Surviving Graduate School: A Foodie's Memoir Part 4

There is a debate over the question: can you eat healthy when you’re poor? And, should folks receiving food stamps be able to use them to purchase sugary drinks and fatty un-healthy foods? As a professor I had a student who used food stamps and thought wow what a smart idea why didn’t I do that when was struggling to put food on the table when I was in grad school! I could not afford to eat poorly back when I was a grad student at Syracuse University in the 1990s because I knew the long term consequence to my health. I stayed with a vegetarian diet full of produce in season, brown rice, and lots of different legumes. To supplement my diet I scoured the Daily Orange, the campus newspaper, for lectures and concerts on campus with REFRESHMENTS SERVED in the advertising. I’d show up and hover around the refreshments filling up on humus, veggies, and fresh fruit particularly expensive fruit like pineapple, kiwi, and grapes all while trying to be as engaged as possible for the real reason for the event. Knowledge is the key to one’s food choices and frankly when we know better we tend to eat better. As a competitive athlete before entering grad school I wanted every edge I could get to improve my performance. Thus for years I sought out the best information possible on the relationship between health and nutrition; that information insured that even when I was temporally poor, I made informed healthy food choices. One of my heroes is former NBA player Will Allen and his work at Growing Power and NGO dedicated to getting fresh produce to impoverished communities. I highly recommend this short video about his organization.

Will Allen’s Good Food Revolution: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EpTWQWx1MQ&feature=player

Relate link on Food Stamps and famer’s markets:http://www.sweettaterblog.com/2010/02/24/food-stamps-at-fruit-stands/

Surviving Graduate School: A Foodie's Memoir Part 3

Tamales, this and other Mexican recipes below

As a graduate student at Syracuse University (SU) in the 1990s, I had a $16,000 stipend to cover all of my expenses and that amount just did not get it done. As a result I had to come up with a strategy to pay the bills. One of the things I did was get a part time job selling footwear at Dick’s Sporting Goods which started as a small bait and tackle shop in Binghamton, New York in 1958. I worked at Dick’s back when it was just expanding; they had less than about five stores and no one outside of Binghamton and Syracuse ever heard of the company. Working about 20 hours a week at Dick’s helped put food on my table while I also worked as a teaching assistant in SU’s Department of African American Studies, and studied full time as a graduate student in the history department. With my meager pay checks, I restricted myself to largely sale items in the small grocery store in Nottingham just up the street from Coyne Field House on the North East corner of the university campus. When I had been gainfully employed at Gettysburg College as an interim dean, I shopped at Wholefoods Market during my weekly trips to metropolitan Washington, D. C. buying organic produce, organic breads, and other baked goods like cookies and muffins etc. Having money is about having food options; the option to fulfill one's food desires and wants and moving beyond purchasing food necessities.Syracuse had no Wholefoods and it didn’t matter because I did have the income to shop there. As a struggling doctoral student necessity turned me into a grocery store hunter tracking food items with those big orange REDUCED stickers on them. Those stickers caused me to smile because they held out hope that I could make it through the checkout line without having to put too much food back because of insufficient funds! I had recently come from living in Guadalajara, Mexico and that city’s cuisine influenced what and how I ate including making homemade tortillas. Mexican cuisine I found inexpensive to make especially if you don’t or cannot afford to eat meat. Here are some post I’ve done with lots of Mexican recipes with both traditional and vegan interpretations. Time spent living in Mexico and teaching Latin American history over my career as a prof has influenced allot of my culinary interest.

Mexican Foodways and recipes: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=mexico

How I Became Interested in Learning Spanish: http://lacrossememoir.blogspot.com/2010/09/guadalajara-mexico-part-8-how-became.html

