Many of my readers are from the upper Midwest, where I spent almost forty years in corporate America. My best friends include quite a few Minnesotans who, one could say, have their roots in Scandinavia.

So when I posted my story Eating Frybread, it didn’t dawn on me that there may be folks who might be unfamiliar with what fry bread might be. It was brought to my attention that fry bread isn’t a household word in the midwest, and it was brought to my attention by a best friend whom I have written about several times as a tennis buddy. Larry was raised in LA, family roots in Devil’s Lake, ND, spent most of his working career in Minneapolis, and now lives between Minnesota and Florida. His family roots are, I believe, Norwegian.

Larry knows my work, and wasn’t shy about telling me that it was hard to get past not knowing for sure what fry Bread was in my Eating Frybread story.

I really didn’t know what fry bread was, either, until about forty years ago my sister Bernice began making it during our hometown Little Big Horn Days. We grew up about fifteen miles from where Custer bit the dust and our town held a re-enactment for years. Now-a-days the re-enactment is held in Crow Agency, and there’s not much activity in our town, but for about thirty years, my family held the Koyama Indian Taco Stand, Where East Meets West.

Fry bread is a Native American staple, even though it’s technically not indigenous, because it’s made of flour. Flour was introduced by the European/White people who brought bags of flour to the West. Fry bread is bread dough made of wheat flour and fried in lard or oil.

It is delicious.

Some real Indian fry bread makers would say you don’t use eggs, but we always did. And we used yeast, some people don’t. The dough is flattened out and a slit is made in the center. Ours were about the size of an 8″ paper plate. We used vegetable oil, not lard. We made our version of Indian Tacos, a fry bread, chili, cheese, lettuce, tomato, salsa. It’s slightly different than the local Navajo Taco, which doesn’t use meat chili but ground beef. To me, now living in Santa Fe, both versions are good, I just grew up with our version, so of course I like our chili version.

There may be more questions like this that come up from stories that are in Windows of Light. There are several rice stories. Sometimes I take for granted that people know what some of the ethic items might be. You can ask questions directly to some of the authors at one of the upcoming events. The Zoom call on Sept 29 will have several of the authors available for questions. They will also be reading from their books.

The live event is October 9 in Santa Fe. Click here for event information!