(bright music) - Hi, my name is Candace Stock.

Got my start in Minnesota.

I grew up on a farm and had my first experiences foraging with my grandparents and my father.

They were quite land stewards and really introduced me to a lot of the beautiful ingredients that are grown in the Midwest.

Today I will be making a indigenous porridge topped with rolled oats and fruits, berries, nuts, and roasted squash.

First I'm gonna start with the granola that will go on top of our porridge.

Here I have our rolled oats, and it's just a little over a cup, cup and a quarter.

Gonna top that with maple syrup that was harvested in Naytahwaush, Minnesota.

(bright music continues) I'm gonna toss in some of these curly dock seeds that we foraged just north of Moorhead.

And then I'm gonna mix in some of this coconut oil.

You wanna get everything incorporated well.

The maple syrup will help rehydrate the oats, but the coconut oil helps develop those clusters of granola.

Next we're gonna add in some hemp hearts with cinnamon and pepita seeds.

(bright music continues) And lastly, some smoked sea salt and vanilla bean powder.

(glass tinkling) Once our granola mixture is well-mixed, we're just gonna place it onto a baking sheet, (metal banging) spread this out nice and evenly.

I don't push the granola mixture too close to the edges 'cause otherwise it'll burn.

But a nice thin layer with some good spacing.

Otherwise, that maple syrup will start to pool at the bottom and it won't get that nice crunchy texture.

So now we're gonna take this and put in the oven at 300 degrees and it'll bake for about 20 to 30 minutes.

(bright music) (oven rack rattling) Next we're going to prepare our squash and our roasted aronia berries.

We're just gonna cut the tips off of the squash and peel.

This is a delicata squash and so it's pretty mild in flavor, but it'll hold its integrity well when roasting, so it won't get too mushy.

I'm gonna cut this in half.

These seeds can also be utilized in the granola.

Just take 'em out, rinse 'em, season them, and roast them off.

(bright music continues) We're just gonna do a medium dice on this squash.

(calm music) (knife scraping) (knife thudding) (knife scraping) Then we're gonna add these aronia berries.

Next, we are just gonna melt a little bit of butter to add into our squash and aronia berry mixture and do two and a half tablespoons of butter.

We're also gonna add just a touch of salt.

This whole meal is set up so that you have a successful day, so that you have energy and good fats for your brain.

There's a lot of antioxidants in this as well.

You're gonna find a good amount of fiber.

A lot of the forage ingredients are gonna have positive hypoglycemic effects.

With the indigenous diet, a lot of the things that plague us today like diabetes, if we revert back to our ancestor's diets, it proves to benefit our body best.

Our butter is melted and we're just gonna pour that over our berries and squash.

Give that a mix.

The butter is well coated over the berries and squash.

Next we're going to place it on our baking sheet, just lined with parchment paper, (calm music continues) (bowl clattering) and then we're gonna bring this over to the oven to roast at 350 degrees.

(bright music) (oven rack rattling) Next, we're gonna prepare the corn cereal.

We're gonna start by meddling some cedar bough.

Cedar bough is a ceremonial ingredient, but also has great health benefits.

We're gonna take a little bit of this cedar bough, about a teaspoon.

We're gonna add it to our pan along with about three tablespoons of butter.

This corn is a Haudenosaunee black corn.

It's nixtamalized and then ground.

I used juniper ash to process the corn.

It's alkaline, but it's also high in magnesium.

Our butter's just getting ready to boil and releasing all the essential oils that are in the cedar bough too.

So it's becoming quite fragrant.

Almost has, like, fruity notes when it's mixed into the butter like this.

It smells really good.

I'm gonna add in our corn.

(bright music continues) (spatula tapping) I'm gonna add in the water.

So what I have here is about a cup and a quarter of black cornmeal, (water hissing) and then four and a half cups of water.

(bright music continues) I'm starting to get some bubbles.

It's just beginning to thicken.

(whisk tapping) Now I'm just gonna cover this up and let it cook on low heat.

And I'm gonna take this time to check our granola.

Oh yeah, it's starting to brown on the edges.

Stir it a bit.

Also, gonna take a look at the squash.

(bright music continues) Nice.

That looks pretty good.

Our squash and aronia berry mixture has come out of the oven, and our granola is nice and crunchy.

We're gonna start by taking our corn pudding mixture and just transferring it to our bowl.

(bright music continues) We smooth that out and just kind of create a channel for all of our toppings.

I'm gonna start with our squash and aronia mixture all the way around.

(bowl clattering) Then we've got our granola.

(bright music continues) This is a mixture of cranberries and some of the black walnuts that we foraged.

They're just toasted.

We have candied spruce tips.

I'm just gonna go around the edges here and use a little bit of this.

These were candied in just a little bit of sugar and maple sap.

(bowl clattering) And then this is a mixture of wild flowers that were forged this season.

There's some lavender, grape hyacinth, jasmine, Calendula flower, the golden rod that we'd picked, and rose petals.

It's like a medicinal confetti, but we're just gonna sprinkle that around the top (bowl clattering) and finish off with just a little bit more of that smoked sea salt.

And there we have it.

Indigenous corn pudding, topped with roasted squash, aronia berry, organic granola mixed with some beautiful forage ingredients from Minnesota.

(bright music) - [Host] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, and by the members of Prairie Public.