Surviving Graduate School: A Foodie's Memoir Part 2

Hasty pudding, this and other oatmeal recipes below

After my first year in the doctoral program in history at Syracuse University (1992-1993) I moved off campus and lived with my older cousin Katie Green who I have talked about in other post http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=cousin+katie. I moved off campus to save money. I had applied for and received a Teaching Fellowship in the Department of African American Studies. The fellowship paid my tuition and provided a small stipend that I used to pay my rent, keep my 84 Honda prelude on the road, purchase books, and buy groceries. During interviews journalist often ask me what is soul food to which I respond, soul food is a fabulous-tasting dish made from simple inexpensive ingredients. Soul food is nitty-gritty food that tasted good and helped African Americans survive during difficult times. In addition I argue soul is putting a premium on suffering, endurance, and surviving with dignity. I grew up middle class but from 1993 to 2000 I lived out the definitions of soul that talk about in my work. I had just turned thirty and pride get me from calling home and asking for help putting food on my table. Instead I used every strategy I could to eat and survive with dignity which I will share over the next couple of days. The issue with me in graduate school was that I did not have a lot of time to cook, money to buy allot of food, and I wanted to eat healthy. One of the things I did was learn how cook oatmeal in a variety of ways. Here are some recipes below. I would love to hear other stories and recipes on how you or your family put food on the table during hard times.

Brown Betty recipes and more: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=brown+betty

Hasty pudding: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/2010/04/molasses-and-social-classes.html

Oatmeal raisin cookies: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/oatmeal_raisin_cookies/

Surviving Graduate School: A Foodie's Memoir

Dinner rolls and soup recipes below (photo from http://www.mystainedapron.com/)

This semester I taught a course called African American History and Foodways using among other sources my book Hog and Hominy http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14638-8/hog-and-hominy/tableOfContents. It was a great class and my students wrote some outstanding papers. Grading is the toughest part of the job as a prof and the workload it creates reminds me of being back in grad school in the 1990s. During my first year in the Ph.D. program in history at Syracuse University’s (SU) Maxwell School, I lived in a graduate dorm and purchased a meal plan. The meal plan allowed me to eat well and focus on my studies. As a foodie, I can always find some reason to cook and not to work. Thus the meal card forced me to stay out of the kitchen and get my graduate work done. When I returned to campus since graduating from SU in 1985, the dining halls had become vegetarian friendly and that’s how I ate back then. The vegetarian diet made me feel allot better on and off the field; at the time I was a competitive lacrosse player gearing up to try out for the 1994 US National Lacrosse team (by the way I didn’t make it). SU’s Haven Dining Hall where I ate had a vegetarian station and soy milk on demand. In edition they had great selections of fresh fruit, cereals, baked goods, and hot delicious dinner rolls that I sliced opened and devoured with melted margarine on them. By the time my first was over, I gotten to know the staff that ran the dining hall and they looked out for me as a vegetarian; they were very nice people who I appreciated dearly. To survive outside of dining hall operating hours, after each meal I returned to my dorm room with food and soymilk from the dining hall that served as snacks during my late nights studying. I would throw the soy milk, which came in vanilla and chocolate flavor, in the small frig and freezer in my dorm room just long enough to turn them into something like a smoothie. These stashes of food and beverages, particularly those dinner rolls helped me survive more all nighters than I care to remember. Here are dinner roll recipes that would go well with the soup recipes below.

Fluffy dinner roll recipe: http://www.mystainedapron.com/2010/11/fluffy-dinner-rolls.html

Step by step dinner roll recipe: http://honeydokitchen.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/a-step-by-step-guide-to-dinner-rolls/

Sesame & Quinoa dinner rolls: http://priyaeasyntastyrecipes.blogspot.com/2010/04/sesame-quinoa-dinner-rolls.html

Various soup recipes: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=soup+recipes

A dish I wished I Could Have Eaten: My Syracuse Lacrosse Culinary Memory

Tuscan white bean salad and grilled lamb chop, recipe below (photo from http://www.seductionmeals.com/)

During an interview yesterday a reporter asked me the question: what would your students be most surprised to learn about you? I paused and then said, they would be surprised to learn that school was never easy for me and that I never made the honor role in high school or dean’s list in college. Second, they would be surprised learn that played two national championships (losing both by the way) as member of the Syracuse University lacrosse team. Today is the last day of classes here at Babson College where I teach. If we reversed the clock back a little more than twenty years, classes would be over for me at Syracuse and the student dining hall on campus closed until the start of summer school and summer camps. As member of the Syracuse lacrosse team in 1985, I stayed on a now abandoned campus preparing for the first round of the playoff s against Rutgers University in the Carrier Dome. To my surprise, the university provided meals for us in the Goldstein Alumni and Faculty Center on campus. I argue that food is an indicator of one’s class and status in a community and the faculty dining center on campus proved the validity of that theory. The next two weeks we had breakfast, lunch, in dinner served to us in an elegant restaurant setting including white table cloths, a wait staff, and a kitchen staff that made superb food order for the lacrosse team. Now the only problem for me was I was suffering from an ulcer and team doctor restricted me to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and few other unadorned items on the menu. Here is related recipe to a dish I wished I could have eaten back then.

