Black History Month For Foodies Series: Vertamae Smart Grosvenor

Fried chicken recipes below

Today's post provides a great conclusion to my black history month series and segue to my women's history month series starting tomorrow. Born 1938 in Hampton County, South Carolina, Vertamae Smart Grosvenor is a culinary writer, activist, and, anthropologist. From low country South Carolina, she is perhaps best known for her book Vibration Cooking, also known as The Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl which was first published in 1970 but an updated edition has recently been releasedhttp://www.ugapress.org/index.php/books/vibration_cooking/. The book is part memoir, part culinary anthropology, part cookbook. I talk about her in my book Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14638-8/hog-and-hominy. In the 1960s she lived in Harlem where she, among other activities, cooked “neck bones, chicken feet stew, biscuits, greens, and grits” and “batches of fried chicken and potato salad” for Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) fundraisers. She and her SNCC colleagues served the food at parties where supporters enjoyed her delicious low country food and the soulful music of James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gay, and other noted artist of that era. Like Montgomery’s Georgia Gilmore http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/2011/01/martin-luther-king-jr-series-part-4, and the Paschal brothers of Atlanta http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/2011/02/black-history-month-for-foodies-series_23.html, Grosvenor played an important part in feeding the civil rights revolution of the 1960s. Here are fried chicken recipes that remind me of culinary contribution to civil rights revolution.

Fried chicken recipe: http://americanfood.about.com/od/chickenrecipes/ss/Fried-Chicken-Recipe.htm

Grill fried chicken: http://www.food-fire.com/index.php/2010/12/23/grill-fried-chicken-2/

Video butter milk fried chicken recipe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxEhH6MPH28

Video vegan fried chicken recipe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te6Cv7RTazU

Black History Month For Foodies Series: Solomon Northrop

Solomon Northrop (1808 –circa 1863) was an African American born free in New York’s Hudson Valley. He played the fiddle and often booked parties where he played for pay and thus made extra income. Two white men, Merrill Brown and Abram Hamilton, posing as the representative of a traveling circus approached him at one of his musical outings and engaged him to play for a circus in Washington, D. C. in 1841. Northrop agreed. He traveled to New York City to obtain his freedmen papers then headed to Washington, D.C. which was one of the nation’s largest slave markets. Northrop, who was married with children, thought that the engagement would be short so he did not bother his wife with the details of his trip. Shortly after he checked into his Washington hotel, he met with Brown and Hamilton for a drink. The two men drugged him, stole his free papers, and sold him at a DC auction into slavery in Louisiana. Louisiana was one of the those slave states that masters in the upper south would use as leverage to keep rebellious slaves in line, warning them that if they did not obey either they or a loved one would be sold “down south” where one’s life as a slave proved much more difficult then say in Maryland or Virginia. Northrop would remain enslaved in Louisiana from 1841 to 1953 until he was finally he was able to get a message to a white patron in New York who successfully gained his manumission. After gaining is freedom, Northrop returned to the north where became a noted speaker on the anti-slavery speaking circuit. He would go on to document his ordeal in a published autobiography titled, Twelve Years A Slave by Solomon Northrop. The book undermined the argument of slavocrats who insisted that masters treated their slaves better than bosses treated wage workers in the free states. The book also provides an example of the agency of blacks folk both in and out of slavery to gain their freedom during the antebellum period. I used the book to gain valuable insights into southern foodways which I've talked about in earlier post.

Solomon Northrop on southern foodways: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/2010/12/christmas-foodway-series-culinary.html

