Sign Banking Presentation Alaska Easy

Industry sign banking alaska presentation easy

maybe i don't know are you able to click forward or am i gonna click for you you're on mute yeah it looks like you're gonna have to click for me it's all right here we go we've started so welcome everyone uh to this live session talking about alaska traditional foods movement uh my name is chikon galbraith i'm the technical assistance specialist for the intertribal agriculture council up here in alaska and today as guests we have melissa kupac who's an assistant dietetic professor and a registered dietitian and senior area executive chef amy foot talk about the incredible work that they have done to integrate traditional food um into multiple programs throughout the state and just to assist in getting you know this important traditional food into the the mouths of those who need it you know we all know that food is medicine and so it's incredible the amount of work that they've done and how they've been able to navigate the different regulations and the food code to make it happen so i'm really excited to hear about all of it and to learn how it can be implemented in more communities with that i'm going to just turn it right over to the presenters today thank you all for joining us thank you t-con and again we are very honored to present to all of you today again my name is melissa clue patch and i am assis an assistant professor in the dietetics and nutrition department at the university of alaska anchorage and uh prior i've only been there a couple of years so prior to this i was a regional healthcare dietitian for nanomanagement services so i got to support all of the food service contracts specifically in healthcare ranging all over the state and even supported the san carlos apache tribe as they moved to take over their own health care so i will let amy introduce herself as well before we get started hi i am amy foote and i am the executive chef on the alaska native tribal health consortium campus and um i've been here almost six years and spent a lot of my time in focus helping start a traditional foods program here and and working with melissa and other places to try to really get the movement going in the state so excited to tell you about our program so welcome to the alaska traditional foods movement now i wish we could all i could have all of you come to alaska to visit us and share our beautiful state but since i'm not we're not able to do that i wanted to give you a little bit of background about alaska if you're not familiar with alaska i know many maps show alaska being next to mexico and hawaii and california trust me even with climate change our temperatures aren't quite that warm yet but alaska is actually very remote and we border canada and our neighbors to russia as well so very remote and just to show you a little more how remote we are we have a very small short road system uh going from our major hubs like anchorage and fairbanks and so you can see all of our and this does not include all of our villages uh some bigger ones but all of our villages they don't have road systems so they heavily rely on air freight to receive their goods and some of them rely on barges as well which are very few and far between and because we have some extreme weather circumstances these barges and these planes this is all weather dependent on whether or not folks receive their goods alaska does have a ferry system and unfortunately the state of alaska's budget has not been um particularly good at funding this ferry system which has really been a detriment to our coastal areas specifically southeast here and along this area coastal area here and has really increased food insecurity along those coastal areas now many villages have small grocery stores and when i say small i mean small and i'm sure many of you are familiar with what the term small grocery store really means especially when it comes to a convenience store right and so we are very limited on what products we get and because we rely on air freight and barge freight things are quite expensive for instance just this little four pack of dole fruit cups that's over six dollars a regular bottle of dressing is over eight dollars and tang and pilot bread have become staples in our villages and then i know many folks are lactose intolerant but for prospective purposes i wanted to show you that a gallon of milk is over almost ten dollars and some although we do really highly encourage breastfeeding some mamas just are unable to breastfeed and rely on formula and this regular size can of similac is over 30 just one little can right and then as you can see here gas prices and this was a few years ago so gas prices have been up and down but gas ranges from five dollars to ten dollars a gallon so even getting traditional foods can be expensive as many people rely on boats uh snow machines atvs now as opposed to dog sleds right but that's why it's so important that we encourage uh traditional foods our indigenous foods they are not only nutritious but they are related to the culture they are spiritual they are comforting right and they help improve the quality of life i love this picture right here she just looks so happy eating her foods so i want you to close your eyes and think about your foods your traditional indigenous foods i want you to think about foods that bring comfort to you so imagine tasting those foods can you smell those foods as well how are you feeling when you taste and smell these foods who are you with did you