Cooking with Baskets

On the Northwest Coast, cooks could produce soups and stews in tightly woven baskets.... How? Plant fibers swell when wet, and make the cooking basket watertight.

• take one cooking basket
• add water
• add vegetables, dried meat, clams, fish
• use tongs to add fire-heated stones to the water
• remove cool stones, add hot ones until food is cooked

Weavers in California and the Southwest also made basketry seed-beating tools, acorn-grinding hoppers, and grain winnowing trays.

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