From sdunavan@aol.com Thu Sep 1 13:37:27 CDT 1994 Article: 2750 of rec.food.historic Path: uuneo.neosoft.com!news.uh.edu!swrinde!gatech!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!uunet!newstf01.cr1.aol.com!search01.news.aol.com!not-for-mail From: sdunavan@aol.com (SDunavan) Newsgroups: rec.food.historic Subject: Re: Aztec food?? Date: 31 Aug 1994 22:22:14 -0400 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Lines: 64 Sender: news@search01.news.aol.com Message-ID: <343dsm$hkd@search01.news.aol.com> References: <34260m$5bc@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM> NNTP-Posting-Host: search01.news.aol.com In article <34260m$5bc@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM>, claird@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM (Cameron Laird) writes: Well, technically, Mesoamericans didn’t (and don’t today) grow “quinoa”, or _Chenopodium quinoa_. But they did (and do) grow a closely related species of Chenodium known as _Chenopodium nuttalliae_ , or _Chenopodium berlandieri subsp. nuttalliae_. The two species’ seeds are virtually indistinguishable without a microscope, and I can’t taste any difference. According to Charles Heiser (see below for references), this Mexican chenopod “exists as three main cultivars: huauzontle, used like broccoli, quelite, used like spinach, and chia used as a grain.”(p. 68). This is not the same chia as the stuff on your chia pet, however, so don’t try to get a crop off that. The only place I’ve seen the Mexican grain variety for sale is from Native Seeds/SEARCH, a nonprofit group that maintains quite a few traditional varieties of Native American crops. They’ve branched out to sell some food, too (their address is 2509 N. Campbell, Tucson, AZ 85719, ph. 602/327-9123 for a catalog). But get this! The really exciting thing is that there is good archaeological evidence for a domesticated variety of Chenopodium berlandieri right here (well, that’s where I am) in the prehistoric midwestern U.S.! So instead of buying quinoa, it might be more authentic to go gather the native variety yourself. However, its a weedy species now, with thicker, black seed coats. Whether you collect it or buy it, you should rinse it well to get some of the saponin off the seed coat. Some more trivia on the Mexican variety: “Annual yields, as reflected by tribute lists, were massive and the crop was well integrated into ‘first fruit’ religious ceremonies associated with important Aztec gods of fire and war....Ceremonial use of the plant, probably cultivars with heavy pigmentation, involved production of a grain-based paste (zoales) which was used to make idols. This use in Aztec ceremony...was the driving force for early Spanish extirpation of the plant and the resulting paucity of ethnographic data” (Wilson 1990, p. 102). It is still grown quite a lot in Michoacan and Puebla, though. I could go on about chenopodium for a lot longer than most people want to read, so e-mail me if anyone wants more. Here’s some references -- (apart from Sophie Coe’s book): Wilson, Hugh D. (1990). Quinua and relatives (Chenopodium sect. Chenopodium subsect. Cellulata). Economic Botany 44(3, Supplement):92-110. Heiser, Charles B. (1985). Some botanical considerations of the early domesticated plants north of Mexico. In Prehistoric Food Production in North America, edited by Richard I. Ford, pp. 57-72. University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology, Anthropological Papers 75, Ann Arbor. Safford, W. E. (1917). Chenopodium nuttalliae, a food plant of the Aztecs. Journal of the Washington Academy of Science 8:521-527. Wilson, Hugh D. and Charles B. Heiser (1979). The origin and evolutionary relationships of ‘Huauzontle’ (Chenopodium nuttalliae Safford), domesticated chenopod of Mexico. American Journal of Botany 66:198-206. for the midwestern U.S. chenopod, many works by Bruce Smith have been reprinted in a 1992 Smithsonian book called ‘Rivers of Change: Essays on Early Agriculture in Eastern North America’. PULQUE -- you can buy it in cans at some big city Mexican groceries (like in Chicago). Supposedly this is not as good as fresh pulque. The canned was pretty gross. SDunavan