I wait – eagerly, excitedly – all year to cook for the holidays. I LOVE IT.
I love planning menus, reading through piles of cookbooks + flagging my favorites, exploring the market for pristine in-season ingredients, and visiting all of the special shops I know for marked items that sing celebration to include in the spreads I share with my family, friends, and everyday meals at home. And, because there are so many reasons to be festive, friends I want to entertain, and reasons I dream up to gather, I relish this season most when all of the holidays blend together in a big blur of delicious gratitude, however simple…or occasionally opulent.
But this year, I’ve found myself viewing Thanksgiving a little bit differently.
This year, I had the pleasure of making some new friends who are members of the Dinè (Navajo) tribe. We’ve gone on bike rides together, we’ve talked about the bounty and nourishment that The Land provides. And we’ve talked about how much of that deep connection – humans to The Earth – is looked over. How harmful this has become for all of us. This disconnection – the idea that we’re separate from the whole, and that our nourishment can be provided in a vacuum – has brought me a completely new perspective on how the Earth provides, how She loves us when we love her, how privileged we all are to be able to harvest, enjoy and thrive from her bounty. And looking at food and life this way has made me realize just how much privilege I have to possess the resources to source the best she has to offer since I myself know respectively little about how to grow my own food or live off the land; a skill that my European ancestors would have had to learn from their European ancestors, who learned it from Native American peoples who learned it through the acts of their ancestors’ trials and errors.
At some point along with the history of humanity, we wandered the earth and foraged ingredients we knew nothing about. Our collective ancestors had to taste test everything to discover whether or not it was edible, or deadly. And then, we had to practice, practice, practice cooking those things that didn’t kill us, coaxing them into meals, gathering around the fire for warmth and nourishment. This food wove humans together, the wisdom of how to prepare it wove together families through generations. And, this social fabric does still exist, even if we ignore it when we’re at the grocery store.
A highly sophisticated society had mastered self-reliance and health by learning the ingredients Native to North America when European settlers arrived in the 1600’s. The wisdom they imparted on those new arrivals has allowed society to survive for centuries now; these were critical gifts, and still are today. But when the Thanksgiving season rolls around, often without meaning it, we loosely hinge our gratefulness on the bounty that life has provided. But we don’t always think about just how far back that we ought to be giving thanks and to whom. We rarely take time to stop to consider where we would be without the ingredients that literally nourish us whole, and allow our lives and actions to take effect.
So this year, inspired by my new friends, I started doing a little digging into how all of the gorgeous foods we elevate this time of year arrived at our contemporary tables in the first place, as well as the longish list of ingredients Indigenous to the lands we now call home. Many of them are right under our noses; dandelion greens, rose hips, acorns that crunch when our car tires roll over them. None of them are weeds, and all of them are food and medicine.
For the next few weeks, these little Recipe Club newsletters are going to be focused on these Native American ingredients and what I’ve learned about them. I’ll share the ways that the ancient wisdom that accompanies them intersects with my own Ayurvedic education, and all the ways that these foods – and a deeper appreciation for them – can benefit us all. And, I’ll be donating all proceeds from November subscriptions 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. So let your friends know, they can be allies through food, too.
And without further ado, THIS. This Red Pumpkin Tart with Pecan-Date Crust, inspired by the humble but incredible pumpkin – one of the most iconic, and important Native foods on these lands.
“I’ve lain among ripening pumpkins and heard creaking as the parasol leaves rock back and forth, tethered by their tendrils, wind lifting their edges and easing them down again. A microphone in the hollow of a swelling pumpkin would reveal the pop of seeds expanding and the rush of water filling succulent orange flesh. These are sounds, but not the story. Plants tell their stories not by what they say, but by what they do.”