Black History Month For Foodies Series: Rethinking Black History

Sweet potato pie, this in many other recipes below

I today I want to want rethink the concept of Black history month through the lens of food. In A Pinch of Soul in Book Form, published in 1969, Pearl Bowser uses the word our and us throughout her description of soul food or African American cuisine in its variation regional forms. I interpret her choice of words to signify her belief that soul food is the intellectual property of southern-born African Americans. It “represents a legacy of good eating bequeathed to us by our parents and grandparents,” who as slaves and later as sharecroppers “broke their backs but not their spirits.” According to Bowser, “Soul food is also food rich in taste. What is bland becomes exciting by the addition of our spices—garlic, pepper, bay leaf—and the other condiments which are always on the table along with the salt and pepper—hot pepper sauce, either from the West Indies or Louisiana, and vinegar to go on many meats and vegetables.” But where does this southern based definition of black culture and cuisine as a marker of cultural authenticity place those of us with roots in Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, and Nicaragua for example? My book Hog and Hominy http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14638-8/hog-and-hominy/tableOfContents and this subsequent blog takes a more inclusive diasporic approach to the development of black urban food markers of identity that argues that jerked chicken, tamales, empanadas, patties, coconut bread, feijoada, mofungo, mangu, and fried plantains were just as much a part of soul food as collards, Hoppin John, fried chicken, corn bread, and sweet potato pie.

Feijoada recipe: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/2010/07/july-soul-food-in-nineteenth-century.html

Mofungo recipes: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=mofongo

Empanada recipes: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=empanada

Hoppin John recipe: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/2010/12/watch-night-series-part-2-food.html

Sweet potato pie recipe: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/2010/11/thanksgiving-day-series-part-3-pie.html

Black History Month For Foodies Series: James Brown

Cabbage and sweet potato coleslaw, recipes for coleslaw and kimchi below (Photo from jarvisfarm.com)

Born and raised in Augusta, Georgia, singer, songwriter, and choreographer James Brown is considered the undisputed Godfather of soul. In 1969 Brown entered a soul food restaurant franchising business called “Gold Platter.” At the time, Brown earned 4.5 million a year from his own production company, record label, three radio stations, apartment buildings, and share in a securities firm, According to a 1969 Jet magazine article, “Soul Brother No. 1” went into business with “a group of white Georgia businessmen in Macon.” Brown insisted that “providing investment and job opportunities for members of minority races,” represented one of his central goals. Like Barry Gordy’s Motown Records, Brown wanted his restaurants to have crossover appeal. In the late 1960s, Brown represented one of a number of African American celebs who used their brand names to launch restaurant franchises. Brown’s Gold Platter menu featured fried chicken, French fries, coleslaw, cornbread, catfish with hush puppies, and hamburgers. For unknown reasons, Brown’s soul food chain never made it past the experimental phase which two locations in Macon. Here is a good coleslaw and kimchi recipes. Both are made from cabbage and my southern wife and northern raised daughter love kimchi. Both make great side dishes for fried chicken catfish, and or hamburgers. Below also find links to stories I’ve done on other African American celebs that started restaurants.

Cabbage and Sweet potato coleslaw: http://jarvisfarm.com/cabbage-and-sweet-potato-slaw/

Coleslaw recipes: http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/food/cookout-perfect-coleslaw-recipes-221005

Zucchini Coleslaw: http://www.healthyfoodforliving.com/?p=9193

Kimchi recipe: http://www.kimchibulgogi.com/pogi-baechu-napa-kimchi/

Muhammad Ali: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/2010/02/muhammad-alis-champburger-neo-soul-food.html
Mahalia Jackson: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/2010/02/black-power-and-black-restaurant.html

Black History Month For Foodies Series: Paschal’s Restaurant

Photo of Paschal’s old location in South West Atlanta, recipes below

After the success of Montgomery Improvement Association and the end of the Jim Crow laws on buses in Montgomery, Alabama in 1956, Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) returned to Atlanta, Georgia. There he organized the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957 and he served as the associated pastor of his father’s church. Paschal’s served as a popular meeting place for black activists and politicians. MLK and his SCLC lieutenants, Maynard Jackson, and Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee’s (SNCC) Julian Bond, who all attended Morehouse, held strategy meetings over Paschal’s famed fried chicken along with collard greens, corn bread, mac and cheese and sweet potato pie, or a plate of eggs, grits, and a cup of coffee. Brothers James and Robert Paschal first opened a lunch counter sandwich shop on Hunter Street in Atlanta in 1947. Overtime the brothers moved to a location adjacent to the AUC and expanded their business to include a motel, a night club on the famous Chitin Circuit, and a white table cloth restaurant. According to Marcellas C. D. Barksdale, who attended Morehouse in the early 1960s, during segregation Paschal’s remained the first choice for a Sunday meal for “Doctor and Mrs. so and so.” In addition to formal dining, Paschal’s also had a lunch counter and grill where you could also order fried chicken, collards and corn bread in a casual setting. Back when I taught in the Morehouse College History Department (2000-2003) Paschal's moved to a new elegant location that perhaps tripled its square footage and provided space for private dining rooms. The quality of the food had not changed and perhaps it even improved. Below are some recipes reminiscent of Paschal’s culinary legacy.

