Cooking the Native Way: Chia Café Collective (Chia Café Collective)

This cookbook invites you to experience the Native American cultures of Southern California through their foods. Full-color photos and detailed recipes showcase the diversity, health, and flavor of modern cuisine made from Southern California native plants in combination with other foods. The results are mouthwatering: dishes including mesquite-rubbed quail marinated in prickly pear juice, “superfood” cookies featuring chia and pine nuts, acorn dumplings, and tepary tart topped with an elderberry reduction. Accompanied by essays that bring to life the rich history and the hopeful future of the Native people of the area, Cooking the Native Way showcases the luscious scents and tastes of vibrant indigenous cultures and is for all who wish to reconnect with the land through gathering, cooking, and savoring.

“[A] superbly presented culinary collection that is unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, family, and community library cookbook collections.” --Midwest Book Review

The Chia Café Collective is a grassroots group dedicated to honoring all the indigenous peoples of Southern California and their connection to the land and native plants. Working with various agencies, organizations, schools, and tribal communities, the Collective offers Native food workshops and classes; gathers, processes, and distributes plants to elders and others; and transplants native plants in areas slated for development, cultivating them in gardens in order to share seeds and cuttings.