Anishnabe Meejim
Robin and Eva Menefee
Lansing, Michigan
Native American Foods

Native American cookery consists of the oldest foods and the oldest cooking methods in North America—a food and cooking tradition based on things gathered from the ground, plants, and fresh and salt waters. Like the Native Americans themselves, their food and cooking have changed greatly since first contact with Europeans. Nonetheless, the Native foods that were once associated with ceremonial life remain so today. Certain things are still eaten in certain seasons only by certain people. What is eaten is central to being Native, and nothing is eaten without a prayer.
Many New World foods have enriched the cuisines of other nations. What would Italian food be, for example, without the tomato? Native peoples grew and preserved a wide variety of corn, which European traders took to all corners of the world. Corn is still an important ingredient in the Native American diet and is eaten in a variety of ways.
Some foods closely identified today with Indians are the result of European and other Native American influences. Frybread, for example, evolved because of access to European wheat and lard, and today it is associated with all Indians. Through fairs, festivals, and pow wows, the southwestern version of frybread--the Indian or Navajo taco--has been adopted by Native Americans of the Great Lakes region and elsewhere.


Armenian Cuisine
East Lansing, Michigan
Armenian Foods

Food of the Armenian minority in Azerbaijan is not well known in Michigan. In the 1980s some 40 to 45 Armenian families from this region of the Caucasus settled in the East Lansing area. Representatives are eager to share their foods.
Caucasian Armenian food has its roots in antiquity and has both influenced and been influenced by Greeks, Romans, Persians, Arabs, Central Asians, and Turks who passed through. The cuisine is varied, exotic, and delicious, using herbs and spices, fresh and dried fruits, walnuts, pine nuts, honey, and rose water in many dishes.


Bev’s Caribbean Kitchen
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Jamaican Foods

Beverly Taylor-Glaza, from Jamaica, and Michael Glaza, from Michigan’s Thumb area, met when Michael served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Jamaica. He taught shop at the school where Beverly taught home economics. In the early 1980s Michael returned to Michigan with his wife Beverly. They eventually settled in Ann Arbor where they have operated the restaurant Bev’s Caribbean Kitchen since October 1993. The restaurant is primarily take-out, as are many Jamaican-American restaurants, but it also has five stools for those who prefer to eat there. The menu includes jerk chicken and jerk pork (Jamaican barbecue), curried goat, patties (the Jamaican version of a pasty), black beans and rice, fried plantains, and a variety of Jamaican soft drinks.


Celaya
Maria Aguilar
Bath, Michigan
Mexican Foods

Maria ("Lupe") Aguilar left Mexico 30 years ago, and now lives in Bath, Michigan and is an active member of the Cristo Rey community in Lansing. At church and Latino festivals, she prepares and sells Mexican foods, some from her hometown, Celaya, Guanajuato. For more than 20 years she has been making tamales, both the savory variety with pork, which most Michiganders know, and the sweet variety, which Mexican-Americans favor at Christmas and other festive occasions. For nearly as long, she has made and sold gorditas, thick shells made from masa that are filled with meat, potatoes, and vegetables or vegetables or cheese. Another of her specialties are flautas, a form of taco found in northern Mexico; a tortilla is filled with beef, generally, then rolled and fried. Maria cooks the real Mexican food, the same as she prepares for her grandchildren and very different than anything you are likely to find at commercial establishments.


Federated Polish Home
Lansing, Michigan
Pierogi

The Federated Polish Home is a social and fraternal hall built by Polish immigrants in about 1926. It is made up of three Polish fraternal organizations: Polish National Alliance, Polish Falcons, and White Eagles. These organizations were started by immigrants to provide accident and death insurance coverage to members from Poland and their families. In addition to their function as insurance providers, these organizations also are social organizations. Among other things, they sponsor dinner dances at which Polish foods prepared by members are sometimes served.
Pierogi are very popular dumplings that symbolize Polishness in the United States. They have a variety of fillings, including cheese and potato, which are offered by the Federated Polish Home.



