Suzanne wrote: |
MMMMmmmmMMMMm Pancakes with sheep-n-onions? ek! Wonder how that recipe came about? kind of sounds like an out-back camping thing. Sort of an omelet but without the eggs.....very interesting, unsavory idea. Some of the Native foods I grew up with are equally nasty sounding. We would take cactus pads from the prickly pear cactus and shave off the spines, cut them into strips (like green beans) and then boil them. You have to boil them a couple of times because of the nasty slimy juice that forms. On the second boil you add other veggies and when all is cooked you put some on a tortilla and call it lunch. It's nasty. If you wanted desert you would go outside and find a mesquite tree and pick up the beans from them and chew away to your heart's content. A life of beans, rice and corn gets boring. Thankfully our food was more influenced by Mexican cooking or I would've grown up with more spines in my tongue. We had goats but no sheep for meat. After I was around 10yrs old or so we had more money to buy real food and our diet was more like potato chips and hamburgers. There is an on-going move to more traditional foods on the reservation, to teach the younger generation and to supplement their diet with more healthy food, but it won't continue past the school aged people. You just can't get past an unhealthy diet sometimes and the struggle of obesity in the Indian Nation has been like giving liquor to NDNs, it's always been a problem. You know they actually found a gene in Natives that they will tend to be alcoholics or addicts of some sort. Probably a government plot.... Tha's been something I don't miss about living in Tucson, the drunks on government payday. If you go to a certain part of town at night you'll find what looks like dead people all over the place. I'm not talkin about in the parks, they're all over the place, bus stops, on the sidewalk, in the street, propped up on church doorways and businesses. Indians and Mexicans drunk out of their gourd and incapacitated beyond belief. You'd think there's no way they could survive the next payday. It's very very sad and it's a way of life for them. Before I went into the Navy I went to junior college and there was an Indian guy in there that told me that if he graduated, he would be the first of his tribe to ever get past high school. He was a very proud person and seemed very educated. That was in or near the late 1970s. He did graduate too, but was a bank teller, the last time I saw him. Hopefully that was improvement enough for him, but I felt sad for him, going to higher learning only to be a bank teller. Maybe it got him a standing in town and off the res. that's always nice. Thing is, if you don't like the res. there's no way you can live near one. The stigma and the poverty is in your skin. You escape it with your surroundings. Nature is good for everything. It is my church and I will always be reverent. I'm wakin up now Suz |
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