In the classroom this week we read The Story of Manoomin and learned more about a sacred food of the Anishinaabe people. We also watched a short film from PBS Wisconsin featuring Fred Ackley Jr. of the Sokaogon Chippewa Community of Mole Lake. Students watched Fred go through the process of harvesting, drying, parching, winnowing, and cooking wild rice and heard the Ojibwe origin story about the food that grows on water.
In the kitchen we made a salad with cooked wild rice originally produced by the Red Lake Nation. The first grade chefs added three additional ingredients that are native to present-day North America: cranberries, squash, and pumpkin seeds. They learned to make a salad dressing by slowly adding oil to lemon juice to create an emulsion, and added arugula, green onion, and dill for additional texture and flavor. We enjoyed the manoomin salad with strawberry leaf tea, another ingredient native to present-day North America and a staple of Anishinaabe foodways and medicinal practices.
