CULINARY HERITAGE LIVES ON; SATWIWA CENTER TEACHES INDIAN COOKING METHODS.Byline: Sylvia L. Oliande Daily News Staff Writer Working as a team, the Thousand Oaks Thousand Oaks, residential city (1990 pop. 104,352), Ventura co., S Calif., in a farm area; inc. 1964. Avocados, citrus, vegetables, strawberries, and nursery products are grown. couple dove right into the acorn-filled basket in the middle of the picnic table A picnic table (or sometimes a picnic bench) is a modified table with benches expressly for the purpose of eating a meal outdoors (picnicking). In the past, picnic tables were typically made of wood, but modern tables can be made out of anything from recycled plastic to , choosing a nut and pounding away at it with a smooth rock until the shell broke. After they'd had a good number of opened acorns in their bowl, Jan Cleary, 55, began peeling the skins off, while her husband Stan Cleary, 71, continued to break them. The two where part of a group gathered at the Satwiwa Native American Culture Center in Newbury Park to learn the art of preparing and cooking acorns - a staple of most California Indian California Indian Any member of the various North American Indian peoples living in and around present-day California, U.S. Of the many California groups, most were composed of independent territorial and political units that were smaller than the average groupings of other tribes just as potatoes and rice are for other cultures. But more than a half-hour after they'd begun, the Clearys were still peeling acorns and were beginning to wonder if they were ever going to get to the next step in their lesson. ``This explains why the guys were out hunting all day,'' Stan chided, nudging his wife, as participants around them chatted to pass the time as they did the same task. ``You shouldn't be proud of that necessarily,'' she said back. The lesson on the preparation of wiwish, or acorn acorn: see oak. acorn Nut of the oak. Acorns are usually seated in or surrounded by a woody cupule. They mature within one to two seasons, and their appearance varies depending on the species of oak. mush (MultiUser Shared Hallucination) See MUD. 1. (games) MUSH - Multi-User Shared Hallucination. 2. (messaging) MUSH - Mail Users' Shell. , was one in a series of 10 featuring American Indian American Indian or Native American or Amerindian or indigenous American Any member of the various aboriginal peoples of the Western Hemisphere, with the exception of the Eskimos (Inuit) and the Aleuts. artists and artisans who help bring the customs of their ancestors to the general public. ``We want to keep these cultures alive for our children and our grandchildren GRANDCHILDREN, domestic relations. The children of one's children. Sometimes these may claim bequests given in a will to children, though in general they can make no such claim. 6 Co. 16. ,'' said Kat High, coordinator of the workshops for Satwiwa. ``And we wanted to share that culture with people who may only see Native Americans in the movies. This way the they get it right from the source.'' Other Saturday workshops scheduled for the coming months are making children's games, telling family stories and Cherokee basketry basketry, art of weaving or coiling and sewing flexible materials to form vessels or other commodities. The materials used include twigs, roots, strips of hide, splints, osier willows, bamboo splits, cane or rattan, raffia, grasses, straw, and crepe paper. . The acorn workshop was led by Lori Sisquoc and Rosemary Morillo, who both grew up eating acorn mush, which has a nutty flavor and is similar in consistency to cream of wheat Cream of Wheat is a hot breakfast cereal invented in 1893 by wheat millers in Grand Forks, North Dakota[1]. The cereal is currently manufactured and sold by B&G Foods. Until 2007, it was the Nabisco brand made by Kraft Foods. . The women took the participants, six in all, through each step. The group first cracked, then peeled and finally used a rock and grinding stone to crush the acorns into a flour. They then set out to leach them - a process by which hot water is poured over the acorn flour to take the bitter taste out and leave the sweet, nut flavor to use for cooking. The point of the exercise was to show the participants exactly how tribes prepared the wiwash for thousands of years. But, for convenience, the organizers had modern tools available, such as a meat grinder Grinder A slang term for a person who works in the investment industry and makes small amounts of money at a time on small investments, over and over again. Notes: and coffee grinder to crush the nuts. Once the flour was sufficiently rid of the bitter taste of the raw acorn, the group cooked it up in a pan - another short cut, the meal would traditionally be cooked in a basket using heated rocks. The participants then got to try some of the paste, spreading it on corn tortillas with a hunk of steak for a late lunch. ``There are a lot of nutrients in this,'' said Sisquoc, a Cahuilla/Apache Indian. ``It's better for us than the other stuff we eat.'' Many of the participants were regulars at Satwiwa and have had a long interest in American Indian culture. They said they'd read about the acorn process and were intrigued to see how it worked. And for Jan Cleary, it was one step in a process she began 10 years ago to learn about that side of her heritage, which she was not told existed until long after she was an adult. ``I'm probably not going to go home and prepare this acorn stuff, but for a person like me, who has absolutely nothing to do with their heritage, this is a terrific opportunity,'' she said. ``And who knows, one day I may decide I'm going to go and make some.'' CAPTION(S): 2 Photos PHOTO (1--Color--Ran in Simi and Conejo Editions only) Stan Cleary peels acorns during a lesson in making wiwash, a nut mush that was a staple of American Indians American Indians: see Americas, antiquity and prehistory of the; Natives, Middle American; Natives, North American; Natives, South American. before the European conquest. (2--Color--Ran in Simi and Conejo Editions only) Participants in the wiwash class use old-fashioned rock power to open acorns. Joe Binoya/Special to the Daily News |
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