This week we started a conversation about Indigenous traditions and wisdom, a theme we will continue to explore in subsequent Edible Social Studies lessons in every grade at Harvey Milk. In the classroom, we read The Popcorn Book by Tomie dePaola and learned that Native peoples of the Americas have been eating and decorating with popcorn for thousands of years. Students shared different ways they have made popcorn in the microwave or with special machines at home.
In the classroom, we used a simple stove-top method to pop rainbow popcorn. We used a mortar and pestle, an ancient tool humans designed for food preparation, to make a spice blend featuring the flavors of Peru (a country with more than 50 varieties of corn!). We enjoyed our snack with glasses of iced chicha morada, a Peruvian drink made from purple corn that’s cooked with spices and garnished with fresh fruit.
