Thursday, June 19, 2008

Connuche (Kenuche)

A Recognized Dish of Honor
Contributed by Youngdeer

Always save back some balls for your family at Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years with what ever other special dishes you fix. This is a side dish that reminds you where you came from and your ancestors can smell the connuche and find your table.

Even those who haven't tasted it before down deep inside remember it and are happy. Most families have one or two prime gatherers. Several women from my town buy their family Christmas presents from making Connuche balls and selling them to everyone else who still is Cherokee but work in offices and don't get to the woods like they should. You can freeze them. My granddaughters come back to Indian Territory in the fall to see the family but pick the fall to get a seasons supply of Connuche balls. I buy them cause, I don't bend over so good any more and it gives women with kids in the country a honorable, traditional way to earn extra money.

Beat up so-hi (hickory nuts) very fine until it can be formed into balls. Balls are big like softballs. This is meat and shell both. Take how much Connuche you want from ball. Each ball can feed enough for about 20. Place in a sauce pan and cover with boiling water. Stir well separating the shells from the "goodies". Strain through a cloth or fine sieve.

Now don't let your city ways scare you from this. The shells will sink to the bottom and the meat has mainly cooked up into a base broth. You can see an oil come to the surface from the boiled nuts. If you pour it careful just use a pasta strainer. Now I add rice and cook it. Add hominy, homemade or from a can. Mash about half into the the soup mixture. Some mash the hominy, others like it whole golden kernels. From here, you are on your own. Tradition stops there in some families.

My family somewhere back there got use to adding sliced mushrooms from the store. Season with lots of salt. Or leave out the mushrooms and add sugar instead. I have added little pieces of deer meat. Fix it the way your family likes it. If the base was Connuche everyone knew it was a special meal. They were honored.

My grandfather would take a hand full of raw Connuche from the icebox and put it in his coffee pot before making the coffee. Teach the family to say "con-nu-che a-gwa-du-li" (I want Connuche) and it is always good if you serve it with se-lu-ga-du. (Cornbread)



From the web site of the Cherokees of Californina

Thursday, June 12, 2008

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Basket weaving techniques

Four basic weaving techniques are used to construct baskets: wicker, plaiting, twining, and coiling. Wicker, plaiting, and twining all interlace wefts (horizontal elements) and warps (vertical elements), but each technique brings to basketry subtleties of design, color, and form. Coiling is more like sewing. Each of the basic weaves has numerous variations, and weavers sometimes use several variations on a technique in a single basket, or combine two or more techniques. Ultimately, the beauty of a basket’s weave reveals the weaver’s creative vision and technical adeptness at both preparing her materials and manipulating them into a basket form.

Plaiting

In plaiting, or checkerwork, two elements are woven over and under each other at right angles. Twilled weave is much the same, except that the weft (horizontal) materials are woven over two or more warps (verticals). In the Southwest, winnowing baskets, known as yucca-ring baskets, are often plaited. Southeastern basket-makers have made twill-plaited cane basketry for thousands of years. Checker- and wicker-plaiting predominate in the Northeast, where 19th-century basket-makers also used curled weft overlays to begin the “fancy basket” tradition that continues among today’s weavers.

Wicker

In wicker, the basket-maker weaves the weft material over and under a stiff foundation or warp of rods or bundles of fiber. In the American Southwest, wicker is used to make serving baskets and trays. Hundreds of wicker plaques are made each year at Hopi to be used in katsina and basket dances and give-aways. Wicker is found less frequently in other parts of North America.

Twining

Twined work begins with a foundation of rigid elements, or warp rods—very often whole plant shoots—around which two, and sometimes three or four, weft elements are woven. The wefts are separated, brought around a stationary warp rod, brought together again, and twisted. The action is repeated again and again, building the basket. Subtle and elegant patterns are made by changing the number of wefts (as in braiding and overlay), or the number of warps the wefts pass over (as in diagonal weaves). A weaver may use any number of twining variations in a single basket. False embroidery, a technique in which a decorative element is wrapped around the wefts, on the outside face of the weave, is often seen on plain twining.

Coiling

Coiling begins at the center of a basket and grows upon itself in spiral rounds, each attached to the round before. Weaving coiled baskets is a sewing technique, as the basket-maker uses an awl to punch holes in the foundation through which she draws sewing strands. These strands are single pieces of plant fiber that have been trimmed to a uniform size. The foundation is made up of one, two, three, or sometimes more slender plant shoots, bundles of grass or shredded plant fibers, or a combination of grass and sticks. In coiling, designs are not made by changing the weave, but rather by using a different color sewing thread. Imbrication, a decorative technique unique to coiled baskets made by Salishan peoples of the Pacific Northwest, involves folding a strip of grass, bark, or other fiber under each sewing stitch on the outer surface of the basket.