s effort to ensure the United States Army Corps of Engineers, or any other agency or department of the United States, strictly adheres to federal environmental review and tribal consultation requirements prior to authorizing any projects that may damage the environment or any sites that are of historic, religious, and cultural significance to any Indian tribe,” said Agua Caliente Chairman Jeff L. Grubbe in a statement on September 27, calling on President Barack Obama to make sure consultation is thorough.

3-fiesta-protest-woman-with-sign_dsc0508_widea  Natives Speak Out Against the Santa Fe Fiesta – The Bloodless Reconquest:

A loud group of about 50 mostly Native protesters disrupted the Entrada kickoff event of the Fiestas de Santa Fe. This is the annual reenactment of Don Diego de Vargas’s “peaceful reconquest” of Santa Fe in 1692 as produced by Caballeros de Vargas, a group which is a member of the Fiesta Council, and several current and past City of Santa Fe Councilors are members of the Fiesta Council or played parts in the Entrada over the years. So these are layers you must wade through when people ask questions and protesters demand changes. And changes or outright abolishment of The Entrada are what the groups “The Red Nation” and “In The Spirit of Popay” are asking for.

climate_news_network-binoculars-flickr-aniket_suryavanshi  Dire Climate Impacts Go Unheeded:

The social and economic impacts of climate change have already begun to take their toll—but most people do not yet know this.

Politicians and economists have yet to work out how and when it would be best to adapt to change. And biologists say they cannot even begin to measure climate change’s effect on biodiversity because there is not enough information.

Two studies in Science journal address the future. The first points out that historical temperature increases depress maize crop yields in the U.S. by 48 percent and have already driven up the rates of civil conflict in sub-Saharan Africa by 11 percent.

big-pix-rick-bartow-counting-the-hours ‘Counting the Hours’ By Rick Bartow:

Rick Bartow, a member of the Mad River Band of Wiyot, walked on April 2, 2016, and had suffered two strokes before he passed. The IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts reports that those events affected his work, and it can be seen in his collection as “exciting examples of Bartow’s production since his stroke… that evidence a new freedom of scale and expression.”

Born in Oregon in 1946, Bartow was never formally trained in the arts, though his artistic nature was encouraged and he did graduate from Western Oregon University with a degree in secondary arts education in 1969. Right after that he served in Vietnam from 1969-1971, and it was demons from that war that he spent his early years in art exorcising. He says he was “twisted” after Vietnam and his art can be described as disturbing, surreal, intense, and visionary; even transformative.

harney_peak_renamed_black_hills_peak_-_ap_photo  Celebration of Forgiveness at Black Elk Peak:

On a recent Autumn Saturday in the Black Hills, a handful of men and women gathered at around 9 a.m. at the Sylvan Lake trailhead just below Black Elk Peak. By 10 a.m., they numbered close to 80.

“The focal point of our gathering was to have family members of General Harney have an opportunity to apologize to members of the Little Thunder family,” said Basil Brave Heart, Oglala Lakota, an organizer of the event. Brave Heart initiated and led the effort to change the name of this highest peak east of the Rocky Mountains from Harney Peak to Black Elk Peak.

Among those standing in a circle that morning was Paul Stover Soderman, a seventh-generation descendant of General William Harney, known as The Butcher of Ash Hollow, and to the Lakota as the architect of the same conflict, known to them as the Massacre at Blue Water Creek. Soderman had come to apologize to Sicangu descendants of Chief Little Thunder, the Brule leader of those murdered in that conflict, and to seek forgiveness and healing.

All this and much more at ICTMN.

Cool Stuff Friday: MAD.

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MAD (taken from the Danish word for “food”) is a not-for-profit organization that works to expand knowledge of food to make every meal a better meal; not just at restaurants, but every meal cooked and served. Good cooking and a healthy environment can and should go hand-in-hand, and the quest for a better meal can leave the world a better place than we found it. MAD is committed to producing and sharing this knowledge and to taking promising ideas from theory to practice.

MAD is a great place to lose yourself for ages on end. Food, food, food, but not all the regular ways food is addressed. Here, there is the breathtaking culture of food, from all over the world, the history of food, the art of food, traditions of food, innovations and artistry of food. Any curiosity you may have about food, you can find satisfaction at MAD. I’ve been trying to catch up, reading at the site for the past month or so, and I’ve barely made a dent. Two articles in particular got my attention in recent days: Turning Trash Into Delicious Things: a Brief Guide by Arielle Johnson, and A People’s History of Carolina Rice, by Michael Twitty.

The first article grabbed my attention because it addresses the waste of craft brewers, and that particular waste happens in my household, as Rick is a home brewer:

On an artisanal-industrial scale, spent grains—the malted barley that is steeped in water to make beer—is a major source of waste for craft brewers, with (roughly) 8 kilos of leftover barley for every 50 liters of finished beer. It can be used as animal fodder, but you can go beyond that, since it also presents creative flavor opportunities.