Tuscan white bean salad and grilled lamb chops recipe: http://www.seductionmeals.com/2010/06/tuscan-

Easter History and Food Series: Chris Rock

Sweet potato pie, recipe below

Today is Resurrection Sunday and historically I would argue the most important day of the year for observant Christians. We received an invitation to dinner today after church and informed our host that I will bake a sweet potato pie. I saw Comedian Chris Rock on Oprah on Friday. In addition to cracking me up with his genius and funny insights, I learned that he, like me, loves sweet potato pie! Chris Rock grew up in Brooklyn but he was born in South Carolina where is mother’s family is from. Author Isabel Wilkersonhttp://wyplfmbooktalk.blogspot.com/2011/02/podcast-isabel-wilkerson-warmth-of.html

tells us that southerners followed three migration streams out of the south during the Great Migration: folks from Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas followed a West coast migration to California; some people from Louisiana and the majority who came from Mississippi went to Chicago and other parts of the Midwest like Cleveland and Detroit; migrants from the upper south from states like Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia followed an East coast migration to among other places, Philadelphia, New York, Pittsburgh, and Boston. When they relocated, Southern migrants brought with them a tradition of church membership and foods iconic to their southern roots. Easter culinary traditions differ across the southern states I mentioned above, but they all have Chris Rock’s love of sweet potato pie in common. Here are some related history and foods links and the recipe for the pie I will be sharing at our Easter gathering with folks from Virginia, Texas, the Caribbean, and Boston at the table.

Chris Rock’s Southern Roots:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fNaUwJVvk4&feature=related

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/2008/01/29/2008-01-29_family_trees_dna_rocks_chris.html

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

Easter History and Food Series: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=Easter+Series

The History Behind Easter Rituals: http://www.npr.org/2011/04/22/135632851/easter-celebrations-through-the-centuries

Easter History and Food Series: Macon, Georgia

Rice pudding, recipes below

“After the [church revival] service,” writes the Swedish novelist Fredrika Bremer in 1850, then “came the dinner hour, when I visited several tents in the black camp, and saw tables covered with all kinds of meat, puddings, and tarts; there seemed to be a regular superfluity of food and drink.” Although they slept in different tent camps at this Macon, Georgia revival, black and whites attended integrated antebellum period camp meetings followed by dinner on the camp grounds. Often we associate the call and response interaction between preachers and their pulpits with African American congregations with southern roots, particularly Baptist and Methodist churches. However similarly we find similar call and response traditions in the history of predominately white protestant churches in the south. We often forgets that during the antebellum period white masters often hired preachers to come and hold services for their families which slaves attended or brought their slaves to church services, although they restricted slaves to church balconies. Never the less whites and blacks often worshiped together particularly on high holidays like Easter. Following an ornate Easter service masters allocated to their slaves both time and food for a large and elaborate meal. Here are some rice pudding recipes that remind me of the Macon, Georgia cuisine that Bremer described.

Georgia rice pudding: http://www.roadfood.com/Recipes/88/rice-pudding

Vegan rice pudding: http://cheaphealthygood.blogspot.com/2010/03/veggie-might-vegan-rice-pudding-or-what.html

Easter History and Food Series: Collards and Creolization

Collard greens, recipes below

Africans in the colonial south did not develop their religious foodways traditions within a vacuum instead creolization occurred naturally. This is the process that happens when two or more cultures come to together and a new culture develops with elements of the original parts. Through close interaction with Native Americans and Africans, white indentured servants integrated many African and Native American cultural traditions. Each group adapted agricultural practices, religious holidays, and culinary preferences from each other. As white indentured servants and white masters adopted African foodways and slaves adopted special occasions and material culture from owners, black and white cultures in the South became more homogenous. Take for example a side dish like collard greens; the plant comes from England but its preparation in the colonial south was distinctively African. Historically Europeans in general did no eat lots of greens nor seasoned the cooked vegetables they ate with hot peppers, onions, and garlic. These plants used as seasoning came to the Americas from Asia via Africa. But today, any native born southerner, white or black, is a green eating corn bread pot liquor sopping person, particularly at an Easter Sunday meal! If you are a northerner without southern roots, that last sentenced probably has you puzzled. Here are some collard green recipes below.

