Slow Food CNY » local food

Slow Food CNY’s First Potluck

psm — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:46:00 +0000

When: Next Friday the 13th (March) at 6:30PM

Where: Westcott Community Center, 826 Euclid Avenue

Bring a dish to pass! Any food that you love to make will be welcome. SFCNY will provide cards so every dish can be identified. Please bring your own utensils and plates!

We are inviting our area Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms to the potluck as well. CSAs provide weekly deliveries of fresh, locally-grown fruits & veggies throughout the growing season. They are also a great way of supporting upstate organic farmers and you may even save some cash in the process….! Now is the season to think about joining a CSA so bring questions for them.

All are welcome!

Local Food: Seneca Hominy Flint Corn

psm — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:29:00 +0000

For the local food homework assignment I’ve chosen Seneca hominy flint corn. This variety dates back about 1000 years to when maize itself was introduced to this region. Originally cultivated by the Seneca, who called it ha-gó-wa, Seneca hominy is one of several varieties of flint corn surviving in the region which date back to the millennium-old introduction. Some of these other varieties include: Tuscarora White flour, Longfellow flint, Mohawk Round Nose, Narragansett White Cap, and Seneca Blue Bear Dance. Seneca hominy is considered to be a critically endangered food.

Local Food: Seafood!

psm — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:37:00 +0000

So, for our homework assignment, we all agreed to take on discussing some of our local foods. Back when I was an ESF student, I took a class called “Food and the Landscape” by the wonderous Matt Potteiger (which is totally worthy of its own post). Regardless, my final project focused on Onondaga Lake as a productive waterway. Here is a list of fish that people used to eat from the lake and local creeks:

American Eels
Atlantic Sturgeons (yes, they used to be found in the lake!)
Atlantic Salmons
Onondaga Whitefish

Just for fun, I found my old project, titled “Eating Onondaga Lake.” It is hard to read, but click on it, and it will take you to a (much) larger version.

I want to focus on the Onondaga Whitefish. If you notice, it is the only fish with a name specific to the area. It was a unique variety of whitefish found only in Onondaga Lake. It was a delicacy, getting shipped around the Northeast and featured prominently in restaurants in Boston and NYC. One thing that makes this whitefish so unique was that it lived in the salty water of Onondaga Lake, and was likely its own variety, if not its own species. The problem: they are in the past tense so no one can actually identify if they were unique or not. The last whitefish was caught in 1897. Again, no one knows exactly why, but it was likely due to overfishing as well as serious ammounts of pollution getting dumped into the lake at that time.

Most people around here dream of a day when we can swim in the lake without worry. I dream of a day we can eat fish from Onondaga Lake without worry.

Maple Syrup Nation

psm — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 18:27:00 +0000

Yet another NY Times article from my bookmarks. It discusses obscure or lost regional food varieties and how we can go about preserving/reviving them. If you don’t feel like reading the article, at least check out the cool food region map attached to it. It comes from a book called Renewing America’s Food Traditions by Gary Paul Nabhan. Apparently he created the map partially based on Native American food traditions. According to the map, we here in CNY are located in the “Maple Syrup Nation” and some of our endangered regional foods include: sugar maple of the Allegheny Plateau (this was a surprise to me!), Java chicken, Cayuga duck (google this bird; it’s beautiful), Oldmixon free peach (yum), Seneca hominy flint corn, and Buckeye chicken.

I haven’t yet read this book, but maybe we could use it in the future as a springboard for discovering more on our indigenous/local food traditions. I’m sure there’s all kinds of goodies in the bibliography (can you tell I’m a grad student?).

Native Food of Syracuse

psm — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:19:00 +0000

All are welcome to attend!…..(I found this event to be quite relevent to what we spoke about yesterday)

The event will be held in the basement of Marshall Hall , located on SUNY Environmental Science and Forestery campus (let me know if you need more info on location….9147150136

-michelle

BAOBAB SOCIETY’S “FILM & FEAST” – DR. ROBIN KIMMERER PRESENTER
Free Native American food and a short film about the struggles of twoWestern Shoshone grandmothers fighting to protect their land.

Featured foods include: Fry Bread, Corn Soup with Venison, Acorn Squash,Three Sisters casserole (corns, beans, squash)Wild Rice, Turkey,Cranberry Sauce, Pumpkin Pie, Strawberry Juice.

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12TH 5:00-7:00 PM ~NIFKIN

Co- Sponsored By Multicultural Affairs/Student Life & ExperientialLearning