Toasted Sister Podcast

In this special episode I hand the reins over to my real sister, Alisha Murphy (Diné). She went to the World Indigenous Business Forum in New Zealand and came back with some T-shirts for our parents, some keychains for her friends and some audio for me. Alisha made some new Maori friends and naturally talked about food with them. Hey, it runs in the family.

Towana Yepa (Jemez Pueblo) comes from a family of gardeners. She’s a business woman who owns and operates her own farm called Corn Pollen Trail Farms in Ponderosa, New Mexico. In this episode, she talks about her origins, the challenges of being an Indigenous woman farmer and filling a need for fresh options in her Native community. I also talk with Tina Archuleta (Jemez Pueblo), owner of Itality:...

Brit Reed (Choctaw) is a cook, culinary service provider for Tulalip Health Clinic in Washington and a member of the I-Collective. She’s sort of new to the world of Indigenous culinary arts but she’s well on her way to making changes in the Native community. In this program we talk about the role of Choctaw women and how food helps her connect to her culture as an adoptee.

In this episode, I hit the road and talk with some folks at the 6th annual Apache Harvest Festival at the Ndée Bikíyaa farm in Canyon Day, Arizona. On this show: Onah Ditzer, farm education coordinator at Ndée Bikíyaa Rachel Beauty, Apache culture intern for the Yavapai Apache Nation Shalitha Peaches, distribution manager for Ndée Bikíyaa Nephi Craig, Café Gozhóó Andrea Batty Emery Hoffman, White...

The non-Indigenous owners of Aloha Poke Co., a Chicago-based restaurant, trademarked the words “Aloha Poke” and became the new face of cultural and food appropriation. In this episode, Dr. Kalama Niheu (Kanaka Maoli) talks about how a long history of cultural appropriation allows for this to continue to happen to Indigenous people, the problem with paradise and how the popularity of poke took this...

Eric Richards (Navajo) has a business degree and originally had plans to get into the Native jewelry business. But fate took him straight to the kitchen and up the ranks. He’s the executive chef of the Twin Arrows Casino Resort near Flagstaff, Ariz. In this episode, I sit down with chef Richards at Zenith Steakhouse and we talk about the restaurant business at an Indian casino, future plans and Na...

If you talk with Diné chef Josh Nez for any amount of time, he’ll mention his daughters. They’re the reason why he cooks. He’ll also throw in some Navajo language translations for “corn,” “salt” or “grandma.” Nez is a cook at the Pueblo Harvest Café in Albuquerque who got his start as a dishwasher. In this episode, we talk about mutton, the first foods he ever cooked and the best way to prepare pr...

Vernon DeFoe (Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa) doesn’t have a glorious origin story. Like many chefs, his food journey starts at a fast food restaurant. But along the way he made a U-turn straight back to Indigenous food. He’s a chef de cuisine on The Sioux Chef team and the bassist for the crust punk band War//Plague. In this episode, Vernon talks about his great-grandmother’s cooking, w...

It’s Saguaro fruit harvest season and that means members of the Tohono O’odham Nation are out this weekend picking that sweet, sweet fruit from the tops of those iconic Arizona cactuses. In this episode, I talk with Jacelle Ramon-Sauberan, Ph. D student in American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona and Tohono O’odham history and culture teacher at the Tohono O’odham Community College, ab...

Shane Chartrand (Enoch Cree) has a particular kind of style that’s currently being projected on the interior of his new restaurant, SC Restaurant, which opens on June 12. It’s sexy, it’s casual, it’s a little upscale and it’s fun. He’s an award-winning chef who beat out some other top chefs in Canada to take home the gold from the Gold Medal Plates Edmonton competition. In this program, Chartrand...

Kristina Stanley (Anishinaabe) is the owner of Abaaso, a plant-based food company based in Madison, Wisconsin. She’s also a member of the I-Collective (Indigenous, Inspired, Innovative, Independent Collective). For this episode, I visit Kristina in the kitchen at the Food Justice Symposium in Colorado to talk about her business, learning about Indigenous foods and being a woman in this industry. V...

In this special episode I hit the road and visit a sheep camp near Shiprock, N.M. to talk with a sheep herder family and Aretta Begay (Diné), director of Diné be’iiná, or Navajo Lifeway, a non-profit group dedicated to preserving and strengthening Navajo sheep culture. Please visit toastedsisterpodcast.com and the Toasted Sister facebook page for photos from sheep camp. Also: Diné be’iiná will hos...