That waste, it turns out, can be used to make koji, which in turn can be used to make a form of miso. Click on over to the article for details, and recipes! The article on Carolina rice was eye-opening, and details the history of this rice from 3500 B.C.E. to 2013. There’s personal history in this overview of one food:

1770s: My great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother is captured in a war in Sierra Leone and brought to Charleston, without a doubt to grow and mill rice on a Lowcountry plantation. She is a member of the Mende people, who would later lead the Amistad slave ship revolt in 1839.

[…]

1835: My great-great-great grandmother, Hettie Esther Haynes, is born and is later sold out of South Carolina, away from her mother Nora, into the cotton country of Alabama during the largest forced migration in American history—the domestic slave trade. Thousands of Gullah-Geechee will know this fate as rice cultivation faces competition from other countries and slaveholders are forced to reduce the number of bondspeople.

Now I’m going to read about The Carbon Footprint of Eating Out, A War Zone Cuisine, and Culture of the Kitchen: Cooks Weigh In.

Have a wondrous wander through the fields of MAD, it’s a journey you won’t regret.

And Now For Something Completely Different…

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Turnip Fries! Bet you weren’t expecting that. Courtesy of Wozupi Tribal Gardens:

Ingredients

  • Turnip wedges
  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  • grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1 teaspoon garlic salt
  • 1 teaspoon paprika
  • 1 teaspoon onion powder

 

Directions

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). Line a baking sheet with a piece of aluminum foil and lightly grease. Peel the turnips, and cut into French fry-sized sticks, about 1/3 by 4 inches. Place into a large bowl, and toss with the vegetable oil to coat. Place the Parmesan cheese, garlic salt, paprika, onion powder in a resealable plastic bag, and shake to mix. Place the oiled turnips into the bag, and shake until evenly coated with the spices. Spread out onto the prepared baking sheet.Bake in preheated oven until the outside is crispy, and the inside is tender, about 20 minutes. Serve immediately.

GOOOOOOAAAALLLLLL!!!!!! WE DID IT!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH EVERYBODY!!!

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On Monday, I posted about The Sioux Chef, happily begging people to help the kickstarter over that final hurdle, and this was in an email I just received:

GOOOOOOAAAALLLLLL!!!!!! WE DID IT!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH EVERYBODY!!!

There’s some excitement, can you tell? We have some great food on the way, and thank you so much, everyone who saw fit to signal boost or kick a few dollars to the Indigenous Kitchen. Pilamayaye.

Update:

As you know, we hit our first goal today at 10:54 AM (CST) two weeks ahead of the end of our campaign. Our team has been screaming, texting, high-fiving, fainting,laugh-crying, and group hugging ever since. We couldn’t post an update for two hours because we are in a state of disbelief and euphoria!!

When Chef Sean had this idea ten years ago he knew that there could be true Native American restaurants, and he slowly started working on educating himself on what the fundamentals of an Indigenous food system are. Two years ago, he formally started the company The Sioux Chef, and Dana came on one month later. Our team has grown and now we have seven team members, and each one of these wonderful humans are completely committed to propelling the concept of bringing the awareness of these foods to as many people as possible.

Hopefully we can bring people in from tribal regions to learn about these foods, and then bring that knowledge back to their communities. You helped us get closer to these goals! You are coming along with us on that path, too! Each one of you has invested in us… That humbles us! Thank you! We are so happy to have you in our Kickstarter tribe!

We have two more weeks of fundraising. The more we raise, the less funds we will need in traditional financing options, and the less risk there will be for us. Two more weeks to get the word out, two more weeks to make new friends and to raise awareness of the importance of these foods that are beautiful, delicious medicine.

In other words, we are going to keep sprinting on this thing.

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The Sioux Chef: An Indigenous Kitchen.

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I know I have been asking half the world of people lately, and yes, here I am again, asking. This too, is important. Chef Sean Sherman, Oglala Lakota from the Pine Ridge rez, wants to change a serious absence in the food scene. Where’s all the Indigenous food? Traditionally based indigenous food is delicious, healthy, and sustainable. This also marks a great potential for so many Indigenous kids, who are looking more and more to traditional foods, and would like to be able to earn a living cooking, doing what they love. The kickstarter for the restaurant is so close, so very close. If you have a few bucks, please become a backer in this most important venture. (Oh yeah, I’m a backer. I want travel over and eat, so gotta make this happen.)

There is a great deal of information at the site, so I’ll just include a bit here, but I’m putting up lots of photos of amazing, delicious food. Foooooooooood. If you haven’t eaten Indigenous food, seriously, you are so missing out. If we can get one Native restaurant up and running, others will happen. So please visit, and back if you can. If you can’t, please signal boost, spread the word everywhere!

