Cabrillo course spotlights native edible plants with Indigenous feast and film showcase

On a warm, sunny February morning, a dozen Cabrillo College students in the Edible Landscaping class snacked on cookies made with black oak acorn flour and bison tallow before they walked to the greenhouse to transplant clusters of miner’s lettuce sprouts. 

In floral overalls and rainbow-streaked hair, instructor Mimi Schilling led the class with a contagious enthusiasm. She passed out information on acorn harvesting and explained how a clean stem cut contributed to the successful propagation of a slim stem of pineapple sage, its threadlike roots dangling in a tube of water. 

When Schilling took over the longstanding class last fall, she decided to emphasize the “edible” in Edible Landscaping and focus on plants native to the Central Coast. Her decision stemmed from experiencing recent climate disasters in the area, including the CZU Lightning Complex fire in 2020 and the severe winter storms in early 2023. 

“We’re seeing first hand what climate change does to our community,” said Schilling. “Can we stop climate change with plants? No, but we can be mindful when we’re planting and planning our home spaces in order to do the most community good by planting California natives that are flexible, adaptable and use fewer resources.”

The group in the spring semester non-credit class is working toward a goal beyond the greenhouse. On April 29, Central Coast-based Indigenous chef Christina Lonewolf will use this miner’s lettuce, an indigenous plant that has a color, taste and texture similar to spinach, in a five-course dinner made with ingredients native to the Central Coast. The meal, which will include smoked mussels with wild herb salsa verde and blue corn cookies, is open to the public for $55 per plate. It will be served during the final evening of the class’s four-month-long free film showcase on food justice after a screening of the film “Gather,” a documentary that sheds light on the revitalization of Indigenous food systems. There is no cost to attend the film screening. 

Schilling launched the monthly film showcase with themes on Indigenous food sovereignty, Black equity, sustainability, permaculture and community life in order to deepen class community and student engagement, and to bring field trip-like experiences into the classroom. Films are shown at the Horticulture Department on the last Tuesday of each month, and culminate in the finale dinner in April with Lonewolf. 

On Feb. 25, Lonewolf visited the class to discuss how she uses native ingredients in her cooking, and to check on the seedlings. 

After a short demonstration in the classroom, the class moved outside, where Lonewolf described how she harvested and processed acorns into flour. The black oak acorn flour, with its hazelnut-like profile, is her favorite to use in tortillas, cookies, even paradelle pasta. She’s also experimenting with acorn flour frybread, a dish created by Indigenous peoples after colonization.

Lonewolf’s modern approach to Indigenous foods stems from the reality that almost all of the historic record has been lost due to colonization and the fact that most of Indigenous peoples’ histories were oral. “The French have cookbooks from hundreds of years ago,” she said, “but we don’t have that.”

Instead, Lonewolf focuses on incorporating native ingredients in familiar ways. “I’m re-Americanizing Indigenous foods to make them more approachable by using French, Japanese, Mexican and Italian cooking techniques,” she said. “I want it to be recognized at the table.” She pointed out that many beloved American foods are already made with ingredients native to the Americas, like tomatoes, chilis, corn and chocolate.

Originally from Salinas, Lonewolf is the daughter of migrant farmerworkers from Mexico and southern Texas. Ten years ago, while working in her early 20s as a bartender in Pebble Beach, she couldn’t keep her eyes off the pizza station. She pestered the sous-chef with cooking questions, while experimenting in her own kitchen on her days off. The sous-chef took note of her enthusiasm and curiosity, and helped her land a chef’s apprenticeship with chef John Cox at Sierra Mar, the restaurant at Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur. 

Cox made his mark at Sierra Mar by drawing heavily from ingredients native to the Big Sur area, such as foraged wildflowers and grasses, Monterey Bay spot prawns and abalone, local seaweed and even insects. Under his wing, Lonewolf learned how to process acorns, a staple food source for many Indigenous people in California, and spent her days off hiking in the Big Sur mountains and returning with different wild edible plants. 

“I collected acorns as a kid and just played with them. I didn’t really understand what the nutritional value was, and how much of a staple it was for the Indigenous people here in this area,” said Lonewolf. “It really unlocked things in my mind.” 

After leaving Sierra Mar in 2016, she helped open Cella Restaurant + Bar and Stokes Adobe in Monterey and has held several successful pop-ups in the Monterey area. She was the executive chef for the Esselen Tribe of Monterey County’s harvest festival in 2022 and 2023, and recently submitted five recipes with the InterTribal Buffalo Council representing the Central Coast as an Indigenous chef. Currently, she’s a part-time private chef and single parent to her 2-year-old son. 

Lonewolf, who was born with the last name Martinez, is still discovering her own Indigenous heritage. The family’s native roots weren’t talked about when she was younger, she said, and it wasn’t until the pandemic that she decided to ask pointed questions about her heritage. From her paternal grandmother, who is still living, she discovered that her father’s family is from an area on the current border of Sinaloa and Sonora, Mexico, and are Yaqui and Apache. 

She knows that mother’s side of the family is Comanche and Shoshone, but she hit a dead end when she discovered that her maternal grandfather had changed his last name for an unknown reason when he came to California. He died two years ago, and no one in her family knows what his original name was, which makes research extremely difficult. 

Like many people who have had their Indigenous heritage stripped away through systemic oppression, Lonewolf might never discover the truth or have an official affiliation: “That’s why I call myself Lonewolf. I know I’m Native. I know I’m Indigenous to this land, but without any tribe of my own.” Instead, she said she feels a strong connection to the Central Coast, where she lives, and has found a community with the Essalen Tribe of Monterey County. 

Indigenous food sovereignty is reestablishing a connection to the land, said Schilling. She hopes that her Edible Landscaping class will help build connections for students to understand the Native experience, colonization and how it’s connected to food sourcing and climate justice. “I’m not Indigenous,” she said, “but I can give some information about reestablishing plants in your yard, and that’s the focus for me.” 

Lonewolf also hopes the students and guests at the dinner in April will walk away from the experience with a greater understanding of the nutritious foods growing in their own communities. “If that’s something I could do for a group of people in a class, that’s 12 extra souls that are mindful of that,” she said. “And they can keep that knowledge going by telling family and friends, like, dude, that’s miner’s lettuce. We can actually eat that.”

Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.