A good Texas Indian Recipe
Bean Bread or Tsu-Ya-Ga
This is a favorite basic Cherokee food.
Boil some beans
Have a second pot of plain water boiling
See below to make wood ash lye.
Add some wood ash lye to fine corn meal till it turns yellow. We are talking small amounts of the lye here. DO NOT add any salt. You are making corn meal hominy here. You might be able to use hominy grits or ground up hominy instead.
When the beans are tender add the beans and some of the soup ( the water the beans were boiled in) to fine cornmeal and mix.
Make dumplings of the mix in your hand and drop in the boiling water. Salt in the dumplings will make them fall apart.
Boil till done. Experiment with the first few of them to see how long your size dumplings take to cook.
Serve with butter, or meat grease.
To make wood ashes lye take any kind of container with holes in the bottom. DO NOT USE ANY ALUMINUM. Pottery works best. Fill the container with hard wood ashes. Pour water into the ashes and let the water soak through them ashes and out the holes in the bottom. This is hard wood lye. Lye is strong stuff like an acid and should be handled with care. Avoid getting in on your skin or in your eyes. Let an adult do this. When mixed with corn meal in small amounts it is OK. Hominy is made by soaking corn kernels in lye and then washing the lye out. Youu are basicly making hominy meal by adding lye to corn meal. You could use ground up hominy for this recipe.
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