A bit of an Intro

I was born in Oklahoma, living all over the northeastern part known as Green Country, a mixture of Ozark Plateau, Cross Timbers and Tall Grass Prairie. My earliest and favorite food memories all involve harvesting wild foods (vegetable, fruit, fish and game) and from the garden. Being a member of the Shawnee Tribe (Loyal Band) I also experienced the yearly cycle of thanksgiving feasts we called dances (Bread Dance, Green Corn Dance, etc.). The year began with fishing for spawning paddlefish and white bass, harvesting and preparing milkweed and poke and ended with canning tomatoes, beans, drying sweetcorn and gathering persimmons and passionflower fruits.

I was trying to think of a unique food experience. The one I came up with was during my first semester of college my grandmother, Elsie Marie Shawnee, mailed me a package of nine quarts of home canned milkweed and dumplings. Safe to say this was most probably the first and last time that milkweed was shipped to The Colorado College.

Getting the ingredients from the pantry

My main interest here is the intersection between two cookbooks, Diet for a Small Planet and The White Trash Cookbooks.