Day at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum

Last weekend we spent the day at one of our favorite museums, the Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center.  Housed on the South Eastern Connecticut Mashantucket tribal land next to the famed Foxwoods Casino, the museum contains a stunning collection of "multi-sensory dioramas and exhibits of eastern woodland and Mashantucket Pequot life", with detailed videos on everything from cooking traditional dishes to making dug-out canoes.

The Connection Between a Popular Senegalese Coffee and a Back Yard Weed

Unbeknowst to me, this common blue-flowered weed pictured above that had been growing in abundance in the neighbor's abandoned lot near the house I grew up in was chicory.  I had heard of chicory from the non-caffeinated coffee substitutes I would by at the health food store and from the popular Bru instant coffee sold in Indian specialty stores, but I had no clue that I could just pick it in the backyard and make a tasty drink myself.

Chicory was brought to America by the European settlers possibly for its many medicinal and healing uses.  The roots were boiled down and used by the Cherokees as a wash and poultice for sores and by the Iroquois as a nerve tonic.  One of the most popular uses was its use as a caffeine-free coffee substitute when coffee beans were scarce.  It's easy to make a nice roasted flavor drink from chicory by drying the roots, grinding them up in a coffee grinder and then roasting them.  I made some myself not long ago and new instantly that chicory was used in the popular Cafe' Touba of Senegal.  It's a distinct warm, spicy flavor that you can't miss.  Besides its great taste, chicory supposedly has the added benefit of cleansing the blood and liver and containing Vitamin C and inulin.

Find out more about chicory here.

  

Medicinal and Other Uses of the Black Walnut Tree

The other day I was at my parent's house in the country and discovered these "fruits" scattered all over the ground under their black walnut tree.  They had a really interesting and strong of spicy smell and there were so many of them, I thought to myself there must be something we can do with these.
I did some research and found out that every part of the tree has been used by indigenous Americans (First Nations) for everything from dyeing the hair to treating toothaches.  And besides eating the flavorful nuts, they also used a juice they would make from it for parasite prevention and as an antiseptic salve.
Read more about it's many uses on the Virginia Tech Fact sheet here and on eHow's fact page here.