Courtesy photos by DeAnn Brown
We made pet rocks and conducted Science Week at the Tenas Illahee Childcare
Center in July.
For more information about the Siletz Tribal language program, please visit siletzlanguage.org.
Time to harvest salal, make fruit leather
By Nancy Ludwig, MS, RD, LD, Siletz
Tribal Head Start Nutrition
As part of my role as a consultant
nutritionist to Siletz Tribal Head Start, I
offer information for families. This seg-
ment looks at salal berries as a traditional
food and how to create fruit leather for a
treat later in the year.
Salal (sala’xbupt, Makah) is one of
our most common and most overlooked
berries. It grows in lush thickets under
open evergreen forests or in sunny areas
where there is moisture and good drainage.
The leaves are thick, dark green on
top and noticeable waxy. They are com-
monly used in floral arrangements. Spring
flowers look like little white bells (sticky
and slightly hairy) and the berries are a
blue-black when ripe.
You cannot disguise that you have
been eating salal berries when you smile
because they color your teeth and tongue
a deep blue.
Salal berries are ready between
August and October, depending on eleva-
tion and weather conditions. This year I
started seeing ripe fruit in late June near
the Oregon Coast.
They vary from delicious to bland
and boring, depending on their soil and
amount of sun exposure. Always taste the
berries before you gather them and if they
do not suit you, try traveling to a different
bush a little ways away. Just a short dis-
tance can make a big difference in taste.
Salal berries are considered a North-
west staple food. They were traditionally
mashed, dried into cakes and then stored
and eaten in the winter months. The cakes
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were dried on cedar boards or skunk cab-
bage leaves (also called Indian wax paper.)
Many people preferred to rehydrate the
cakes in water, then dip them into seal,
whale or eulachon oil.
The leaves have been used tradition-
ally as a medicine for wounds, coughs,
colds and digestive problems. Tea made
from the leaves is astringent and anti-
inflammatory, used in the mouth and
throat as well as throughout the body,
including intestines, bloodstream, urinary
tract, sinuses and lungs.
Gather the stems with green healthy-
looking leaves in the spring to summer
and bundle them to dry. When the leaves
are crackly when crushed, strip them off
the branches and store them in a glass jar
or plastic bag for later uses.
Before making tea, crush the leaves
up with your hands. Use about one table-
spoon per cup of hot water and infuse for
20 minutes.
Resources
Feeding the People Feeding the Spirit
– Revitalizing Northwest Coastal
Indian Food Culture by Elise Krohn,
Valerie Segrest and the Northwest
Indian College, 2010
Wild Rose and Western Red Cedar – The
Gifts of the Northwest Plants by Elise
Krohn, printed with partial support
from the Northwest Indian College
and Longhouse Media, 2007
This recipe is a modern approach
to a traditional food. It can be lightly
sweetened with honey. While this isn’t a
traditional recipe, I believe it embraces
August 2016
the principals of traditional foods and
nutritional equivalents.
When I made many batches a few
years ago, I didn’t enjoy picking one berry
at a time. I accidentally smashed the
berries and my fingers turned deep purple.
In my haste to be efficient and get
them picked before it was too late, I ended
up snipping the berries with the stems and
freezing them prior to making the fruit
leather. It was easier to remove the berries
from the stem while they were frozen.
Then I blended the berries in the
food processor. I liked the flavor best with
honey and lemon. My favorite method was
the food dryer with silicon sheets (again
a modern touch, but the leather came off
easily with minimal waste).
Salal Fruit Leather
Dried berry cakes were a staple food
throughout wintertime. This modern ver-
sion is the equivalent to fruit rollups and
is a delicious snack that is packed with
vitamins, minerals and antioxidants.
Salal berries dry best but you can mix
in other berries for flavor. Gather salal
berries in late summer to early fall when
they are sweet and tasty.
6-8 cups berries, fresh or frozen (salal,
huckleberry, juneberry, strawberry,
thimbleberry)
¼ cup honey
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Clean and rinse berries if necessary.
Place berries in a blender or food processor
and blend until smooth. If desired, add
honey to sweeten and a little squeeze of
fresh lemon juice to bring out the flavor.
Fit wax paper over a cookie sheet with
sides. Pour blended berries onto the sheet
and use a spatula to smooth them out to
an even consistency of about ¼ inch. The
berries can be dried traditionally in the
sun or in the oven.
Sun drying: If it is hot and dry, place
the pan in the full sun, preferably in a
windy spot. If there are flies or bugs, you
can put cheesecloth over the berries. It will
probably take 2-4 days to dry completely,
so bring the berries in at night to prevent
them from gathering dew.
After the berries are mostly dried,
lay another piece of wax paper over the
berries and carefully turn them over. Peel
the old wax paper off and let the other
side dry out.
When it seems the consistency of fruit
leather, cut the berry sheet into strips and
store in plastic bags to prevent it from
drying out completely.
Dehydrator: Use the lowest setting to
dehydrate fruit leather. It will take several
hours to a day for the fruit leather to have
a dry but still pliable consistency.
Oven method: Place the berries in the
oven on the lowest temperature (usually
about 170 degrees F) and leave the oven
cracked so that water can evaporate from
the berries. It will take 6-10 hours for the
berries to dry. Place another piece of wax
paper over the berries and flip them over
when they are mostly dry to make the
process quicker.
Carefully peel off the wax paper and
continue drying. If you have to leave,
simply turn your oven off and place the
berries in a warm spot in the house with
cheesecloth or a paper towel over them.
Continue drying as you can.