harvest these foods yourself if you did were you with someone were you with your auntie were you with your kiddos or maybe you were harvesting with your grandchildren and just enjoying the ultimate experience of being with them and now you're enjoying your foods i can smell them right now and getting on upon lunchtime it is making me hungrier and hungrier and hungrier so i wanted to put you in that nice beautiful comforting place of eating your own foods now you can open your eyes and as you think about your traditional foods i want you to think well can i have my foods in a hospital or can my kids or grandkids eat these foods in their schools you bet they can but there are some regulations and i know i get it regulations here are more regulations right but it's okay we're here to help all of you out and show you tell you how these foods can be implemented in health care long-term care schools food assistance programs we're here to help you out okay so let's talk a little bit about those regulations first well the alaska department of environmental conservation has had verbiage about traditional foods donations in their food code for a number of years and that includes donating wild game meat seafood plants and other foods donated to an institution or a non-profit program this includes schools even senior meal programs now there are some stipulations the food must be whole gutted gilled as quarters or as roasts without further processing now why wouldn't we be able to accept something that's already ground or cut into stew meat or even fillet well there's a reason there's a high risk of getting of cross contamination the more you process a product there's that greater risk of cross-contamination and potential of foodborne illness right so we want to get these products in a whole form okay now there are some prohibited foods on the alaska food code like walrus and bear meat and that's due to the risk of trichinosis and we need to make sure the foods are safe and fermented meats and seafoods are very popular in many of our villages but unfortunately we are unable to donate those as well one of the highly prized items that many people ask for on menus is seal oil and that is alaska's condiment i mean everyone dips everything into their seal oil fish crackers meat everything you can possibly imagine goes into seal oil and seal oil is what has one of the highest numbers of omega-3s out there it's amazing but there's a there's an organization who is trying to make sure that their elders in a long-term care facility are able to get seal oil and i'll talk about that a little bit later now the federal government finally caught up with alaska and included traditional food donations in the 2014 farm bill in fact that verbiage is very similar to our alaska food code and actually that verbiage did come from our alaska food code but we've had another farm bill since 2014 right the 2018 farm bill do you think that verbiage is in that farm bill nope and when i heard that it wasn't in that farm bill i was so stressed out in fact i called amy right away because i was quite irritated and yeah i want to call other people up in dc but i was told by some folks in dc not to fear that verbiage has not gone away it is actually in the u.s code title 25 chapter 18 subtitle six so it would take it would actually take an act of congress to change that verbage so it's there for quite a while because i think congress is a little busy doing other things right now so we're safe right now and the municipality of anchorage caught up as well back in uh december 2017 almost three years now and added the ability to donate wild game meat seafood and plants to food service operations in an institution and non-profit programs now not everybody likes to read the food codes and all of that verbiage right so many of us got together and created a couple of posters and a tool kit for the layers and these were sent out throughout the state on how people can donate traditional foods what they can donate what they can't donate and as processors how how we can accept those donations as well now let's start talking about some of these programs that have been going on i'm going to pass the baton over to amy to talk about the healthcare so hi everybody as melissa shared in 2014 the farm bill did clarify the use of traditional and indigenous foods and ingredients in healthcare long-term care schools and as she said senior meal programs since then at la alaska native medical center we developed a traditional foods policy a traditional foods program at the the health care center here our work here has been actually recognized by the national indian health board and the association of nutrition professionals and we started our program off by assessing what could we buy were there items that were available that would be considered traditional foods that we could purchase from our vendors already so we were able to continue at that point we were serving reindeer but we had reindeer in different ways we put wild caught alaskan salmon on there those were the easiest ones to get so those are the easiest items for us to really get traction in our program but then we had to say where else can we get our ingredients so we started by thinking out of the box we started by saying and committing to what could we harvest ourselves right sort of a grassroots effort between those of us in the kitchen and folks that wanted to share what they were harvesting then we joined the ma the moose salvage program which is also known as kind of a road kill