Corn bread recipes: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/2010/11/thanksgiving-day-series-corn-bread-and.html

Mac and cheese recipes: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Southern-Macaroni-and-Cheese/MoreRecipesLikeThis.aspx

Black History Month For Foodies Series: Alvenia Fulton

Dr. Alvenia Fulton behind the counter of her business on 53^rd Street on the south side of Chicago. Fulton was a juicing advocate; notice the juicer in front of her (photo circa 1979) 

Known as the "Queen of Nutrition," in 1958 Dr. Alvenia Fulton (1893 to 1999) started Fultonia Health and Fasting Institute on Chicago’s South Side. This combination health food store, restaurant, and herbal pharmacy, was a business in a rough part of the city and it was “a kind of hodgepodge” of health foods and alternative health products. Dr. Eileen Silva, a doctor of naturopathy, described the store as a “homespun kitchen that exploded all over the place.” It was not like any other health food store that you saw. I have been working for several years through my scholarship to give Dr. Fulton the credit she deserves as one of the earliest giants in the modern holistic health and nutrition movement before people like Gary Null came on the scene. When Fultonia’s started in the 1950s, it was a real oddity; it was only later that people embraced the message of natural living in the United States, especially in African-American communities where highly fattening, often fried, soul food constituted a large part of local cultural traditions. However, Fulton’s store became well-known for the sale of herb and vitamin pills, and the potions and solutions that she mixed. Fulton’s expertise also attracted a diverse clientele that included whites, black, rich, and poor, commoners and the well known. Among her “celebrity” clients who made their way to her south side store one finds Muhammad Ali, Godfrey Cambridge, singers Eartha Kitt and Roberta Flack, gospel artist Mahalia Jackson, and comedian Redd Foxx. They all came Fulton’s store to load up her herbal mixtures. Fulton also worked with both white and black professional athletes such as Chicago Bear’s Hall of Famer Gale Sayers, and NBA Hall of Famer Bill Walton. If you know someone who attended one of her many lecturers, or you are a former customer, student, or listener to her radio show please contact me via Facebook or email; I like to record your memories of Dr. Fulton as part of my ongoing research about this pioneering holistic herbalist, teacher, and cook.

Black History Month For Foodies Series: W. E. B. Dubois

Fried chicken, recipes below

People often ask me why I decided to pursue a Ph.D. in history. In part, a PBS documentary on the life and work of W. E. B. Dubois (1868-1963) I saw back in the winter of 1985, just after I graduated from Syracuse University, inspired me. Dubois life as a scholar and activist resonated with my goals and aspiration back then to make a impact with my life's work. Talk about an impact, how about Dubois’ book The Souls of Black Folk which he published in 1903 and it's still in print and used in history and African American studies courses around the world! The book is part history, part autobiography, and Dubois delves also into a bit of food writing. For example, he tells about the time when he served as teacher in a country school in rural Tennessee back when he was a student at Fisk University. Dubois graduated from this Nashville Historically Black College in 1888 in the middle of the period we historians call white redemption, when white supremacist groups like the Knights of the White Chameleon turned back many of the gains made during reconstruction (1863-1877) like the creation of colored blind state funded public schools in the South. Dubois taught at one segregated public school in a piedmont region of post-reconstruction Tennessee during a summer break from Fisk. “On Friday nights I often went home with some of the children [from the school]—sometimes to Doc Burke’s farm,” recalls Dubois. “In the tiny back kitchen I was often invited to ‘take out and help’ myself to fried chicken and wheat biscuits, ‘meat’ and corn pone, string-beans and berries.” Dubois would later go on to provide rich descriptions of food and the black church in the The Souls of Black Folk, which he argues represented “the social centre” of African-American life. He writes, “this building is the central club-house of a community of a thousand or more Negroes. . . Entertainments, suppers, and lectures are held besides the five or six regular weekly religious services.” Here are some fried chicken recipes that remind me of Dubois’s description of southern foodways at the turn of the century.

