Paging Gazhekwe

[gazhekwe]

When talking about sweet things, you have to remember that the concept of dessert, something sweet after meals, may not have been a part of the native thinking. Sweets were something special. Many of the sweet foods were fruit, without additional sweetening. Nowadays of course, our tastes have changed to the extent that we love sugar, probably too much. In the old days, additional sweetening was added by means of honey or maple sugar or syrup.

By fall, most of the berries are gone, but there are some that are dried and kept for year round use, like huckleberries, cranberries, blueberries, chokecherries.

A sweet food was prepared by the Wampanoag using dried huckleberries which the Pilgrims called currrants. The following account shows some of the problems trying to reproduce such recipes in today's kitchen.

Sautauthig
Sautaash are these currants [[hurtleberries - Attitaash) dried by the Natives and so preserved all the yeare, which they beat to a powder, and mingle with their parched meale, and make a delicate dish which they call Sautauthig which is as sweet to them as plum or spice cake to the English [[Williams 169)

My guess is that the ground currants mixed with the ground parched corn meal is made into a sort of spoon bread or pudding. Another way is to mix it into a dry dough and press it flat to dry for a day or so. Then cut it up and have some for a quick energy meal, which we know as Pemmican.

http://plymoutharch.tripod.com/id226.html

If you want a nice sweet dessert, though, here is a good one:

Quick Maple Upside-down Pudding, serves 4

1 cup maple syrup
2 tsp baking powder
1 tablespoon butter or margarine
1/4 tsp salt
3 tablespoons brown [[or maple) sugar
1 cup sifted flour
1 egg
1/2 cup milk

Heat maple syrup to boiling and pour into bottom of buttered baking dish. Cream shortening, add sugar, cream together until fluffy. Sift flour, baking powder, salt, and add alternately with milk in small amounts beating well. Pour batter into hot syrup and bake in hot [[420°) oven for 25 minutes, turn upside-down onto serving plate, garnish with chopped nuts, whipped cream. Or serve like a puddling in bowls with nuts and plain cream to pour on it.

You will note the presence of baking powder and realize that, of course, we didn't have that back then. What did we do when we wanted leavening? At the edge of a hot fire, there will be a line of white ashes. A good finger scoop of those mixed in at the end of the mixing provides some leavening. Make sure you only get the white ones, and no dirt.

We wouldn't have had milk, either, but fine ground sweet corn meal with water can add the same kind of thickened texture. We also probably wouldn't have used the egg. The fat would have been bear fat. In the fall, bears are at their best, with lots of fat to put by to get a family through the winter.