program up here we began to develop relationships with organizations like the alaska professional hunters association i worked with a company um that harvest it's a food processor it's called fabco and they take and buy um whole fish from commercial fishermen and they process and they were taking all their salmon heads and they were just grinding them up and either putting them back in the ocean or the or they just became waste at that point it was a byproduct and so i talked them into um saving these king salmon heads for us and that we would purchase them and so we took something that was formerly a waste stream that is one of the most beautiful traditional items that we can have right and and they kept them for us so we were able to purchase them and put fish head soup on our on our patient menu so in this time we have been able to develop a pretty awesome program you'll see coming up next that 35 communities have joined our efforts throughout the state and they are the our mission at the alaska native medical center um is to make the alaskan people the healthiest peoples in the world um we now have a traditional foods cache that has four commercial freezers and we are truly able to share the bounty of the entire state as you look at our state you can see that we're pretty vast and we have villages from all over and so each one of those areas has a gif different land has different sea has different plants has different animals and different traditions and so being in anchorage it's really important that we're able to support people from all over the state so when you come to our hospital no matter where you come from we are able to offer you a taste of home now we started our program in 2014 and it has been a lot of work but i'm proud to share with you some pretty amazing stories that we have received over 1900 pounds of seal that comes from a hunter that hunts just for us in ketchikan but while he's doing that he started a youth program for traditional hunting and he uses the seal in his village once the elders take the prized parts of it then we freeze it gets shipped to anchorage and it goes on our patient menu it's really a beautiful thing we've gotten over 3 800 pounds of moose the majority of that has come from the alaska professional hunters association over nineteen hundred pounds of diet black tail deer that comes from larson excuse me larson bay lodge which is a professional hunter's uh fishing lodge hunting and fishing lodge but it's also alaska native owned our relationship with them has been just amazing in our program we got over an 800 pounds from um rainy past lodge and caribou in fact i picked up one yesterday afternoon and we are processing it currently so that number has gone up um 1300 pounds of salmon heads from port ausworth which is a a remote community that's fly in but we did that in a joint effort with the alaska department of fish and game where they study an ear bone inside the salmon head so they split the head take the bone and they do testing to continue um the fisheries for alaska so amazing stuff there the 2800 pounds of salmon bellies was a took quite a while several years in progress to get that kind of coming um the bellies had become kind of a byproduct from their fisheries so that was from the native village village of amonic 3 400 pounds of hooligan has been harvested and donated by the anthc staff and they share their stories of fun and adventure it's pretty amazing that if you haven't seen a hooligan they're pretty small and that's a lot of little hooligans and lastly the the she fish we've had two separate large donations but one is near and dear to my heart in april of 2019 nms the company i work for sponsored a trip to kotzebue for all of um the managers in the food service department and we got to go to kotzik view and we got to harvest to support our patients and so we were able to bring back and so fish that i actually caught were serving our patients now i know i shot rattled off a lot of numbers but this is pretty amazing and i'm very proud to say that this is over 10 tons of food since 2014. we've had moose here's some pictures of some bone marrow that we served with some pile pilot bread some caribou trim uh that's one of our first moose donations there that was actually uh one by one of the um that is the president of the alaska professional hunters association um herring eggs and so each time as we go throughout the seasons of things some years we get herring eggs some some years we don't um you can see in the one picture that's me holding up a branch um of herring eggs where we're blanching them off and and pulling them off to serve the patients now seal meat is a another um important part of what we have done we proudly work in collaboration with the alaska native um tribal health conservation has a culture committee and on traditional tuesdays we serve seal soup to our guests and to our visitors but this story of the photos on here is more near and dear to melissa's heart so i'm just going to let her tell this story melissa so several years ago i worked with the ice building trying to build a rapport with the alaska native harbor seal commission and in doing so i i wanted to build that relationship and work on um donations of seal to the alask native medical center now this is something that had never been done before never been done in the state of alaska and it took a little bit but in january 2016 the alaska native medical center received their first donation of seal and this gentleman here is raymond since