Earth Eats: Real Food, Green Living

In the fall of 2024 Kayte had the chance to talk with Nicole Keith, Food Sovereignty Coordinator of the Nottawasepi Huron Band of the Potawatomi (also known as NHBP) and Kevin Harris, Culture Specialist with the NHBP.
They visited Bloomington in the fall of 2024 to share a film about wild river rice with The First Nations Educational and Cultural Center on the IU campus, in partnership with the IU Media School. The film is called Mnomen | Wild Rice "From the River Banks to the Table.”
The interview that appeared in the last episode of our Eats Wild series was cut for time, here is an extended version.

“Wild rice camp started a long time ago. It actually started thousands of years ago, with our ancestors having a real-time lifeway.”
We have a jam-packed show for you today featuring traditional foodways from the original inhabitants of this land, foods from lands far away–Anatolia and Mongolia, as well as right here in our own back yard. Wild rice harvested in a canoe, sumac by the side of the road, and for dessert? Pawpaw ice cream.

This week on the show, we focus on tools of the trade. Muddy Fork Bakery upgraded their mixer and it turned out to be a game changer. Hot sauce production is made easier with a hand crank food mill. And if you ever accidentally purchase the wrong kind of rice in Tokyo, never fear, they have coin operated kiosks to help you out.

“Sniff it! If they’re smelly, I mean stinky, then it’s not persimmon…”
This week on Earth Eats Eats Wild, we explore the fruits of fall…and the nuts and even beans!
Forager Chef Alan Bergo fancies the Kentucky coffee been in its GREEN state, Liz Barnhart crafts a deep purple elderberry syrup, Keako Liff takes a (ahem) aromatic walk down memory lane with ginkgo nuts, and we talk persimmons with a researcher in folklore and library science.

”Acorns are, I mean, they're everywhere. They are incredibly abundant and they've been a really important food source for humans in essentially every region of the planet that had oak trees–which is almost every temperate zone on the entire globe.
"But we don't do much of acorn eating anymore as people and in communities in most places.”
Graphic Novelist Mel Gilman made an instructional zine about eating acorns, and this week on Earth Eats Eats Wild, they talk with us about this abundant food source, and why comics can be a great medium for learning about foraging.
And, we process some acorns of our own into flour for baking projects.