Find out what are some traditional Navajo foods still eaten today? What are some traditional Navajo foods from the past, but not commonly eaten today? What are the various foods prepared from a sheep?
The principal food is mutton, boiled, and corn prepared in many ways. Considerable flour obtained from traders is consumed; this is leavened slightly and made into small cakes, which are cooked over the embers like Mexican tortillas.
The standard diet, established in tribal habits at Bosque Redondo (which was in effect a military boarding school for the "Americanization" of the Navajo), consists of mutton, fried bread, vast quantities of coffee with sugar and goat milk.
The Navajo tell many amusing anecdotes of their adjustment to the food of white people at Bosque Redondo. Those who came from the Navajo backwoods, beyond the forts, had never seen coffee. At first they tried frying the coffee beans, which did not improve the flavor; next they made porridge of them.
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English: "Fort Defiance, New Mexico" (now Arizona)...
English: Photo of a marker at Bosque Redondo, Fort...Grinding Sumac Berries for Soup
The Navajo of today claim that their dislike of pork and bacon dates from Bosque Redondo days when so many people fell ill from eating poorly cooked pork. This is a rationalization for their abhorrence, however, because as early as 1855 Davis observed that they loathed hogs.
Cooking Mutton and Sumac Berriies Soup
The Navajo are very fond of goat meat. Reichard (1936:7) quotes a Navajo as philosophising: "It seems like you're getting more to eat if it's tough."
The Navajo children drink some of the goat milk, but the tribe did not take over the European fondness for dairy products along with domesticated animals.
Miss Navajo Frybread Contest
WILD PLANTS Wild plants which were gathered for food in early times included greens from beeweed; seed from the hedge mustard, pigweed and mountain grass;...