When Mariah Gladstone (Blackfeet) was a young girl, she had a dream about cookies and her mom helped her bring them to real life. She still dreams about food and turns them into recipes, only now, she produces her own little cooking show called Indigikitchen. In this episode, Mariah talks about the Blackfeet diet and how sacrifices from her ancestors paid for her existence. Info: https://indigikit...

Anna Sattler (Yupik) is an urban hunter and gatherer provider who can make a mean salmon dip and lots of other Alaskan dishes. She’s a chef and creator of “Anna’s Alaska: Off The Eaten Path,” a yet-to-be-filmed TV show with a pilot episode in the works. In this episode, we talk about Pilot Bread crackers, subsistence hunting in Alaska and stealing food from mice. Anna’s easy peasy salmon dip Ingre...

In February, I attended the 2018 New Mexico Organic Farmers Conference in Albuquerque and met up with some Native farmers who are doing some really awesome things in their Native communities. In this episode, we talk about traditional farming, resilience, soil health and preservation. Photo: The Resilience Garden at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center via Bettina Sandoval. Voices: Bettina Sandoval (...

If you like the Toasted Sister intro music, you’re going to enjoy this special, musical episode featuring CW Ayon, or Cooper Ayon. As a one-man-band, he sings, he plays guitar, a kick drum, the tambourine and a harmonica sometimes. It’s very impressive to watch him perform live at a bar, a festival or a restaurant. He’s pretty much the voice of Las Cruces, New Mexico, but he’s played all over the...

Neftalí Duran (Mixteco) came to this country as a migrant worker so he’s particularly in-tuned with today’s conversations about borders and migration. In this episode, Neftalí talks about the importance of migrant workers in the American food system, food shaming and why we can’t talk about food sovereignty without talking about access to food first.

David Wolfman (Xaxli’p First Nation) started cooking when he was 9 years old. Now he’s a classically trained chef, educator and host of the TV show “Cooking with the Wolfman.” In this episode, he talks about his new cookbook, “Cooking with the Wolfman: Indigenous Fusion,” the history of his family and the Indigenous food movement in Canada.

(Ink & Paper/Jessica Sargent photos) In this special episode, I talk with four Indigenous chefs who attended the I-Collective’s (Indigenous, Inspired, Innovative, Independent Collective) Indigenous Harvest Pop Up dinner in New York. They talk about the dishes they prepared for the seven-course dinner and what inspires and motivates them when they cook. Voices: Brit Reed (Choctaw), cook and student...

At The Boot in Durham, North Carolina, chef Robert Kinneen (Tlingit) makes a lot of pasta and breaks down a pig and half a cow a month. It’s different than cooking porcupine, moose and walrus in Alaska. In this episode, Rob talks about moving and cooking in different restaurants, feeding President Obama and why truffle oil is an unrealistic ingredient to use in rural Alaska. Kinneen is the executi...

An endless search for food, tainted cheese, killer pastries, feasting on the Death Star: that’s how Native comic book artists and illustrators incorporated food into their work. I talk with a bunch of “Indigenerds” at the Indigenous Comic Con 2. In the show: Arigon Starr, “Super Indian” Tatum Bowie and Damon Begay, “Spiral,” Interstellar Comix Jason EagleSpeaker, Eagle Speaker Publishing Jonathan...

In this special episode, four Indigenous chefs talk about what it’s like being female chefs in a culinary world currently dominated by men. Guests are Claudia Serrato (Purépecha), anthropologist, professor and chef, Andrea Murdoch (Venezuelan Andean Native), creator and owner of Four Directions Cuisine, Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz (Tewa, Tiwa, Mexican, Spanish), holistic healer and chef and Marlene Agui...

In this special episode, I travel to Taos, New Mexico to talk with a few Native chefs, some tribal leaders and farmers about the importance of eating the food that our ancestors ate. The Indigenous Food Experience was a first-time event put on by the Red Willow Farm at the Taos Pueblo.

You can’t talk about climate change in Native America without talking about food and how it’s affected by changes in water, land and temperature. Dr. Kyle Whyte (Citizen Potawatomi Nation), Timnick chair in the humanities and professor of philosophy and community sustainability at Michigan State University, spends a lot of time thinking about traditional Native food and how tribes are trying to pr...

At age 5, Claudia Serrato (Purépecha) started cooking plant-based foods. Today, her passion is exploring raw foods, sweet flavors and making desserts with delicious combinations of Indigenous ingredients from all over Turtle Island. She’s an anthropologist, professor and chef who embraces words like “intimacy” and “Indigenous love” to describe the experience of ancestral foods. In this episode, Cl...