This got me in a rabbit hole and I got curious about what indigenous/Native American cuisine would be like because I genuinely didn’t know and came across a good list of indigenous owned restaurants as well as a bunch of new recipes to try, in case anyone else is curious.
Things we would call “Mexican” food are indigenous food. Mole, empanadas, certain types of salsa. We just call it something else. I mean, they had corn and tomatoes all the way up most of the U.S.
Surely it wasn’t all the same clear up into the US eastern seaboard though, right? Mexican (Aztec/Nahua) food is great and all, but I’m interested in what the natives in my specific part of the continent would’ve been eating, which here in Georgia would mean Creek and/or Cherokee cuisine.
The Mississippians were growing corn in the Midwest. I am sure it was grown in the East as well. When you have a domesticated plant that grows pretty much everywhere and is able to fulfill a lot of your dietary needs, it spreads and spreads. See wheat or rice. Or in the Andes, potatoes. Or taro in Polynesia.
Sure, I’m just saying If you want a version of “authentic” native American food a lot of what we call Mexican food is alive and well in the modern day. I’m sure cornmeal was a staple of a lot of the US before modern borders and we categorized it as central American food.
There would be a ton of local variety since a large number of different tribes and societies had varying access to local fauna and game, plus trade. Think of the variety we have from Canada to Argentina and that is likely a comparable range to the wildly different native populations. Food near the great lakes would be completely different from food in the tropics and completely different from the foods in the mountains of the southern continent with a ton of variety in between.
Kind of like the massive variety in the continent of Africa.
This got me in a rabbit hole and I got curious about what indigenous/Native American cuisine would be like because I genuinely didn’t know and came across a good list of indigenous owned restaurants as well as a bunch of new recipes to try, in case anyone else is curious.
https://www.afar.com/magazine/native-american-restaurants-in-the-us
https://www.tastingtable.com/1297689/native-american-foods-should-try-once/
https://www.beautybyearth.com/blogs/blog/native-american-cuisine-a-beginner-s-guide-to-indigenous-food
Things we would call “Mexican” food are indigenous food. Mole, empanadas, certain types of salsa. We just call it something else. I mean, they had corn and tomatoes all the way up most of the U.S.
Surely it wasn’t all the same clear up into the US eastern seaboard though, right? Mexican (Aztec/Nahua) food is great and all, but I’m interested in what the natives in my specific part of the continent would’ve been eating, which here in Georgia would mean Creek and/or Cherokee cuisine.
The Mississippians were growing corn in the Midwest. I am sure it was grown in the East as well. When you have a domesticated plant that grows pretty much everywhere and is able to fulfill a lot of your dietary needs, it spreads and spreads. See wheat or rice. Or in the Andes, potatoes. Or taro in Polynesia.
Sure, I’m just saying If you want a version of “authentic” native American food a lot of what we call Mexican food is alive and well in the modern day. I’m sure cornmeal was a staple of a lot of the US before modern borders and we categorized it as central American food.
There would be a ton of local variety since a large number of different tribes and societies had varying access to local fauna and game, plus trade. Think of the variety we have from Canada to Argentina and that is likely a comparable range to the wildly different native populations. Food near the great lakes would be completely different from food in the tropics and completely different from the foods in the mountains of the southern continent with a ton of variety in between.
Kind of like the massive variety in the continent of Africa.