Native American Herbal, Plant Knowledge

FRUIT, BERRIES

USDA database has only jams, pop, sweetened stuff for strawberry, other berries

and fruits. Their food value is mostly just sugar calories. Handbook #8 has more

info.

"Modern" Wojape--a berry pudding to eat with fry bread. From Stacy Winter, a Crow

Creek Lakota woman, who says to dip fry bread into it. We usually serve it over the

fry bread, but then people pick it up and scoop around in the wojape. She calls it

modern because of using any kind of frozen berries; we often use commoddities

gallon cans. This recipe makes enough for about 20-30 people who have 1-2 fry

breads with it. It resides on the Indian Health Service server. See the fry bread

menu, where I'm probably going to add several other versions of fry bread.

Wild Strawberries in chocolate fondue

Well, you take about a pound of

expensive bittersweet chocolate, shave it

and melt it in a little coffee with a

tablespoon of butter stirred in. Keep it

warm in a foudue pot over a little burner

for the pot. And about a quart of

delicious little red-all-through wild

strawberries, chiilled. And one fondue

fork per person. Swirl a berry in the

chocolate. Other bland, crisp fruits can

stretch the berries if you don't have

enough:

Apple slices (Green Granny Smith), Pear slices. Sprinkle these slices with

lemon juice so they won't turn brown. Small cubes (1 inch or less) of French

bread (especially crust) is also good. Then -- frog out on it!

A little cultural explanation, here, of that picture. Midè teachings about death

is that the spirit will, on its road toward the Milky Way, encounter the

temptation of a giant wild strawberry. If you are too greedy there (like you

were in life), your spirit will turn into a frog, right there, eating more from the

base of the berry and croaking futile warnings at other spirits coming along

there. I always figured I wouldn't be too greedy, except that wild strawberries

are so much better than those big white tasteless things from the store.

Still, I could maybe pig-out or frog-out on just a F - E - W bites, then move on.

But, if they got a pot of melted bitter-sweet chocolate, and a fondue fork to

swirl that incomparably delicious red berry meat with right by that giant

Native Foods -- Recipes--Fruit, berries

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