– Robin Wall Kimmerer, from Braiding Sweetgrass – The Three Sisters
You may recall hearing the folklore of The Three Sisters in elementary school; the foundational fables that tells the story of corn, beans, and squash critical, and honored, staples in the diets of many Native American tribes. There are many competing legends, actually, but in my favorite iteration, the three sisters are depicted as quite different from one another in their size and way of dressing. The little sister was so young that she could only crawl at first, and she was dressed in green (this is the pumpkin sister.) The second sister wore a bright yellow dress, and she had a way of running off by herself when the sun shone and the soft wind blew in her face – the bean sister. The third was the eldest sister, standing always very straight and tall above the other sisters and trying to protect them. She wore a pale green shawl, and she had long, yellow hair that tossed about her head in the breeze – she was the corn sister. There was one way the sisters were all alike, though. They loved each other dearly, and they always stayed together. When a Mohawk boy came and began plucking them from their garden home, it was revealed that the sisters couldn’t live without one another, and for the rest of time Native peoples sought to keep the three together.
This sweet fable illustrates an agricultural practice that originates with the Haudenosaunee (hah-dee-no-shownee), or “People of the Longhouse”, and it reveals the way that the garden creates an ecosystem through the community of plants and animals. Each plant helps the other to grow, a natural phenomenon that modern agriculturalists refer to as “companion planting.”
The Haudenosaunee interplanted pole beans and squash with corn, using the strength of the sturdy corn stalks to support the twining beans and the shade of the spreading squash vines to trap moisture for the growing crop. We now know that the bacterial colonies on the bean roots capture nitrogen from the air, some of which is released into the soil and helps to nourish the needs of the corn. It may be worth mentioning that commercial farms do not capitalize on this highly effective if visually disorganized planting method. In my mind, I wonder if the squashes, corn, and beans we consume are a bit less rich because of it.
The fable is also a peek into just how critical pumpkins were in the survival and thriving of the tribes. Eaten roasted, steamed, and even dehydrated, the pumpkins of fall were used in cooking year-round to provide nourishment. While pumpkins have become an iconic flavor that signals the arrival of fall, they were important year-round to Indigenous peoples – literally a building block for human health + vitality.
Pumpkins are some of the oldest domesticated plants, and have been cultivated in the territories now known as the southern United States and Northeastern Mexico since approximately 3500 B.C., almost as long as maize.* While these regional areas were the locations where pumpkins first gained ground, their seeds were used in trades and so many varieties of pumpkin and squashes began popping up all over North and South America. Different Native nations have different uses for the sweet, nutrient-dense flesh rich in beta carotene, vitamin C, vitamin E, iron and folate; Diné (Navajo) cooks fry it with mutton, while Taos Pueblo cooks make a succotash by cooking unripe pumpkin with corn kernels and onion. Simple preparations, with powerful impacts on the body.
Across the ocean on the Indian subcontinent, a trust + attention to the power of the pumpkin was simmering in Ayurvedic medicine too. According to Ayurveda, ripe pumpkins reduce heat in the body when our lives get too hot and help us to keep our balance when life (and our bodies,) get too full. Pumpkins are grounding, cooling, soothing, building, reducing inflammation and helping the body detoxify by supporting digestion and assimilation. Traditionally speaking, pumpkins are trusted to sharpen the intellect and induce calm, on account of their incredible ability to help the body manage stress and agitation…which might be the best reason ever to get into the kitchen right now, make this tart, and have a slice. (What holiday feast?!) ????
It’s ready to go in all of the places that your pumpkin pie would go, but in a naturally sweetened crust, that also is accidentally gluten-free, and easily subbed to be dairy-free. It’s not too sweet, easy to come together, and a really lovely twist on a typical squash-focused dessert. I love making it with the coconut whipped cream below…but you could also dollop good old-fashioned whip on top if you wish.
The process here is a little bit different than other pumpkin desserts you’ve made before…because you’re going to whir together the pumpkin with homemade caramel (gasp!) Trust me though – this extra step is highly worthwhile to push this special tart over the top.
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