Finnish Cultural Association
Farmington Hills, Michigan
U. P. Pasty

The pasty (pronounced "pass-tee") was introduced to the Upper Peninsula during the nineteenth century by Cornish mining families who immigrated to Michigan’s copper- and iron-mining regions. This portable turnover of pie-like crust filled with meat, potatoes, rutabagas, and onions--a complete meal in itself--was carried underground and often reheated by placing it in a miner’s shovel that was held over a candle flame. The pasty became popular throughout the ethnically diverse Upper Peninsula and today is a regional specialty. Forgetting pasty’s origin, some even say pasty is the U.P.’s contribution to American cuisine.
Many members of the Finnish Cultural Association resettled in southeast Michigan from the Upper Peninsula, where they still maintain close ties. Twice a year the Association’s pasty sale is a very popular fundraiser, and the making of this offers this regional treat is demonstrated at the National Folk Festival.


Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church
Lansing, Michigan
Greek Foods

Ethnic churches in America are very important in maintaining culinary traditions, a role they do not usually have in the countries of origin. Cornish-American churches hold pasty bake sales, Serbian-American churches have summer lamb roasts, and Armenian-American churches hold regular bazaars at which a wide range of Armenian foods are sold, both to take home and to eat on site. The Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church of Lansing is no exception. Among other food events, the congregation hosts a fundraising luncheon featuring Greek cuisine prepared by the Greek Orthodox Ladies Philoptochos Society.
Church members are now second- and third-generation Americans and include a number of other ethnics united by eastern rite Orthodox faith, as well as converts in marriage. The food, however, is steadfastly Greek.


Kolache Kitchen
Laingsburg, Michigan
Czech Cuisine

Michigan has a significant population of Czech-, Moravian-, Bohemian-, and Slovak-Americans, many of whom reside in Gratiot, Clinton, Saginaw, and Shiawassee Counties, whose ancestors were attracted to this area in the early 1900s to work in the sugar beet industry.
Sherry Winkler Bowles is one of these Czech-Americans. The Kolache Kitchen is the result of her efforts, with help from her family and friends, to bring delicious Czech food to other Michiganders. Working beside her mother in her kitchen, Sherry learned to bake and cook Czech specialties. They took the results to local fundraisers, Mr. Winkler’s Czech language class, and other area events, gaining recognition for their baking. Finally, Sherry opened Kolache Kitchen in St. Johns.
Here at the festival, we have the opportunity to sample a variety of traditional Czech foods, savory dishes and pastries, for which Czechs are known.


Kowalski Sausage Company
Hamtramck, Michigan
Polish Foods

Hamtramck, a small autonomous city within the metropolitan Detroit area, was once the home of the Dodge Main auto plant and a major employer that attracted many to settle here. Although today Hamtramck is home to many ethnic groups, it is still predominantly a Polish community as evidenced by the many Polish bakeries, butchers, and grocers; churches and social halls; and ethnic gift and book stores.
In 1920 Zygmund and Agnes Kowalski started a grocery store. Very soon the demand for their sausage became so great they abandoned the grocery store and, in May 1920, established the Kowalski Sausage Company in Hamtramck where it is still located. Today the fourth generation of Kowalskis runs the company, providing a wide variety of Polish specialty foods and meats, including sauerkraut, pierogis, stuffed cabbage, and their great-grandfather’s sausage made according to his secret recipe.


Mexican Fruit Drinks
Lansing, Michigan
Liquados

Along the busy streets and bustling marketplaces of urban Mexico, vendors in shops and stands offer passersby cool, refreshing fruit drinks. Light and natural, these drinks are made in blenders with fruit, water, and sugar or with fruit, milk, possibly an egg, sugar and ice.
In Lansing, liquados are made in some Mexican American households, consumed as a snack or even a light meal when made with milk and egg, and occasionally are sold at festivals. At the National Folk Festival, we are fortunate to have an opportunity to taste liquados.


Lopez Bakery
Lansing, Michigan
Mexican Pastries

The Spanish introduced a wide array of foods and a new meal system to the Prehispanic culture of Mexico. One of the new ingredients incorporated into the foodways of Mexico was wheat. Using wheat flour, Mexicans have developed over the centuries many and varied kinds of pastries and rolls.
The Lopez Bakery offers a wide selection of traditional Mexican pastries. Pedro Lopez started baking in Mexico when he was nine years old. Now in his 70s he is a master baker, and he and his son Jose offer a selection of their delicious sweet breads, cookies, and rolls, which are eaten for breakfast, supper, or as a snack.