meyer and he delivered this beautiful blessing and speech about the importance of tradition and indigenous foods and i'm tearing up right now just talking about it but we were all very tearful after his blessing and he said he had been waiting 30 years for this very donation to happen and it was just beautiful that we were able to make this happen not only for for his dreams but for the patients at the alaska native medical center so wild alaskan king salmon as you can see they're pretty amazing beautiful huge fish that was a really beautiful donation that we got fiddlehead ferns and beach asparagus um are other items that can be harvested but also procured and another really um i guess fun thing that i'd like to share is that in the past few years we've worked as a team and created this outdoor courtyard garden so it's a healing um it's an edible healing traditional plant garden we even have a piece of tundra that we um harvested and brought brought in from gnome and so we actually have the tundra here in anchorage so the garden was featured by rhonda mcbride on frontiers and on alaska insight so now that we've figured out how to get all these things right now we have to figure out how to serve the menu of traditional foods so at the alaska native medical center since 2015 we have increased our patient offerings from 33 percent to 66 percent we only serve wild caught alaskan salmon our goal is to only use native fisheries we meet with elders we meet with patients and staff to learn traditional recipes then we have to make them into healthy and safe industrial health care recipes right with safe procedures that but still hold true to tradition and so one of the things that i um have always looked at uh with the traditional foods is the ingredients are so beautiful and so my chef brain wants to go on these different um tangents and mix them together but then looking for the healing aspect and really holding to true to tradition the sustainability and food insecurity in alaska is a real reality right a barge is two weeks away so we have built relationships with our local vendors our distributors our processors our farmers right so that we are keeping the local community alive and truly keeping alaska natives being nourished by food from their own land now caring during covid has been um it's become more apparent during this whole process that because the gatherings are limited that this connection to our to our food and that spiritual aspect um it needs to be more frequent and more often and so in doing that we celebrate holidays we uh celebrate alaska native peoples and regional events and we also um started like i said the traditional tuesdays so we serve seal soup mousse stew caribou stew um the fish heads that i told you how we got those and the salmon bellies with ro with bulk help which is also alaska native uh traditional food fishy fridays has become kind of fun so we we fry and smoke the hooligan and set up a treat on that end of things even the she fish or the salmon and then sweet treat saturday so the birch sourdough one was a was a sourdough that i had started with birch water and then we fed it throughout and then melissa and i actually went and picked um well i think it was about seven gallons of fireweed but we came back and made this beautiful jelly right now we're rendering some high bush cranberries down to make pudding so these are really important things that we do to share those traditional items so another interesting program that we started this year was we worked with the alaska pacific university spring creek farm and they're growing local and traditional items for us so dandelion greens sorrel dock we tried some stinkweed there's lots of of those items that we've been getting we also buy from tionic gardens and we work with alaska village initiatives to increase and expand our traditional offerings now i think it's melissa thank you amy and what an amazing job um amy and her team have done at a mc she has made my dreams i had worked at a mc for 12 years and she made my dreams come true to have this such a beautiful program implemented now there's another program that i wanted to brag about as well and uh as a regional in my previous life as a regional dietitian i was able to work with um search mount edgecomb hospital in sitka alaska and that's in southeast alaska in the pan and handle and i developed a traditional foods program in december 2015 and once the policy was signed by their administration chef lexi whom you see pictured here went out as soon as that was signed and harvested a deer and donated it to the food service program so that her patients could receive their traditional foods and i've provided a couple of articles in regard about uh the traditional foods program there at search mountain hospital and since then they've received venison mountain goat king salmon heads sockeye salmon beach asparagus huckleberries and even blueberries so now i think your mouths are really watering right now let's take a look at long-term care in october 2011 manila association in kotzebue alaska which is in northwestern alaska opened a an 18-bed long-term care facility called utukanat enot a place for elders now prior to this they had a senior care facility and on that menu they had all sorts of great things they had all the foods that they had grown up on but as many of you probably know when you move into a long-term care facility there are a lot more regulations and restrictions and a lot of auditors coming in and out of the facility so having those