It’s curious to me how such a wide-spread food source could be suppressed to the point that a life-long nature nerd like myself had never heard of it until this last spring. I guess that’s the magic of colonialism plus capitalism – if it can’t be made into a monoculture that can be harvested by machine it doesn’t exist.

I’ve just started my proper exploration of pre-colonial food plants native to my home area on the east coast of the Salish Sea, and my first surprise is Camissia quamash – common Camas. It is a slightly sweet tuber with a wide natural range (https://www.wnps.org/native-plant-directory/67-camassia-quamash). I was able to buy some Camas plants from a local nursery (https://gonativesnursery.com/).

I found this video showing one indigenous method of cooking the bulb; the Spokane nation is on the other side of the Cascades from me but it’s the first step-by-step I’ve found.

I only had two bulbs to work with so instead of doing a proper pit cook I used an Instapot on low. I layered my camas bulbs between sword fern, vine maple, and big leaf maple from my back yard.

After steaming for 12 hours the bulbs were soft and pastey. They had a mildly sweet flavor that would go well with a wide variety of other flavors.