Fried chicken recipe:http://americanfood.about.com/od/chickenrecipes/ss/Fried-Chicken-Recipe.htm

Video butter milk fried chicken recipe:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxEhH6MPH28

Video vegan fried chicken recipe:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te6Cv7RTazU

NPR's Tell Me More Black History Month Appreciation of Dubois: http://www.npr.org/2011/02/09/133623714/honoring-leading-thinker-w-e-b-dubois

Black History Month For Foodies Series: National Council of Negro Women

The Black Family Dinner Quilt Cookbook (first edition 1993)

Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1955) founded The National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), a non-profit organization in 1935 during the Depression. Bethune worked principally as an educator and later she served as member of President Franklin D. Roosevelt “Black Cabinet” advising the president on issues related his African American constituency. NCNW programs focused on improving the lives and opportunities for people in the United States and Africa. For example it published under the direction of the NCNW’s Dorothy I. Height (1912-2010) http://www.npr.org/2011/02/17/133839602/dorothy-height-queen-of-black-womens-empowerment, The Black Family Dinner Quilt Cookbook (first edition 1993). Still in publication, the book is an important part of the organizations national obesity abatement initiative which provides excellent tips for cooking heart-healthy soul food which I also talk about in my book Hog and Hominy http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14638-8/hog-and-hominy. NCNW’s cook book suggests cooking and baking with margarine or liquid vegetable oils such as canola oil, safflower oil, or olive oil, instead of lard. Other instructions for heart-healthy meals include roasting, baking, broiling, grilling, and stir-frying instead of deep-fat frying. Use smoked turkey, turkey bacon, and imitation soy meat products instead of ham hocks, fatback, and bacon to season greens and other vegetables. Remove most of the skin (which is primarily fat) from poultry before cooking. Eat more fiber-rich foods such as legumes, whole grain products, fruits and vegetables, brown rice, red potatoes, and whole wheat, spelt, or spinach pasta. Avoid organ meats as much as possible. Use olive oil and vinegar and vegetable-based mayonnaise dressing instead of real mayonnaise-based dressings. Eat soy or rice milk ice cream with zero cholesterol instead of high cholesterol ice cream.

Black History Month For Foodies Series: Mahalia Jackson

Mahalia Jackson singing at the March on Washington in 1963 (photo from http://www.forensicgenealogy.info/index.html)

In the 1960s, several African-American celebrities invested in short-lived soul food restaurant franchises; gospel singer Mahalia Jackson became one of them and as a native of New Orleans she was definitely a foodie--see the link to a post I did on her at the end of this story. In the 1950s Jackson became a gospel superstar who toured internationally. According to Clarence Jones, who helped draft the famous “I Have a Dream” speech and the author of the book, Behind the Dream: The Making of the Speech that Transformed a Nation, Jackson was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK)’s favorite gospel singer. In fact it was Jackson who sang at the march on Washington before MLK gave the “I Have a Dream” speech on Aug. 28, 1963 (see footage of her performance at the event below). While MLK was delivering a written speech, Jackson who was near the podium that day, turned to him and shouted, “tell them about the dream, Martin. Tell them about the dream.” She had heard King talk his dream on a previous occasion but it was not in the speech written for on the occasion of the March on Washington. MLK acknowledged her, Clarence Jones explains, “and momentarily pauses and he pushes the text of the [original] speech aside, grabbed the podium, lean[s] back and look[s] out at those 250,000 people or more assembled, and I leaned to somebody standing next to me, I said these people don't know it but they're about ready to go to church. . . And that's when he started this extraordinary extemporaneous proration and it was mesmerizing. It was something as I think I used the word it was like he had captured lightning in a bottle.” I love that analogy!

Mahalia Jackson performing at the March on Washington http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TALcOreZi0A

Mahalia Jackson the restaurateur and a recipe: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/2010/02/black-power-and-black-restaurant.html.

