Caterer infuses Native dishes with love & spirit

When all the right ingredients come together, good things happen. Caterer Tricia Fields-Alexander only uses the best whole foods, fresh seasonings and her memories to make her business succeed.

The aptly named Spirit Soup, for example, is carefully prepared with quality ground bison or venison, fresh vegetables and deliberate thought of how the elders prepared food -what they used and the people they served at the table. Cooking is about respect and responsibility.

“Whenever I cook, I just think of all of that stuff. I think about the way they were raised. I think about the food they got and didn’t get at boarding schools. I think about where they camped,” she says. “Some people, whenever I tell that, … get all sarcastic, you know, and say something smart or rude, like ‘You think about all that when you’re just making soup? I don’t. I’m just watching TV.’”

Perhaps that difference is the reason Fields-Alexander, Pawnee and Muscogee (Creek), has made a success of her home-based business Autumn Star Catering, a full-service operation preparing Native American dishes. With the help of relatives and friends, Fields-Alexander has catered at Native art festivals, film festivals, and fundraisers.  She was even featured during the Living Earth Festival at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., where she cooked some of her signature dishes - venison Spirit Soup, grape dumplings, corn soup with beef and buffalo chili. She created another specialty, grape fry bread, at the NMAI when she had a sudden idea to combine leftover fry bread dough and her grape dumpling mixture together. The blend seemed to take everyone by pleasant surprise.

Food should bring comfort to the body and spirit, she said, which is why she, like her grandmothers and great aunts, always begin their cooking with a prayer.

A person could be experiencing hardships with family or work. It is Fields-Alexander’s hope that her soups and meat pies will nourish and heal the soul. Call it the ultimate comfort food.

“That food will bless them and bless their house or their kids … that’s what I try to think of,” she says.

It also blesses Fields-Alexander, who began catering by cooking for money at camps and stomp dances more than ten years ago to supplement her income. However, her history in food goes back even further. She began seriously cooking at 14. Raised in a traditional household, Fields-Alexander (who is also Choctaw, Chickasaw and Euchee) was taught she needed to learn to cook and care for a home and family. She happily learned to take care of others as well as herself and grew to love cooking. She quickly saw the honor in it and moved to take up a lead role among her family at gatherings and feasts.

“My grandma was getting older and my aunts couldn’t always do it … and I always felt like that was an important thing and I felt like if I was doing that I would be like the big wig, in charge, and I’m bossy anyway,” she says with a grin.

In 2002, she stationed herself at powwows and other public events to sell her food, particularly her meat pies, which are among her most requested specialties. They are also her most guarded recipe. When it comes to Pawnee meat pies, every cook has his or her own secret combination of ingredients. If you ever ask a cook for the blueprint, don’t be surprised if you’re greeted with an emphatic “No.” Fields-Alexander was on her own when it came to learning to make meat pies.

“I just experimented and tried through trial and error. My dad and everybody had to eat lots of funky meat pies,” she says. “You know, they were good, but they weren’t the greatest. They might have been greasy or something, but nobody ever complained.”

Over time, she perfected her own pastry crust folded around a perfectly seasoned beef filling. She’s not sharing her recipe either and says she has even lost a few friends because of that.

“I worked hard for it. It’s not that I’m trying to be mean, but to me it’s more special. I want my kids to be able to tell. And they can tell a difference now - if it’s my meat pies or somebody else,” she says.

Today, Fields-Alexander is known for making food that is not only delicious but healthier, too. She changed the way she cooked for the sake of her health and her family’s health. Diabetes also forced her to consider why she cooks.

“I’m diabetic and I almost died last year,” she says. She was diagnosed with Type II diabetes in 2011, but because she didn’t feel bad or different, she neglected to take medication and make changes to her diet and lifestyle. That ended when her blood sugar shot up so high she was placed in the hospital for most of a week.

“It caught up to me, and I could literally feel myself withering away,” she says. “… It was just stubbornness and bad habits, and I realized later, even depression, probably.”

In the vein of what has come to be known as traditional Native American foods, she strives to locally source many ingredients for freshness and quality, uses foods indigenous to the land and makes modifications of old recipes. She also controls the portion sizes of her meals: Fry bread is smaller and not so dense, servings of soups and dishes are no longer massive and she avoids using lard, shortening and salt.

“I show my love for other people through food. If it’s somebody’s birthday I’m going to go all out,” she says.

For Fields-Alexander, there’s no better compliment than when someone empties a bowl of stew or cleans a plate of her special posole. Just knowing her food nourishes her family, her guests and her customers inside and out is enough. And that’s a blessing in itself.

 


Tricia Fields-Alexander stirs up a pot of her special ‘Spirit Soup’ in her ahome kitchen.
PHOTO BY KAREN SHADE | NATIVE TIMES