Experience Indigenous cuisine at Thirty Nine restaurant at First Americans Museum, open Wednesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Plus, meet more inspirational First Americans and learn about the 39 Tribal Nations in Oklahoma by visiting the exhibits at First Americans Museum. The museum is open Wednesday through Monday. The third Sunday of each month is free for kids 12 and under. Learn more about the museum, restaurant and kids programming like FAMcamps at famok.org.
Get Growing! Create your own garden at home with Chef Loretta’s tips: 1. Start very small with a container garden. Get a metal trough at a feed store, layer rocks in the bottom, then add a layer of sand and then good soil. (Or you can start even smaller with a single tomato plant or pepper plant in a pot.) 2. Plant corns, beans and squash — the Three Sisters! 3. Add herbs like basil, oregano and chives. 4. Plant edible flowers, like marigolds. You can pull the petals off and sprinkle them on a salad. They have a great peppery taste.
That sparked a thought that I would open a Native food restaurant. My eldest son, Clay, and I opened the Corn Dance Café in Santa Fe in 1993 and it took off. It was the right place at the right time. And that just spurred my all-consuming passion to learn more about Native and Indigenous foods — pre-contact or pre-Columbian foods. I wanted to know: what did they hunt and grow throughout the Americas? I learn something new every day. What do you most enjoy about working with kids in Chef Loretta’s Garden at FAMcamp, and what lessons do you hope to impart to them? I love the curiosity and wonder in kids’ eyes when they see and learn new things. Now, you have to do this subliminally — you can’t let them know it’s good for them! A lot of it is about playing in the dirt — I always garden with bare hands because I like to feel the earth. I try to plant some things that are fast growing — like radishes — because kids can see them grow and then harvest and taste them. Last year, we shucked corn and the kids ate raw corn, made bundles of corn silk to make corn silk tea and they took home husks to make tamales or corn husk dolls. This year, we’ll be painting with ears of corn or corn cobs and making plant dyes with smushed up berries. We get messy, we have fun and we taste all along the way. I enjoy showing them that food nourishes our body, but it also nourishes our hearts and our soul. I think I have more fun than the kids!
What is your current favorite dish to prepare? My go-to is something involving the Three Sisters [corn, beans and squash]. When they are planted, grown, harvested and eaten together, they provide the perfect protein and amino acids — you could live off of it! I make a Three Sisters stew with blue corn dumplings and a Three Sisters salad with all kinds of greens. But my favorite dish hearkens back to my Okie roots and is named after my son Clay, who passed away and was a brilliant, creative chef. Clay’s Buffaloaf uses buffalo meat and quinoa instead of panko for the binder. It’s good fresh out of the oven, but my favorite is a cold meatloaf sandwich the next day. What has it meant to you to serve as an ambassador and re-vitalizor of First American cuisine? I’ve been doing this for 35 years, and when I began, there were no representations of Native foods anywhere. For so many years it was cyclical. I would come back in vogue every 10 years, always at Thanksgiving, and be on the Today Show . I’d tell about the real Thanksgiving — I do love to get out there and stir the pot. But now it’s happening! I have worked with and mentored and cooked alongside young chefs all over the country. We’re getting Beard awards and young chefs are opening new restaurants. This is one of my great joys.
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