Many people have asked for a recipe for the traditional fry bread. We recently enjoy making and eating it at our annual

Culture Night at Tuscarora School. Sixth graders make this recipe and parents help fry it for this special evening! Our

students like to eat fry bread with butter and jam!! Try it that way!! It's also great with corn soup!

Here's the recipe:

4 cups flour

1/2 cup sugar

3 Tablespoons baking powder

milk or water to make proper consistency

oil for frying

Mix the dry ingredients together. Then add water or milk ( we usually use milk) to make a working consistency-- sort of

like the consistency of biscuit dough. Use some extra flour to help shape the dough into round or oval shapes about

4-5 inches across. Fry them in oil until done on one side; then flip them and fry the other side.

Corn soup is a favorite among the Tuscarora people. The traditional soup is made with green corn that has been carefully

washed using wood ashes from hardwood trees mixed with boiling water. The corn is cooked and washed three times

so that it is milky and has no black "eyes" floating around or stuck in the kernels.

To make the soup you put the washed corn into a large cooking pot and mix in kidney beans Add cold water to the desired

thickness. Add some cooked deer, moose or beaver meat. Some people use cow meat or salt pork or spare ribs in place

of the wild game. You may want to put some salt and pepper in the soup now too. You cook all this until the corn is

cooked. Let the soup simmer for half an hour to an hour. This is the real, old traditional corn soup.

To make the soup more of a vegetable soup you may add fresh carrots, turnips, and cabbage. You can also use pork or

pork hocks. This is really more of a vegetable soup with a corn base.

The traditional recipe calls for white corn put through the washing process only once rather than the three times required

for the corn soup. The corn is then dried on a wire screen for the day or night or over a wood stove. In about 12 hours, the

corn should be ready to pound with the corn pounder. It is best to do this when the corn is not entirely dry. When it is still a

bit moist the kernels will not fly out of the pounder. If you use an electric appliance, the kernels should be completely dry.

You now put the corn flour into a bowl and add boiling water to it. Then add a drained can of kidney beans into the corn

and mix it all together until all wet and you can form the corn mush into round, thick, flat loaves to be cooked in very hot

water. The water must be boiling and then turned down so it is not bubbling. A bubbling boil will cause the loaves to fall

apart. Put the loaves in the boiling water and cook until they float to the top of the water. When the corn bread loaves float,

they are ready. To eat, you may put on melted butter which will be absorbed into the loaves. The corn bread loaves should be

about 5-7 inches in diameter and about one to one and a half inches thick.