Clarence Jones Interview on Fresh Air: http://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132905796/dream-speech-writer-jones-reflects-on-king-jr

Black History Month For Foodies Series: Colonial America

Tom Tom, a one pot dish, recipes below

By the eighteenth century northern colonies in first Dutch and then British North America had become increasingly dependent on enslaved African laborers. For example, between 1700 and 1774 there were about 6,800 slaves in New York; 2,800 directly from Africa and 4,000 from the Americas. With them came African retentions in music, dance, dress, and foodways. Tom Tom, described as, “a very good Pudding Composed with the Flour of Indian Corn, and boild [sic] with Flesh, fish Cayenne pepper,” and okra (an African plant), is example of a dish that one might find a vender selling at a Pinkster celebration http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/2010/06/pinkster-celebration-and-afro-dutch.html in colonial New York City and the surrounding area. Here is an interesting East Asian recipe for Tom Tom Gai (also called Tom Yum) which seems very similar to the one pot dish described above. We do know that Asians foodways began to circulate in Madagascar in the ninth century as Indonesian migrants settled there to facilitate trade between Asia and Africa. We also know that the Dutch imported slaves from Madagascar into their American colonies in the Caribbean and New York.

Traditional Tom Tom Gai recipe: http://www.indobase.com/recipes/details/tom-tom-gai.php

Vegan Tom Tom Gai recipe: http://vegsfblog.com/2010/02/11/vegetarian-thai-hot-and-sour-soup-tom-yum-gai/

Black History Month For Foodies Series: Amanda Taylor-Foster

Molasses almond toffee, recipes below (photo from http://www.homegrown.org/profiles/blogs/using-your-creative-power)

I once delivered a Black History month lectured entitled, “The Ambiguous Character of the Underground Railroad: the agency of Black People in the South and the Hudson Valley.” My central argument was that the Underground Railroad was challenging to research and explain because it was a stealth and covert operation meant to keep the conductors (people like Harriet Tubman who helped to guide enslaved folk to freedom), stationmasters (people who provided clandestine lodging and food along escape routes) and investors (people who financed railroad and steamship passage, food, and funds bribe local and state officials) totally anonymous. After some serious digging I was able to find some interesting details on several conductors, stationmasters, and investors who I talk about in the lecture based on the available documentary history I pieced together. I want to talk today about Amanda Taylor (1806-1904). Taylor was born in an unknown section of New York with free papers. She somehow ended up in Arkansas where she worked as a nurse for Arkansas’ first governor, democrat James Sevier Conway (1798-1855). Conway served as governor from 1836-1840. In Arkansas Taylor used her “free papers” to help a young fugitive slave girl escape before Taylor returned to New York in 1837. She married Henry Foster, a barber, about 1845 and eventually opened what became a popular confectionery business in Tarrytown, New York in Westchester County. Proceeds from the confectionery store along with donations from the local Dutch Reformed and Methodist churches and residents in the Tarrytowns helped establish what became Foster African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. Before the abolition of U. S. slavery, Amanda Foster and Foster AME feed and sheltered runways as a station house on the Underground Railroad. Today Foster AME, still located at 90 Wildey Street in Tarrytown, is a Nationally Registered underground railroad Station. Below are several candy recipes that seem so appropriate for this story about a woman whose confections helped feed a revolutionary movement.

Molasses almond toffee: http://www.homegrown.org/profiles/blogs/using-your-creative-power

New York Times almond candy recipes: http://www.tastebook.com/s/recipes/almond-candy?brand_id=46-New-York-Times

Cinnamon glazed almonds: http://mattmandymitch.blogspot.com/2010/11/cinnamon-glazed-almonds.html

Black History Month For Foodies Series: Malcolm X

Navy bean soup, recipes below (photo from http://belleofthekitchen.blogspot.com/)