menu items was we couldn't do it right so but manila didn't want to do that to their people to their elders so they worked with a number of organizations including the state of alaska dec and state surveyors the auditors that come through the facility to determine how they can provide the foods the elders grew up on well guess what the dec and the state surveyors said let the tundra be considered as the elder's garden any kitchen with a dec permit can receive traditional game directly this was amazing news and so the sigulock was born and the sigilwook was a pre-existing building that was remodeled into a traditional foods processing facility and sid luck is an anubiac name meaning ice cellar or cold storage and it officially opened on july 7th 2015 and the first donation was 200 pounds of musk ox and that actually came from the wildlife troopers because they had found a poached musk ox and gave it to the siglock to process so this was the beginning of the traditional foods program for utu cannot ena and here we see um the this is for the a picture from the grand opening of the siglwak we have the ribbon here and some of the elder residents patiently or more impatiently awaiting the ribbon cutting and here we have inside the cigar pictures and this is cyrus harris who is in charge of manila's hunter support program and the sigiluc traditional foods processing facility and he is holding up his freshly processed musk ox and he is very proud of it and this gentleman right here heart of gold an amazing man uh just i am humbled to to know him and be friends with him now there are some food items that are not on manila's policy for instance seal now a mc as a facility has allowed seal to be a part of the menu but for whatever reason and that's okay manila has decided to not allow seal on their policy for their patients and elders however to get around this manila has a monthly potluck called the nickapec which is an inuit name for native food or real food and so seal is able to be offered at once a month to the elder residents and here i had cyrus had invited me uh and the executive chef over at uh manila the manila hospital to help him dress out a seal and i was so excited to help him out and so you can see that we are here trying to cut off the blubber from the skin which is a highly uh prized food and they eventually made it into the delicious seal oil and here we have a couple of menus from uchu cannot enact and here we have cyrus enjoying his traditional meal and telling amazing stories now manila didn't stop there they built a tundra garden they received permission to harvest some of the tundra from the land and build a garden a tundra garden for their elder residents and in addition to that they made the boxes so that elders and wheelchairs could sit next to those beautiful garden beds i think she's pretty happy sitting right there in the sunshine in front of her garden don't you think now let's take a look at our kiddos at schools many of our schools try the best that they can to offer as many traditional foods as they can within the guidelines of course and there are a lot of guidelines for the school lunch program that's for sure and in alaska we have the fish to school program where donations come through commercial fleets and go directly to commercial processors haynes school district sitka school district bristol bay these are just some examples of school districts that participate in the fish to school program and kids in sitka are able to experience their local fish every wednesday in addition to this like amy had mentioned earlier there is a salvage program which is also known as the road kill list and the wildlife troopers and troopers can call up a school district or if you're on the list can call up and and see and ask hey you want this and a great example is haynes school district they called up haynes and they said hey we have a we have a roadkill moose would you like it heck yeah and so here you see one of the teachers carrying a quarter of uh a lego moose getting ready to process it and it was an educational experience because they had the students help out you know looking at the anatomy and then eating their yummy traditional food when we look at food assistance programs the food bank of alaska has done a great job and has created a program called help meet the need and they welcome gifts of moose caribou deer and sheep meat as well as salmon and halibut and have that processed and are able to give that to their alaska native folks in need now this year i received the grant a federal grant to help create a traditional foods program for beans cafe and beans cafe is a local cafe in anchorage that helps the needy not just the homeless but it helps those feed those in need and over half of the people served at beans cafe are alaska native many of whom are elders and the cafe they don't have an operating budget so they heavily rely on food donations and as amy said it takes a lot of hard work and it's taken a lot of time for them to build their traditional foods program so we are working on the traditional foods program at beans cafe they've received fish donations as well as bird donations so it's very exciting we're hoping to get some bigger proteins though like moose and caribou in the near future we also want to include the department of corrections because the inmates need healing as well and a great example is the yukon kuskokwim correctional center out in bethel in western alaska during fishing season fish are donated to the correctional center and