Revi made a watermelon slushy. This wasn’t from the cookbook, but it was a great drink to have at a summer dinner party. It was a fantastic palate cleanser, and also wonderful mixed with wine (which I’ll admit I did happily).

Revi also started us off with a lovely fruit and cheese platter to munch on before the main event. Again, not from the cookbook, but a nice touch by such a gracious host. And made extra special by a truly incredible fig jam that she made that morning using figs from her trees.

Julian made Black Bean and Yucca Soup with Warming Spices. The broth had great flavor and the heartiness of the soup made me want it for a cold night. I don’t know that I’ve had yucca before – I liked it, though I found that it had tough bits I wished were cut out.

Brian made Three Sisters Mash, which is a mixture of squash, cedar-braised beans, corn, and hominy in a dressing of maple syrup, sage, and mint. The recipe didn’t specify what kind of beans, so Brian used a couple different ones. He was concerned that the dressing would be too minty, but I thought it added a nice freshness. I enjoyed all the different textures, and I wish hominy was a more frequently used ingredient!

Sheana made Cedar-Braised Beans. On its own, I found this dish a bit uninteresting. I hoped to taste more of the cedar flavor, but it didn’t come through very strongly for me. I did like the cedar-braised beans as an ingredient in the Three Sisters Mash, and also when I mixed it with the bison from Tracey’s indigenous taco dish (luckily there was plenty of extra bison!).

Sheana also made Braised Sunflowers. She described the process of removing the petals, then the leaves, then the face of the flower, to finally get to the meat. It sounded like a lot of work to get to what ended up being a pretty small amount of flesh, but it was delicious. Akin to the texture of artichoke heart, but with a more full-bodied flavor. I want to eat this again!

Revi made Griddled Maple Squash. You put fried sage leaves on pretty much anything and I will love it, but it was especially nice with the sweetness of the squash against the citrusy sumac. The roasted seeds added good crunch as well.

Rachel made Wild Rice Cakes. She was going to make Sorrel Sauce to accompany the rice cakes, but wasn’t able to find any sorrel. Even without the sauce, I found these incredibly simple rice cakes (basically wild rice with a touch of salt and sugar browned in a skillet) to be surprisingly appealing. The crispy chewy combo made for a great base to eat with more of that extra bison.

Tracey made Indigenous Tacos, which consisted of corn cakes topped with ground bison, wojape, and corn nuts. As you probably gleaned from the fact that I put the bison on several other dishes, I thought the meat was tasty. All the ingredients came together beautifully, and my favorite part was the homemade corn nuts, which were a crunchy treat that I would have been happy just to snack on.

Drew made Wojape, which is essentially your choice of berries cooked with water until it becomes a thick mixture. Tracey strained hers, whereas Drew’s was chunkier. His also seemed tangier, which could have been due to the berries he chose to use, or how much he sweetened (the recipe just said to sweeten with honey or maple syrup as desired).

Drew also made Rabbit Braised with Apples and Mint. I adore rabbit, and thus am constantly on the lookout for opportunities to eat it, so I was thrilled to hear Drew would be making this dish. I’m happy to report it lived up to my expectations. Drew said he would just as easily have put the yummy savory sweet sauce on chicken, but I loved the tender delicate rabbit meat.

Drew was the overachiever of the party, making Hazelnut Maple Sorbet as his third dish. He bemoaned the work involved in skinning all the hazelnuts, but I was delighted at the results of his efforts. The sorbet was my favorite dish of the night – very nutty and just a touch sweet.

Shayna made Chocolate Pecan Bites. It’s hard to go wrong with the flavor combo of toasted pecans and chocolate. These were smooth and creamy, though the cocoa butter melted as soon as you touched it, so they wouldn’t be chocolates you could travel with. I tossed one onto my scoop of sorbet and was a happy camper.

I made Sunflower Cookies, which are simply toasted sunflower seeds ground with maple syrup and a little salt, rolled in cornmeal and baked. I ended up using only 2/3 the amount of maple syrup that the recipe called for, because otherwise the dough would have been too runny to form into cookies, so I was very concerned about how these would turn out. But the flavor was great, and the texture was chewy on the inside with good crunch on the outside. I’d make them again!