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Tahlequah, OK - With all of the fast food restaurants and convenience food available in today’s society, traditional cooking is becoming a lost art. In an attempt to revive this diminishing art Kathy VanBuskirk and Lucinda Flynn will teach a Cherokee cooking/herb class on Saturday, June 29 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Cherokee Heritage Center.

"Grandma always said we will go back to hard times and people won’t know how to live off of the land", said VanBuskirk. "This is a simple way we can live off of the land." In this class, students will learn traditional Cherokee recipes and how to gather edible plants from instructors who have had years of experience.

"The recipes are what we had. We grew up on them", said VanBuskirk. "Everything that we are teaching, we have eaten." Some of the recipes will include bean bread, bean dumplings and kanuchi, an old traditional food made out of hickory nuts. "The Cherokees used kanuchi balls during famine times,” said VanBuskirk. "It makes a soup or a broth filled with so much protein that they could live off of it for weeks or months at a time."

In addition to the traditional recipes, VanBuskirk says she will teach students how to make fry bread because so many people have asked for it. "Fry bread isn’t that traditional, but everyone wants to know how to make it", said VanBuskirk. "The Cherokees actually used corn meal and made fried mush. Fry bread didn’t come along until later."

As with most classes offered at the Cherokee Heritage Center, this class will be a hands-on class for the students. "We are going to cook about five different dishes", said VanBuskirk. "I am going to show the students how to do it and let them cook. That way they will get the feel of it and know exactly what to do."

The cost of this class is $30 which includes all supplies. For more information, call the Cherokee Heritage Center, phone: 918-456-6007 or toll free, 888-999-6007 and visit the website.