Native American Herbal, Plant Knowledge

Whip the egg yolk and baking soda into the water in a large dipping bowl. Sift in

the flour, mix well. Batter should be thin, rather watery, run easily off a spoon. It

should be used no more than 10 minutes after made, i.e. still bre quite cold when it

hits the frying oil. Dip blossom, twirl to coat thoroughly, Turn after 1 minute and fry

1 minute longer, lighter gold than the cornmeal coating in the Pueblo version.

Sprinkle with sifted powdered sugar while still draining and hot from the oil. Keep

warm in oven. Alternatively: omit sugar, serve with small dipping bowls of or berry

syrup.

Traditionally, the flowers were used in soups and stews in 2 ways. In the

commonest, they were thickeners -- put in at the beginning, the fragile flowers

cooked away into the broth and had no individual identity. Put in near the end, they

were heated through, softened a bit (especially th female blossoms, which have

tiny squashes or pumpkins forming at the stem end) as a sort of vegetable --

although the rest of the soup or stew was likely to be full of dried berries, so maybe

I should say as another fruit.

Up north here, these fritters were traditionally made with pumpkin and squash

flowers too. No chile or cumin was used, and about 1/2 tsp (or no) salt. A batter of

flour would be more likely to be used than cornmeal if there was a good trade

supply of it, because although some corn was raised, it was nowhere near as much

as in the southwest, and a bit farther north of the Great Lakes, the growing season

is too short for curcurbitae.

The blossoms were most often eaten as a sweet with maple syrup or sprinkled with

maple sugar -- and that's still a great way to eat these fritters, too --

blossom-beignets. You can also sprinkle them with sifted powdered sugar, as with

New Orleans beignets.

Acorn squash stuffed with wild rice

1 squash per 2 people

1 1/2 cup rice stuffing per squash

Easy cheese sauce:

1/2 lb grated brick cheese

Hellman's mayo

Good mustard

Bake the squash halves in a 375° oven, upside down in a pan with a little water for

20 minutes. Turn them right side up and finish for 10 minutes more, until tender but

not dried out. Use a variant of fish or bird wild rice stuffings (above) or a mixture

with ground meat or chopped leftover chicken in it. Add a can of unmixed cream of

mushroom soup to the rice mix. Stuff the squash cavity full, packing it down and

press buttered breadcrumbs on it. Heat thoroughly in oven over hot water (about

10 minutes). Pass easy cheese sauce with it.

Cheese sauce: Melt grated cheese in double boiler. Add 1/4 as much mayo as the

Native Foods -- Recipes--Squash, Pumpkin

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