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[Read more…]

Cool Stuff Friday

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Are you on Instagram? Check out Nihongo Flashcards, and learn Japanese. Via Spoon & Tamago. Also, I just have to mention these fabulous Seppuku sweets, which you can only get if you’re in Japan, specifically, Tokyo.

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Visit the Kickstarter for a great project, Umi Hashi.

Need to feel a bit ethereal for a while? Check out these watercolour butterfly temporary tattoos:

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For Dinosaur Watchers, a beautiful poster of Birds of North America:

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Pride Pasta

I chose fettuccine noodles for this recipe, rather than other forms of pasta. You’ll see at the end that they remind me of ribbons and show a bit more color than a spaghetti or linguine version, being wider and having more surface area. I also tried different sauces for the rainbow-colored pasta, and the trick is to use a clear sauce or dressing, because anything white or opaque, like alfredo sauce, ended up taking on some of the color that eventually migrates from the noodles. Also, choosing a chunky mozzarella cheese with black olives was deliberate, to help show a sharp contrast and make the noodles “pop” more; other cheeses would have dulled the appearance of the whole presentation and too many add-ins could also detract and change the color composition. I would, though, recommend slicing the olives because leaving them whole as I did here was mostly a pain in the neck when it came time to actually eat the dish with a fork…they looked good whole, but rolled around and avoided the fork in that form.

When testing the storage and transport of this dish, I’d recommend eating it within four hours of tossing it together. If you’re taking it to a potluck, cook and color the noodles at home but try to compose the salad on site. But, if you need to transport it composed, it should be fine and not mix too many of the colors when the noodles move and get jostled. I threw one set of noodles with dressing, olives, and cheese into a resealable bag and took it to my cabin with me. All of that movement didn’t change the presentation too much that first day, but on the second day a few of the colors were transferring between the different noodles and the white of the mozzarella chunks were graffiti-ed with stripes of color that made them look like confetti. So, while the recipe will last for days in the refrigerator and still taste good and look colorful, I’d recommend consuming it the same day you throw it all together. Carb-load for all of those Pride activities and have a wonderful time celebrating this community.

Pride Pasta
Ingredients:
1 package fettuccine noodles
salt for water
liquid food coloring
1 cup Italian dressing (add more to taste)
mozzarella cheese (cut into chunks)
black olives (sliced is preferable)

6 quart-sized resealable bags
2 tablespoons water
paper towels

Instructions:
Bring a pot of water to a full boil. Add salt and fettuccine to water and stir, fettuccine tries to stick together. Do not add olive oil to the water if you normally might, because the oil will affect the coloring process later on. Allow the noodles to cook anywhere from 7 minutes (as recommended on the package) to 16 minutes (which is my preference). Drain and run cold water on the noodles to cool and rinse away some of the starch.

Add 2 tablespoons of water to each of the six quart-sized resealable bags. Then, add the following for the six colors of the Pride flag:
Red: 20 drops coloring
Orange: 15 drops yellow coloring, 5 drops red coloring
Yellow: 20 drops yellow coloring
Green: 20 drops green coloring
Blue: 20 drops blue coloring
Purple: 15 drops red coloring, 5 drops blue coloring

Split the pasta into 6 sections and put a section of pasta into each bag, being sure to seal it securely. Then, mix the coloring and noodles together for a minute before setting each bag aside for 5 minutes or so.

Section by section, give each bag one last mix before dumping the pasta into a strainer in the sink. Run water on the pasta to rinse the color away, feel free to really agitate it with your hands…the fettuccine is pretty sturdy.

Remove pasta from the strainer and onto a paper towel. Blot with another paper towel to try to remove as much liquid as possible. If there’s still a lot of color bleeding off of it, put it back into the strainer to rinse longer.

Repeat with each color of pasta, being sure to rinse the strainer completely between colors.

For assembly, feel free to leave the noodles in their colored sections or mix them up as I did in the video. Either way, they’re playful and brilliant. Add things to the pasta, but in the case of all these colors, remember that less is more. Enjoy. And Happy Pride, friends.

This looks a bit scary to me, but fun! I think I’d prefer Pride Pancakes, well, because pancakes. Via Lavender Magazine and Tablespoon.

Ethnobotany of the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians

9780870718526Ethnobotany of the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians, by Patricia Whereat-Phillips.

Myrtlewood is most often thought of as beautiful wood for woodworking, but to Native people on the southern Oregon coast it was an important source of food. The roasted nuts taste like bitter chocolate, coffee, and burnt popcorn. The roots of Skunk Cabbage provided another traditional food source, while also serving as a medicine for colds. In tribal mythology, the leaves of Skunk Cabbage were thought to be tents where the Little People sheltered.