In my book Hog and Hominy http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14638-8/hog-and-hominy, I have a chapter called food Rebels; Malcolm X fits that definition—one who opposed the traditional African American culinary traditions like eating lots of pork and other southern eating habits. Starting in 1954, Malcolm X and the members of Temple 7 in Harlem were the face of the Nation of Islam’s message about food in metropolitan New York. The only African Americans he knew of “who had any sense of being very disciplined nutritionally would probably be the Muslims,” says Harlem native Roy Miller. “I think that Malcolm X personified that publicly,” maintains Miller. On many occasions “he spoke very vigilantly about, ‘you don’t eat that pig,’ and all that sort of stuff.” In what he said and how he lived, Malcolm, says Miller, “made a lot of people conscious about what they were eating and being very careful about what you were eating.” Rudy Bradshaw, another Harlem native, had a brother who was very close to Malcolm. He said that if you went to a place to eat and ordered pork, “Malcolm would ridicule you in a joking way . . . he did that with [Harlem intellectuals] John Hendrik Clarke and Dr. Benyohagen [aka Dr. Ben].” He would remind them that the pig is the dirtiest animal on the farm and subsequently over time persuaded them and others to reform their eating traditions. In contrast to soul food restaurants, Black Muslim restaurants served beef and fish meals with brown rice, fresh vegetables, bean soup, and bean pies. Below are navy bean soup recipes that are most appropriate for this slice of black history.

Nation of Islam Navy bean soup recipe (recipe from http://www.seventhfam.com/scmhwc/ourfamily/vegetarian.htm)

Ingredients

1 pound of small navy beans
1 large onion
3-4 bay leaves ground parsley
ground peppers salt
(All of the above to taste)

Method

Soak beans overnight or quick soak by bringing beans to a boil for 2-3 minutes and soak for I hour. Soaking cuts cooking time by approximately 1/2 . Rinse the beans thoroughly, discarding all of the water used for soaking and clean the remnants of the water from the pot used. Replace beans in a full pot of clean, cool water and place on top of the stove at a medium to medium high setting. Dice or thinly slice the onion and the cloves. Add the whole bay leaves. Cook until beans are tender, then add spices, reduce heat and slow cook until the desired consistency of beans and bean stock is achieved.

Southern navy bean soup: http://belleofthekitchen.blogspot.com/2011/01/better-together-eating-tuscan-white.html

Ham and navy bean soup: http://www.foodnetwork.co.uk/recipes/ham-and-navy-bean-soup-ru347099.html

Black History Month For Foodies Series: Michael Jackson

Ahi tuna nicoise salad, recipe below (photo from http://nomlog.blogspot.com/)

Before the 1970s, black groups like the Jackson Five made their living on the “Chitlin’ Circuit,” a string of black-owned honky-tonks, nightclubs, and more elaborate theaters. The circuit weaved throughout the Southeast and Midwest, stretching from Nashville to Chicago, to the Jackson’s hometown of Gary, Indiana, and into New York. The Jacksons would have often done consecutive one-night stands, frequently more than 800 miles apart. On the road, performers often settled for sandwiches from the coloured window of segregated restaurants until they arrived at the next venue. The Chitlin’ Circuit was crucial to artists like the Jacksons because it was the only way to perform when the white media did not cover black artists. The entertainers called it the Chitlin’ Circuit because club owners sold chitlin’s and other soul food dishes out of their kitchens. The circuit went beyond small hole-in-the-wall clubs, however. Elaborate African-American-operated theaters like the Regent in Washington, D.C., the Uptown in Philadelphia, the Apollo in New York, the Fox in Detroit, and the Regal in Chicago, were big-time venues considered part of the circuit. In an interview Gladys Knight recalled seeing the Jackson Five for the first time at the Regal in Chicago and immediately calling Motown’s Barry Gordy telling him he had to audition them. In short, theatres on the circuit were particularly important to black artists like Michael Jackson and the Jackson Five who were not given the opportunity to play in mainstream venues because of racist whites in the entertainment business. Because the Jacksons made it look so easy, most of us forgot just how hard it was for Michael Jackson and the Jackson Five when they started so many decades ago. Came a across a video recipe in which Michael’s personal chief shares one of MJ’s favorite recipes. As you see it’s a far distance from the food of the Chitlin’ Circuit!

