Join Sunny Savage at the third annual Wild Food Summit on the White Earth Reservation in Northern Minnesota. In this video, part 1 of 3, Sunny interviews some of the presenters, Steve Dahlberg and Stephanie Williams, and folks attending the event.

Hosted by The White Earth Tribal and Community College, this gathering, held during the summer solstice, brought folks together who were interested in learning about identifying and preparing wild foods. But as shown through the various interviews, the gathering runs deeper than that, and is really about that intersecting point between how plants and people shape each other.

Below is the recipe for a cattail stir-fry prepared during the event. Sunny got the idea for the nettle and sesame seed powder from Susan Weeds book Healing Wise, and the stir-fry is just one of the many number of ways our family prepares cattail shoots. Enjoy!

Nettle - Sesame Powder
Harvest your nettle leaves, clean them, and then thoroughly dry them. Take some sesame seeds and put them into a hot skillet. Keep moving them around with your spatula so they dont burn, and watch out because they will start to jump and pop. Once they start to smell like theyve been toasted and start to brown you can remove them and put into a food processor, blender or mortar & pestle, along with your dried nettle leaves and a small amount of salt (I used 1 tsp of salt to a 1/2 gallon mason jar full of dried nettle leaves and about 2 cups of sesame seeds). Experiment with how many nettles to sesame seeds you like. Use this powder to top rice dishes, soups, salads, etc. It is loaded with nutrients and adds a delicious nutty flavor to your foods.

Cattail Stir-fry
Gather your cattail shoots and pull off the tough, fibrous outer leaves until you reach the tender white inner core of the cattail heart. Wash them thoroughly and cut into roughly 4 pieces. Put a healthy amount of high-heat cooking oil in the bottom of your skillet. Put in your burdock root slices into the hot oil, which are cut diagonally about 1/8 thick, and cook for about 5 minutes. Then add chopped spring onion, carrots that have been cut into long strips (julienned), and the chopped burdock petioles. Cook about 3-5 minutes and then add cattail shoots, minced garlic, and minced ginger (you could use a small amount of wild ginger). Cook for about 3 minutes. Then add a few splashes of sesame seed oil, some black sesame seeds, chopped red cabbage, some finely chopped wild greens (we used sow thistle greens) and a lot of Braggs Liquid Aminos, soy sauce, tamari or shoyu. Cover and let cook for about a minute. Serve with Nettle - Sesame Powder sprinkled on top.

Sunny's wild food television series Hot on the Trail with Sunny Savage airs on Veria Network (DISH channel 218 and Verizon FIOS channel 162).
See http://veria.com/hot-on-the-trail.html for show times and more information.

Learn more about wild food plants:

Sunny's web blog at http://sunnysavage.com

Sunny's wild food site at http://wildfoodplants.com