this helps minimize food costs as well as provide traditional foods to the inmates now we're going to circle back around to seal oil alaska's condiment as i said before this is a prohibited food item according to the alaska food code and many folks really want this on their menus well unfortunately it poses a safety risk due to the potential of botulism we have had some outbreaks because of seal oil and alaska has the highest rate of botulism in the united states well that hasn't deterred the manila association because they have worked with a number of researchers some local like mr uh dr brian himmelblum and chris cenado in kodiak and then also out in wisconsin they found a specialist a botulism special specialist dr eric johnson and they have been studying the seal oil for a number of years trying to figure out how they can safely provide seal oil to the u2 cannot elder residents they are very very close now do you think the state of alaska is in support of all of this because i mean it is prohibited on their food code actually i think i see some of you shaking your head no there's no way the state would accept that actually the state is all for it and very supportive of this project they want to make sure however that manila can produce safe seal oil and show policies and procedures and we call it hassop a hazard analysis critical control control point plan that this seal oil is safe to serve to the elders so once they can do that manila can have a variance so that they can serve their elders their seal oil so very very exciting i can't wait because they've been working on this for a little while now so how can you do this i'm going to let amy take it away so we talked about how we did it here at a mc but the biggest piece is really making sure that you have your organization um and your local support you know here at the hospital having the support of the municipality in our programs has been huge obviously having tribal and governmental and having those those in support on that to protect it long term so figuring out what you can buy right and then start building your policy so your policy really needs to be um vetted through you need to go through and decide um you know what what are the acceptable kind of um items that you would want um develop your policies and procedures going through there for making sure that when you're taking in foods um that that you have a hass up plan that you're making sure that um you're reducing uh the opportunity for foodborne illness right so networking with your vendors like i talked about see if you can find some some native farmers or some some local fishermen and and try to work within your communities um tell your story determine um the potential waste management so what i mean by that is as we started thinking about this and if we got in um an entire moose donation see say and and um you know maybe one of the hindquarters was shot or you know there's items in there that um maybe got too dried out or maybe it hung too long or you know maybe during the process it was um infested with some blowfly eggs because that happens during hunting right so we don't take those items and just go throw them in the dumpster because that is not um how we take care of things when we harvest them and so our policy actually has a waste management practice um where we call um we either give it back to the land so we go out and we could bury it we give it to the raptor rescue we were able to give the polar bears um a portion of seal at the zoo here so even the polar bears got some of their traditional food from our program the alaska wildlife conservation center um has also helped us um if we've had items in fact this year we had so much hooligan that was donated um that we were rendering it down and and making some hooligan oil and so we had taken some of that to um gift to them to try to make bear treats with with some of the cooked off hooligan byproduct so once you've decided all those things then then you start developing your menu and one of the things that i would say i guess for advice on this is the you know looking at at 10 tons coming through our program in five years um and then thinking back to how long it took for us to get where we are is to celebrate the little teeny successes no matter how small they are the first hearing aid donation the first sealed donation um the first trade show type booth that we had telling people about our program so one of the other really important parts of doing this and that i feel is really important is that we believe in having a teaching kitchen and so we hire alaska native and american indian as as much as possible we believe in developing them and promoting our staff to reach their goals so once they can learn these skills and they can learn about our program we want them to go back to their community we don't want this to just be a job we want to impact their lives we want to imp ct the communities and we want to impact the futures in a positive way so there are a lot of resources out there and the state of alaska has developed a traditional traditional foods website for us the alaska native tribal health consortium cancer program developed an amazing traditional food guide which i actually use as one of my textbooks in my survey of alaska native nutrition class and then there's an activity book based on that traditional food guide and another book that i use as a textbook is kakemi which comes from the illusion privilege islands associate association beautiful beautiful traditional food guides and