Muskrat Stew
Hero, abolitionist, spy, nurse, soldier. Of the many things Harriet Tubman was rightly known for, two of those were her skills as a cook and her foraging abilities. She was a very knowledgeable outdoorswoman and used those skills while leading the enslaved to freedom on the underground railroad. When she was enslaved as a young girl in her native Maryland,
It was her job to check the muskrat traps in the cold Winter. Those hunting, trapping, and wilderness skills she used later in her life navigating the land to help free enslaved people and in her time in the Civil War leading a raid against the confederate army.
This muskrat stew has some wild greens- ramps, garlic mustard, wild mustard, also a sweet potato, and a couple dried fish peppers.
Our friends in Fishtown -Harriet’s Bookshop, took their name from the spirit of Harriet Tubman, a bookstore dedicated to women authors and activists. The founder of Harriet’s Bookshop, Jeanine Cook, is an educator, an activist, and an important figure in our community. She has announced that the lease will be up in July and has created a Gofundme page where they are trying to raise enough money to buy their own building to house Harriet’s Bookshop permanently.
My love for books and reading I got from my mom. When I was younger I really liked Gothic fiction, Edgar Allen Poe, H.G. Wells, Frankenstein, Dracula, etc, and the classics. I took that love with me, in my travels to be a cook, when all I had in those small apartments were kitchen equipment and culinary books, using the local libraries on my days off, I tried to find time to read for fun. I reread Moby Dick when I lived in Boston, The Jungle when I lived in Chicago, and Child of God when I had a year down in Tennessee. Books are a great way to understand our world and other’s perspectives.
Jeanine’s vision is a noble one and if you have the time check out the link to donate to their gofundme