Poignant and clear-eyed look at growing up Menominee
I experience of pang of wounded conscience reading Weso’s preface listing foods he grew up eating in the generation of change when food preparation sank to the bottom of the list of family activities. Allowing strangers to create shelf-stable quick-prep eat-and-run food marched us another step away from our identities. In twenty-one stories about life growing up Menominee, Weso attempts to redirect us toward our own family memories as well as encouraging us to forge new ones and pass them on to the next generation.
Weso lived mostly with his grandparents. “Grandma’s meals always followed the basic Menominee food pyramid….sweet, salt, meat and water.” Meal times were family times, stories and making plans, sharing news. The recipes that follow each story are full of pithy comments, such as the one in Venison Soup: “This is a relatively simple dish to make, after preparing the corn, and finding a deer, dispatching it, and dressing it.” Some of the recipes I’m excited to try, such as Winter Tamale Pie, many ingredients of which can be substituted with canned goods. “These also work during pandemic quarantines when trips to the grocery store are limited.” Other recipes…not so much. I do believe and accept that grasshoppers have lots of protein, but I’m not quite so anxious to make grasshopper tacos. Weso ate a grasshopper taco once in his “search for authenticity” as a college student in Madison.
Every story is an opportunity to share a life lesson or comment such as why Grandma encouraged them to drink coffee and tea, not alcohol. The stories are generous memories of tick bites, porcupine rescues, bear hunting, working on a road crew, felling trees, going to college, learning family lore such as the history behind Grandma and Grandpa’s house. All the way to the passing of Weso’s mother, Weso’s memories weave a loving and poignant, sometimes funny, and always thought-provoking tale of the importance of family and memory and how food is often the main ingredient of home.
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