then store outside your door was developed by the alaska native tribal health consortium and they have a youtube channel and have at least 30 webisodes talking about traditional foods from all around the state so i highly recommend you take a look at those because these they are beautiful videos in fact chef amy is in the herring egg video here are some more resources that we use these in particular are from southeast alaska and the diet alaska dietary survey i actually used as part of my master's thesis and then the inuit circumpolar council has amazing resources and have done a lot of work in terms of food security and food sovereignty and then some national resources as well for instance from the cdc and then for food safety for first nations people of canada but the most important resources are our elders they have the stories they have the knowledge to share we need to listen to those stories so we can continue the culture and continue encouraging these nutritious comforting traditional foods and in addition to that amy and i would like to dedicate this presentation in loving memory of bertha to bertha foster and this is bertha right here smiling and laughing away she was one of our very special patients who recently passed away we have a number of organizations supporting this movement and to end our presentation we want to quote frank huna frank wright from huna happiness is healing elders need to taste the food they've grown up on so they can feel good about themselves again it's a healing thing and again this is dedicated to miss bertha who was one of our very special patients eating one of our first donations of herring eggs and enjoying and healing and impr and her quality of life was improved right then and there so please let food be thy medicine and let medicine be thy food thank you thank you my goodness that is so amazing you two are so amazing it was so lovely to hear about so many programs that have integrated traditional foods and just to think that you know from the young ones in school to our elders to those who are sick and need the healing qualities of the traditional foods and those in need who might not have access financially and that it's happening like in this holistic way across the state it's it's an inspiring story to hear and i'm so grateful for both of you being here to share it today um it's such a wealth of knowledge and such an incredible story thank you again you're welcome uh we also wanted to just make sure everybody had our information and and melissa and i um really enjoy seeing other programs flourish and so you know feel free to reach out to us if i can help you with policy or food safety or hasset plans or um you know working with within the state um i'm very open to to help other programs i think the more um of these programs that we can see uh throughout the state as well as in you know the earth 48 throughout the united states the healing can happen and and we we want to be a part of that awesome yeah i love the idea of you know the tundra being designated as a garden by the dec like that that's radical it's decolonizing our way of thinking about what a garden can be and what a menu can look like and so it's just so great um i'm curious if you have if you could render it all down into one piece of advice for those who are curious about starting this journey you know do either of you have kind of a line of wisdom that you could share i think we would both say don't give up you know brave step on it out and and try something even if it's something small and don't give up and like amy said earlier those small successes mean so much setting those small goals help you have all those small successes to achieve that that bigger goal that you want to achieve later on and be patient with yourself be patient with everything with the program and it'll come together because i've really demonstrated that it does it's amazing a question for you amy foot i'm curious as you're developing the recipes if you drew inspiration from traditional methods of preparation or can you share a little bit about the process of developing the recipes and integrating them into the menu a little bit more sure so when we're um looking at something on our patient menu um we have to obviously look at the processing piece um and and making sure as we're taking things in a lot of times um sorry when i first initially started um i um needed to make sure that i could kind of stretch it because we have so many patients here and so initially um i would you would i would use a lot of ground items so if i would get it then we would butcher it and then we would grind it so the meat would just stretch farther in a stew or in a soup that way so i would look at it from that standpoint on how we could do that the south central foundation has a the largest gathering of alaska native elders every day and so obviously pre covet i had the opportunity to spend more time with them and listen to their stories again my staff is has been a a great resource as well um because they grew up on on traditional foods um and then we have to look at the the dietetic piece and so working with our dietitians you know you'll find a seal suit made in many different ways and moose soup made in many different ways and so we have to look at trying to to meet all of the diets and so if someone's on a restricted diet or a restricted texture or if they can't have salt or you know those items and so um looking at those and then going back to just the traditional method and so sometimes you'll see a recipe