It is sold at the Bashas' grocery stores here and is cotton-bagged flour frequently used by Navajos, produced and packaged by the Cortez Milling Co., out of Cortez, Colorado.
Here's a clip from the Bashas' website about it's stores specific to the reservations here:
"Dine Markets, The Bashas' Dine Markets are located on Native American reservations throughout Arizona. They specialize in the needs of Navajo, Apache and Tohono O' odam customers with products such as Blue Bird flour for fry bread, mutton and wool. Signs in the store are in the native language."
According to the Food Museum (who knew there was one), Blue Bird Flour is "a brand begun in 1920 and still dominating in the 21st century. Blue Bird seems to be the only flour traditionally used by Navajos to make fry bread." The blog from the Food Museum site also notes that "Cortez Milling says it may be the last mill putting flour in cotton bags, used by generations of natives to make purses, clothes, even diapers." You can see from the photo that it's a pretty cool looking bag, and I have seen various homemade purses made out of the bags being sold at a local market. I also found some websites selling the bags as antiques (maybe they are, but they look the same as the ones still sold in stores). In fact, I've thought about buying the $5.99 flour just for the bag, but I'm not sure what I would do with the 20 lbs of flour inside of it!
Now that I'm talking about the bag, I just remembered another thing about it. Many of you might remember my story about how last summer shortly after we moved here, I participated in (mostly observed) the slaughter and butchering of a sheep for a feast. I remember that the woman leading and teaching about the process was using the cotton from the flour bags during it, for laying out and covering the meat, etc.
As a side note, a Google search about the flour turned up a somewhat unrelated article from the Navajo Times about a Navajo guy who's a Cage Fighter in the Gladiator Challenge! He delivers Blue Bird flour for Cortez Milling. If you're really bored, you're welcome to read the article here.
3 comments:
On a trip we took in July, we passed through Cortez, CO and I purchased a bag of Blue Bird Flour. I bake a lot and this is the finest flour I have ever used. I hope I will be able to order this when I run out.
Z of Santa Fe, NM
I always like to go to the grocery when I work someplace new since it really tells you a lot about people, their diets, their habits. I noticed this flour during a visit to Basha's in an Apache area recently. I guessed it was for fry bread, but wanted to learn more so just went online to check it out. What a great story. I'm going to have to figure out how to get some home next time. Thanks for posting this info!
blue bird flour is the first run through the mill it is a coarser more whole grain than the more processed ones such as red rose or white rose or valley queen. It used to be the cheapest one but with the later health crazes it is now the most expensive. Back before the federal government and the IRS got involved local farmers brought their wheat into the mill and could either sell it or trade it for flour or germade or bran. But the IRS said no barter cause they were not getting their taxes
on the tradeing. white rose was the premium cake flour red rose the everyday flour and blue bird used fro tortillas and fry bread and pan breads ect.
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