Heid Erdrich signs copies of her cookbook "Original Local: Indigenous Foods, Stories, and Recipes from the Upper Midwest"

“In this remarkable cookbook, Heid Erdrich shares her deep knowledge of indigeneous foods and original recipes that make me want to read and learn as well as cook.” Beth Dooley, author of Minnesota’s Bounty: The Farmer’s Market Cookbook

Visit with Heid Erdrich and hear about her new cookbook which blends traditional American Indian ingredients and creative contemporary fusion. Heid, the author Original Local: Indigenous Foods, Stories, and Recipes from the Upper Midwest, will be at Common Good Books at noon on the day after Thanksgiving, to talk with shoppers about the richness of our region’s foods. And she’ll even have soup to sample. Take a break from the holiday hustle to celebrate the upper Midwest’s finest foods.

The innovative recipes collected in Original Local--from Maple Baked Cranberry Beans to Three Sisters Salsa, from Manoomin Lasagna to Black and Blue Bison Stew--will inspire home cooks not only to make better use of the foods all around them but also to honor the storied heritage these dishes represent. A chapter on wild rice makes clear the crucial role manoomin plays in cultural and economic survival. A look at freshwater fish is concerned with shifts in climate and threats to water purity as it reveals the deep relationship between Ojibwe people and indigenous fish species such as Ginoozhii, the Muskie, Ogaa, the Walleye, and Adikamig, Whitefish. Health concerns have encouraged Ojibwe, Dakota, and Lakota cooks to return to, and revise, recipes for bison, venison, and wild game. Sections on vegetables and beans, herbs and tea, and maple and berries offer insight from a broad representation of regional tribes, including Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Potawatomi, and Mandan gardeners and harvesters.

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Heid E. Erdrich, author of five books of poetry and coeditor ofSister Nations: Native American Women Writers on Community, teaches writing, performs her work broadly, and gives lectures on American Indian art, language, and literature.