for say like moose stew and it's got rice and it's got potatoes and it's got a macaroni noodle which are all that's like carbs carbs carbs carbs carbs and so we we have to look at those um and and see which one of those is gonna um be allowed by the majority of the diets and so then we look at making those on that and even the seal soup we were making broths so that people that were on a clear liquid diet or that that weren't um allowed to have you know anything that they could chew could still participate in the program and so um you know it really takes kind of looking at all the different uh challenges and and trying to make it um fit everyone's needs that's fantastic again a holistic approach to getting the traditional foods and into people's bellies very inspiring and you guys have a tool kit right can you share a little bit about that and if people want to get access to um that toolkit is that correct yeah the um so a number of organizations got together and developed this little mini tool kit and a couple of posters to help folks understand the the food code a little bit more a little easier because even i when i try to read the food code it's like [Music] what what do they mean and so sometimes i need help from my um my friend who works for the dec or our friend who works for the dec loren de latka and she is more than happy to help decipher some of that furbish and so um yes i believe and i'm not sure how it can get shared but i think i shared the two posters and the toolkit with utcon so that you can share with this amazing group of folks as as well and it's also on our um dec traditional foods website too awesome yes we'll share the link to the dec traditional foods website and we will get those resources posted to our website at iec as well and onto the facebook page just so everyone has access to it and and you both said that you're open to receive inquiries or to support uh efforts in other communities if people are looking for that support absolutely fantastic well i just can't thank you both enough for being here today and sharing your knowledge and sharing your story and just really really being a big inspiration to me and i hope to others um it looks like we have another question that came in how are the recipes and traditional recipes received by the younger generation well i can share a pretty awesome story about that so um we were serving um this is pre-covered too but we served patients room to room when we were serving seal soup and we came into this room and there's this guy in there and he was um he was probably in his 20s 1920 and um offered some some seal soup and he had his burger and his other stuff there and he was like okay yeah i'll try it you know so he left him his soup and and went down and as we serve we start on a floor and then we go down an elevator we kind of work our way down the hospital like that and so we had gotten down um i think we had gone through almost two floors at that point and his two buddies came chasing down the hallway and they said hey hey hey we need some more of that soup we need some more of that seal soup he loves it so um not everybody has that response but that was one that was like a win where we had um were able to have someone you know from a younger generation really accept it and not just accept it but love it and and send his buddies to chase us down to find it so it really just it really just depends the eskimo ice cream that we have um on our patient menu um seems to be something that the kiddos can kind of pout a little bit easier are interested in you'd be surprised though it really is whether you've been fed it before or not and so we do have pediatric kids that are asking for um the fish soup of course you know they want french fries and pizza and chicken strips and things like that too so you know you have to kind of choose your battles and try to get those those tastes in but it really it's really dependent and i think also with folks that are our age as well so i remember serving uh seal stew to a couple of uh gentlemen and uh the first gentleman he was he was all about it and i said well did you want some more he goes oh no that's okay one serving's fine i haven't had this since i was a kid and then i went to to his um uh neighbor and i said would you like some seals too he goes oh no i'm an urban native i didn't grow up on that and uh the the um his neighbor the one that had declined a second portion goes actually can i have his portion this is really good so it's just really sweet and um it's very heartwarming also not only is it healing for for our patients but when we're serving these foods it's healing for us as well because it is so heartwarming to see the change in demeanor of our patients it's like they're no longer we know they're sick but they're no longer sick anymore because they've tasted their foods you can see that they're healing right there it's just just amazing awesome to see that transformation in a person the way that they can just light up when they connect to their culture through food the power of food you know just exemplified in those moments so i think we're at our hour and i really appreciate both of you being here again and just got to do one final plug if you enjoyed this presentation please consider joining iac at our annual conference and in december and check join our mailing list for more information for when the registration opens for that thank you both again for being here today and sharing so that will wrap it up thank you all thank you everyone be well