Organic seared Ahi tuna nicoise salad: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/32207093/ns/today-foodwine/

Black History Month For Foodies Series: Muhammad Ali

Champburger, burger recipes below (Photo from http://www.mixingbowl.com/home/view.castle)

As a Member of the Nation of Islam, a black pacifist religious organization, Muhammad Ali refused to be drafted into the U. S. army during the Vietnam War. As he told one reporter, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Congs. No Viet Cong ever called me Nigger.” His anti-war position resulted in Federal authorities sentenced him to five years imprisonment, and a fine of $1, 00,000 (He appealed the decision consequently keeping out of jail) and forced him to surrender his passport thus preventing him from earning money fighting abroad. Furthermore the World Boxing Association took his title and boxing license so he could not fight in the United States. To support his family, Ali among other activities, signed a restaurant franchise deal in 1968 that launched a chain of black-owned-and-operated “Champburger Palaces” in black neighborhoods. Champburger menus included Champburgers, all beef “hot dogs, along with fried chicken, fried and boiled fish and Mr. Champ soft drinks.

Best burger recipes: http://www.culinary.net/articlesfeatures/FeatureDetail.aspx?ID=1455

Best veggie burger recipes: http://www.tamaraduker.com/2010/01/resolved-the-best-homemade-veggie-burger/

Portobello mushroom burger recipe: http://www.veggienumnum.com/2010/06/portobello-mushroom-burger-w-homemade-fries/

Black History Month For Foodies Series: Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

Popovers, recipes below (Photo from http://rootsoftaste.wordpress.com/)

Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (1908-1972) became the first African American to serve in the U. S. Congress (1945 to 1971) representing the 22nd congressional district, which included Harlem. Powell also served as pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church, perhaps the most politically powerful African American congregation in New York City. Both of Powell’s parents were southerners. “I was born more than a half century ago, when [a] black stove was a place of magic where the coal fire always glowed and from which good things came,” writes Powell. He goes on to say, “I don’t know how we modern men live on such paltry offerings—food then was food. For breakfast we had a different hot bread every morning—muffins, biscuits, corn bread, loaves of hot oatmeal bread with handfuls of raisins and blueberries sprinkled through them; pancakes so big that they seemed to be a yard wide but, in fact, were only the size of a big frying pan. . . and popovers so big you could put up your hand inside, which there was room for plenty of butter.” A Popover is a hollow quick bread shaped like a muffin and made from a thin batter of eggs, milk, and flour. Popovers evolved out of English pudding batters from the 17^th century with their first documented history in a 1850 letter and later in a late nineteenth century cook book. Its popularity made its way from Maine to New York and some called for greasing the muffin tins with beef or pork drippings creating a meat flavored pastry. Other interpretations used garlic and herbs in the batter and still another recipe included substituting purred pumpkin for some of the flour and further flavoring the batter with allspice, nutmeg, and or cinnamon. Today most popovers have a butter flavor instead of meat or eggnog like flavor.

Popover recipe: http://rootsoftaste.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/popovers-rise-to-the-occasion/

Vegan popover recipe: http://www.ecovegangal.com/2008/12/vegan-popovers.html

Popover tips and tricks: http://home.insightbb.com/~bonnett/popover/popover_tipsandtricks.htm

Black History Month For Foodies Series: Nina Simone

Roasted potato and green bean salad, recipes below

Singer and song writer Nina Simone (1933-2003) was born and raised in Tyron, North Carolina. During the Great Depression, the federal government put one of its Federal National Relief Agency (NRA) food distribution depots in Tyron. In my book Hog and Hominyhttp://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14638-8/hog-and-hominy/webFeatures I talk about how many survived the Depression with the help of the NRA. Simone’s father and others in Tyron received NRA truck-driving jobs. “Not only did the men at the depot get given a little extra food to take home, but the drivers built up a network of people who would trade food among themselves,” Simone recalls. Families would trade what they raised in excess from their gardens that they canned for the winter months and the surplus food they received on the job. Most of what she remembers from the very earliest part of her life “is tied up with food and music.” Her mother would stretch the family budget with “rice pudding, brown betty . . [a]nd beans. Tons of beans” says Simon. “We were poor for a long time but I can’t remember ever going hungry, not once.” Here are some green bean recipes.

Vegetarian green bean recipes: http://whatscookingamerica.net/Vegetarian/VegetarianGreenBeans.htm

Green bean casserole: http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2006/11/best-vegan-green-bean-casserole.html

Roasted Potato and Green Bean Salad: http://foodmuses.wordpress.com/2010/08/01/roasted-potato-and-green-bean-salad/

Vegan green bean recipes: http://vegweb.com/index.php?board=453.0