Very little has been published until now on the ethnobotany of western Oregon indigenous peoples. Ethnobotany of the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians documents the use of plants by these closely-related coastal tribes, covering a geographical area that extends roughly from Cape Perpetua on the central coast, south to the Coquille River, and from the Coast Range west to the Pacific shore. With a focus on native plants and their traditional uses, it also includes mention of farming crops, as well as the highly invasive Himalayan blackberry, which some Oregon coast Indians called the “white man’s berry.”

The cultures of the Coos Bay, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw are distinct from the Athabaskan speaking people to the south, and the Alsea to the north. Today, many tribal members are reviving ancient arts of basket weaving and woodworking, and many now participate in annual intertribal canoe events. Ethnobotany of the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians contributes to this cultural renaissance by filling an important gap in the historical record. It is an invaluable resource for anyone who wishes to learn about the indigenous cultures of the central and southern Oregon coast, as well as those who are interested in Pacific Northwest plants and their cultural uses.

The Melding of Ethnobotany with Language and Story.

If you’ve ever studied a second language, you’ve probably heard, “If you don’t use it, you lose it.” While some people may feel unaffected that they no longer remember the language they learned in secondary school, entire cultures suffer when the last speaker of that language dies and the language is lost. There is a great importance behind understanding cultures and their practices. This includes how the culture connects with the environment around them. Today Patricia Whereat-Phillips discusses her introduction to research focused on indigenous languages and how she became interested in ethnobotany. In her new book, Ethnobotany of the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians, Whereat-Phillips documents the ethnobotany of western Oregon indigenous peoples.

Growing up in the hills near the eastern shore of Coos Bay, I spent much of my childhood playing out in nature – playing in the stream at the bottom of the draw, watching deer eat apples in our yard, helping mom fill the bird feeders, and spending all summer wandering the land around our house picking berries. As a child, I learned that I was descended from the Milluk people of lower Coos Bay. I wondered what the old language was like, but no one seemed to know. The last fluent speaker of Milluk died before I was born, and the last speaker of its sister language, Hanis, died when I was 2 ½ years old. I never met her.

For years my research focused on indigenous languages – mostly the Coosan languages of Hanis and Milluk, and Siuslaw, and traditional legends. My interest in ethnobotany began when I received a letter from an undergraduate who was researching medicinal plants of Oregon Indians. It wasn’t a question I’d looked in to before, and I began to do some research. I found a few mentions of medicinal plants, and answered her letter. By now, my curiosity piqued, I tried to do some more research and found (probably as this student did) that there is little published on western Oregon ethnobotany (unlike the rest of the Pacific Northwest and California).

So I spent years trying to research the ethnobotanical knowledge of the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw. Not only did I gain a greater appreciation of the beauty and diversity of the temperate rainforest that I had grown up in, but a greater appreciation of the breadth of indigenous knowledge of the landscape and the melding of ethnobotany with language and story.

You can read more here. I don’t have my copy yet, but I am looking forward to it, and learning more about these peoples. The book can be ordered here.

Native Cooking: Summer Fruit Breads.

Strawberry bread is a good summer bread option. The frosting is an optional add-on. Photo: istock.

Strawberry bread is a good summer bread option. The frosting is an optional add-on. Photo: istock.

Every cultural area in Indian country, if not every tribal nation, has breads that are unique to them.  Then, there are other breads that are made by all, like corn bread or fry bread, but that may have variations. Many breads are used as a vehicle to put foods on or in, a tortilla for example. Many breads take the name of their major flavor ingredient, pumpkin, apple, molasses, wild rice, walnut, cranberry, lemon, blueberry, and on and on. Here are a couple to get us ready for summer, which is just around the corner.

Strawberry Bread

½ cup real butter, softened

¾ cup maple sugar

2 cups flour

1 egg

½ cup cornmeal, white or yellow

½ cup chopped walnuts

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

Milk – enough to form a stiff batter

1 heaping cup of strawberries, wild or commercial

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spread ingredients in a greased 8- or 9-inch baking pan and bake for 20-25 minutes. Let cool then serve warm.

To vary, mix together 2 tablespoons of light brown sugar with ½ teaspoon of cinnamon and sprinkle on top before baking.

Cranberry-Apricot Bread

1 cup dried cranberries (crasins)

1 cup dried apricots

1 tablespoon lemon zest

1 cup boiling water

4 tablespoons butter, room temperature

1-1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs

3 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Cover the apricots with boiling water and let stand for 10 minutes. Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl, add eggs and apricots and blend. Now add flour, baking powder and salt. Mix well and fold in nuts. Pour into a greased 9 x 5-inch loaf pan or two 8 x 4-inch loaf pans. Bake 50 to 60 minutes, until done.

To vary this bread, use chopped dates or fresh peach pieces and some pine nuts.

From Dale Carson (Abenaki), via ICTMN.