We’re STILL waiting on snow here in Colorado (maybe you are too?) and it’s WEIRD. My body + soul are ready for the rest that comes with the chill and the change in seasons, but the consistent 60°F degree days tell my brain that it’s still time to PLAY! To sponge up that Vitamin D! And so, we’re still getting after it which means SNACKS.
As you know, I’ve been thinking a lot about Indigenous ingredients this month, taking a peek at the products that come into my house + how I use them. Considering what my cooking and eating would be like if the historical movements of humans across the planet would have been a bit different. Globalization is a thing, and so we’ve grown disconnected from what is truly local to us. And, our way of life now includes many ingredients and ways of cooking that aren’t original to the land that we live on. But eating, cooking and fueling our bodies with this in mind still has tremendous value.
Eating ingredients native to the lands we live on means that we’re cultivating and supporting species that are in original harmony with our environment. They are literally, as nature intended and that’s really good for our bodies that are “of nature” too.
Eating and cooking ingredients that are local to where we live means that we’re getting the most nutrients out of our food. Our foods are most nourishing the moment that they’re plucked from the ground, a bush, a tree and they start to lose their vitality as they travel to their destination where they are purchased by us and THEN cooked and eaten. Those grapes? Fresh berries in the middle of the winter? Even bananas, avocados or fresh lettuces in the dead of winter have come a LONG way. And while they fit the “healthy” definition by wider society, they’re almost devoid of nutrition by the time they arrive in our kitchens.
And, lastly, we ARE what we eat. Every single bite becomes us. And, if you’re like me and you believe that energy is a real thing – not just calories – the energies you consume in your food are your nourishment too. The good (or greedy) intentions that planted the seeds that grew our food are part of the nutrition of our meals, however promoting or subtracting. And so understanding the history of the foods that we eat – the stories of the things that fuel us – is an important part of learning how to fuel ourselves BEST.
Ok, end rant BUT, it was surprising and exciting to me to realize – as I was doing a bit of research into Native American food ways – that it was pretty easy to make a granola bar made with almost 100% Indigenous ingredients — foods that would have been available to Native peoples hundreds of years ago to fuel their hunts and journeys along winter trading routes…much more serious feats than my everyday backyard bike ride. So, that’s what I did and these Pecan Brownie Granola Bars are the result. Yum.
When we take a peek at a recipe, all of us, including me, are thinking about where we can get the ingredients – as in which grocery store – but it’s been interesting for me to think about where in the WORLD each of the ingredients I use in a pretty typical recipe come from. Here’s where the goodies in this granola bar are sourced, and how they arrived in my pantry in the first place.
Oats were brought to the New World by Scottish settlers in the 1600s to be used as animal feed but they date back far longer than that – an estimated 32,000 years older when wild oats were ground using stones by paleolithic hunter-gatherers. This is not an ingredient that a Native American cook would have used for her granola bars.
Pecans are actually the only tree nut native to North America, and the name “pecan” is derived from the Native American (Algonquin) word “pacane” (pacane) meaning “nuts requiring a stone to crack.” The natives of pre-colonial central and eastern regions of North America and the river valleys of Mexico used pecans as a primary source because they were readily available, easy to shell and they had excellent taste. The nuts were used as currency, and as an ingredient and this reliance spurred their cultivation of the pecan tree.
Understanding the importance of local produce, and the complicated realities of invasive species, it might be surprising to learn that in 1898, the U.S. Department of Agriculture created a special department of men called Agriculture Explorers to travel the globe searching for new food crops to bring back for farmers to grow in the U.S. and dates were on the shortlist of ingredients to investigate. The growing conditions in the California desert were similar to those in Algeria and Baghdad, original locations for date production. It was quite an adventure to get dates to take root, but today gardens of date palms stretch through the Coachella Valley. I myself buy a hefty amount of them each year, and they are non-local ingredients in these bars.
Strangely, cacao originated a little closer to us. There’s a good amount of controversy about where exactly is cacao’s native land, but a common belief is that criollo cacao (Theobroma cacao ssp. cacao) was cultivated by the Mayas over 1500 years ago. It has been suggested that Criollo cacao originated in Central America and that it evolved independently from the cacao populations in the Amazon basin. From there, it spread across the globe through trade and wisdom, easily crossing geographical lines with its immense health, ceremonial and flavor benefits. Cacao seems like an exotic ingredient, but strangely its arrival on our tables is a seemingly natural progression. Cacao is an incredible food – while “chocolate” in the modern-day is often loaded with refined sugars, and non-food fillers, cacao is loaded with antioxidants, minerals, nutrients and helps our bodies reduce inflammation. Something I have a hunch that the Aztecs knew when they elevated it in celebrations (NOT something that fitness magazines of scientists discovered.)
For this recipe, I’m using sunflower butter….because sunflowers are Native to where I live, and thought it would be nice to make these local! Almonds are actually native to southwestern Asia (!!) cashews are native to Brazil and peanuts are native to South America…but both pecans, sunflower and pumpkin seeds are from RIGHT HERE.
Agave nectar was harvested from Native peoples in Mexico centuries ago. From there, the wisdom spread north. And you learned all about maple syrup + it’s Native heritage when we made Maple Buttermilk Biscuits earlier this month! Both are exceptional sweeteners to use here. I do NOT recommend using honey, because you do need to warm the sweetener + nut butter in these bars, and heating honey is a big no-no. It destroys the anti-microbial properties in the honey, as well as blasting the nutrients, AND it makes it very very difficult to digest. Never heat honey.
Ingredient histories aside, I love having these little bars around. They’re rich, dense, nutty, super chocolatey, slightly crunchy + perfectly sweet. Not only are they a great snack for runs/rides and hikes, they’re a great on-the-go breakfast, are super easy tossed into yogurt in the morning, and generally make me feel on Cloud 9 because I know that no matter how busy or full my day gets, I have a snack that’s filled with The Good Stuff to carry me through. I hope you love them too!
As a little reminder, all proceeds from November Recipe Club subscriptions will be donated to NATIFS.org – an organization dedicated to establishing a new food system that reintegrates Native Foods and Indigenous-focused Education into tribal communities across North America through their Indigenous !Food Lab project. Thank you, deeply, for your support of my work and of this cause.
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