Vegan Native Toyon Blueberry Muffins

Ananda (DBM), Seven, Xochitl, Crystal Q., Imogen VEGAN TEST KITCHEN, Wisdom Quarterly

Turning any baked item vegan is easy; gluten-free take more ingenuity (foodnetwork.com)

We forage plants for tasty health!

Today in the Vegan Test Kitchen, we whipped up some Native American fare, foraging like the local Tongva people with a modern twist -- superfoods but no Old World ingredients.

In a pot, simmer locally collected toyon (astringent California holly) berries with stems pulled off, fresh or dried. Add mesquite powder, maca powder, yams or sweet potatoes (mashed), cooked brown rice.

These are toyon berries, a Native American treasure. They grow everywhere in Tongvaland.

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Add a gluten-free flour (acorn, available in the Asian section of most markets), sorghum, millet, amaranth, quinoa, tapioca, farro, teff, corn, rice of all kinds, buckwheat, or a gluten-free all-purpose mix of starches, making sure to avoid wheat, barley, rye, kamut, spelt, and oats*). In-season nuts are an optional addition, such as shelled walnuts or pecans or almond butter. Adding cooked pumpkin or apple sauce is also an option.

Soon we'll all be invited to the White House to celebrate Native Sec'y of the Interior Haaland

I have to learn to unlearn Eurocentrism.

• *NOTE: Oats can never be gluten-free no matter what the manufacturer or package says because oat is mostly gluten, but its gluten is called gliadin and that's how they get away with the misleading claim to be "gluten-free" when its form of gluten is more harmful than wheat's, according to Dr. Joel Wallach.

Decolonize Your Diet (Calvo & Esquibel)

Combine mixture and stir into a doughy consistency. Bake in preheated oven at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or until brown. Allow to cool and serve topped with toyon/cranberry jelly.

Toyon/cranberry jelly is very easy to make. Simply heat water in a pot and add raw toyon berries, which grow all over in the fall and winter and so were a staple of the Tongva, fresh cranberries, blackberries, and blueberries. Squeeze a fresh orange into it or cut an organic orange into slices rind and all. Simmer until thick. Add agave to sweeten to taste.

FREE: Vegan Thanksgiving Potluck Picnic (11/24)

First we must decolonize our diets then decolonize our minds. Let's end colonial imperialism

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