Old World Foods
Cleveland, Ohio
Potato Pancakes

When most Americans hear "potato pancake," they think first of the Jewish-American latke. Ashkenazim Jews prepare latkes, especially during Hanukkah, and associate the cooking oil with the miraculous oil that is a part of the Hanukkah legend. In fact, potato pancakes are widespread in Central and East Europe. In Poland, they are known as placki kartoflan and sometimes include chopped bacon, cheese, or poppyseed. Russians call them oladyi and sometimes add fresh or dried herbs. Germans, who know them as either Kartoffelpuffer or Reiberdatschi, have a variant that includes grated apple. Czechs call them bramborak; Lithuanians, bulviniai blynai. Byelorussians, who make their potato pancakes with sour milk or yogurt, call them draniki.
Andy Emrisko, who comes from Cleveland, one of America’s greatest multiethnic communities, and who is himself Slovak and Hungarian, faithfully uses his mother’s recipe for potato pancakes, which he makes and sells through Old World Foods, Inc. He also provides haluski (fried cabbage and dumplings), cabbage rolls, and "city chicken," other eastern European favorites learned from his family.


Turkeyman
Lansing, Michigan
Barbecue

As the eldest child, Craig Harris helped his mother by assuming much of the cooking responsibilities. Even then his specialty was barbecue. He regards his catering business as a natural progression. From his memorable smoked barbecue turkey comes his nickname "Turkeyman." Craig began as a street vendor in 1994, serving smoked barbecued turkey on street corners and at ball parks. Today, in addition to providing barbecue to hungry crowds at sports arenas in the Lansing area, "Turkeyman" donates food to missions, volunteers in school kitchens, and feeds families in need.


United Methodist Women
First United Methodist Church
Holland, Michigan
Dutch Pigs in the Blanket

The first large Dutch immigration to America began in the 1840s, arriving in western Michigan in 1847. Within two years, despite malaria, smallpox, dysentery, insufficient food, and other impediments, a steady stream of Dutch immigrants had established Holland, Zeeland, Vriesland, Drenthe, and Graafschap. Subsequent immigrations in the 1880s and after World War II scattered Dutch throughout the state, although the highest concentration still is in western Michigan.
Dutch-Americans have made major contributions to American culture through politics and government, education, industry, and foodways. Today’s all-American foods, such as cookies, pancakes, waffles, doughnuts, pretzels, and coleslaw, were originally brought to this country by early Dutch settlers. A Dutch-American food not yet widely known is "pigs in the blanket" (saucijzenbroodjes), a popular treat offered by the Women’s Club of the First United Methodist Church of Holland.


Woody’s Oasis
East Lansing, Michigan
Arab Foods

Outside of the Middle East, Michigan is home to the largest Arabic-speaking population, comprising many religions, nations, ethnic groups, and regional cuisines.
Great value is attached to cooking and good food in the Middle East.
It is a sensual kind of cooking, generously using herbs, spices, and aromatics. Most local cuisines include rice and wheat dishes, stuffed vegetables, pies wrapped in paper-thin pastry, various methods for roasting meats, meatballs, thick omelettes, cold vegetables cooked in oil, scented rice puddings, nut-filled pastries, fritters soak in syrup, and a variety of fruit and vegetable juices.
Some areas are known for a highly developed cuisine. Lebanon, for example, is one of only two Middle Eastern countries to have a highly developed restaurant tradition. Lebanese emigrant cooks and restaurateurs brought Arab cuisine to the attention of the world. In Michigan, the majority of restaurants and bakeries offer Lebanese foods. Woody’s Oasis, the first Arab restaurant in the area, has pleased its customers with Lebanese foods.


Zemer’s Rootbeer
Tyler, Texas
Root Beer

Chris and Joy Zemer are the makers and sellers of root beer, using a secret recipe passed on to Chris from his father and grandfather, who also were root beer vendors. From a stand made by his grandfather and great grandfather in Ionia, Michigan, in the 1920s, Chris and his wife have been selling root beer since 1991. Chris’s grandfather made the counters and his great grandfather had used the root beer barrel, both of which are part of the stand. The stand is a highly valued family heirloom and the root beer business, a long family tradition. Chris is proud of his root beer. Served in chilled glass mugs, you know its the "real" thing. "Once you taste my root beer," Chris boasted, "you’ll never want anyone else’s."