Pork Seasoned Greens: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/collard_greens_with_bacon/

Healthier Southern Greens: http://www.healthyselfandhome.com/InTheKitchen.html

Vegan Greens

Ingredients

1 bunch of greens: collard greens, mustard greens, turnip greens, kale, or chard
1 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 bay leaf
¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 teaspoon salt, depending on the saltiness of your stock

Liquid smoke or smoked paprika

Method:

Wash the collards good in plenty of slightly salted water, strip the leaves off the steams, discard the steams and cut the greens into small pieces. Start out with 3 bunches which will serve 6 people, they are big but they cook down like spinach. I steam mine in a pressure cooker for 10 minutes until the fibrous leaves are easy to eat. Steaming preserves the water soluble vitamins that are killed when you just boil the greens down like most of my ancestors have done for years. Remove the collards from the pressure cooker and save the water to make the pot-licker or stock. Season the water with 3 cubes of vegetable bullion, dried bay leaf, dried red pepper flakes, little vinegar, and some honey. Had some smoked paprika or a little liquid smoke which most grocery stores sell if you like that smoked meat flavor (the traditional recipe calls for a smoked ham hock or a hunk of smoked fat back). The pot-licker is full of vitamins and great seasoning for the greens Sauté the steamed greens with chopped onions and garlic in olive oil with your preferred seasonings like pepper, salt, etc. Add sautéed greens to the pot-licker and let them marinade for 30 or more minutes.

Patriot’s Day and the Boston Marathon

Beef Stew, recipes below (photo from http://operagirlcooks.com) 

Today is the Boston Marathon which is run on Patriot’s Day here in Massachusetts. This my family’ first marathon and we can see the runner go pass a section of the race route from the window of our house! Needless to say, Patriot’s Day is big here in the Boston area complete with reenactments of the first battle of American Revolution in the morning and the start of the marathon later in the morning. Starting at 3 am reenactors dressed as British troops march from downtown Boston to the countryside of Lexington where the Revolution began. Some say the British may have responded in a particularly brutal undisciplined manner toward the minute men because they were tired from the long cold march in the rain and because they were hungry and wanted to disperse the patriots and sit down and eat. We have a rough estimate that the complete one day rations for a British soldier at the time of the Battle of Lexington and Concord would have included:

1 ½ pounds of Flour or Bread
1 pound Beef
½ pound of Pork
¼ pint of Pease
1 ounce of Butter
1 ounce of Rice

1 or 2 cups of Rum

Rum (although diluted with water) represented the most important part of a soldier’s rations. This was particularly true during inclement weather or a difficult assignment like a long march in the rain. The ordinary allowance was about a cup of rum and 2 cups to maintain morale during a tough assignment. Rifting off of the list of rations, here are some related recipes.

Beef stew recipe: http://operagirlcooks.com/2010/10/27/healthy-beef-stew-recip/

Vegan Beef stew recipe: http://www.myvegancookbook.com/recipes/recipe.php?id=54

Historic Poems and Food Series: Jambalaya

Louisiana Jambalaya, recipes below (photo from http://surprisinglyfunctional.wordpress.com/)  

Poet Patrick Mackeown has a very interesting background, diverse in both culture and experiences. Mackeown was born in 1966 in London, England and raised in Turkey, Wales, and various parts of England. Educated as a philosopher, he has worked as a salesman, computer operator, internet technician, and a chef as he developed is writing chops. Mackeown’s poem below about Louisiana Jambalaya is not particularly historic, but jambalaya is and his history as a chef gives him creditability with this food historian.

Louisiana Jambalaya Giant Bird Chew

Louisiana, Jambalaya Capital of the World
Recipes that kings envy are here unfurled
Crayfish and sausage, oysters and shrimp
Combinations making hardy tastebuds limp


Onions, green, and cayenne peppers too
Smartly julienned and added to the stew
Simmer gently, relax and have fun
But mindful your creation is not overdone


Jambalaya originates from Spanish paella
Creole kitchen-sink wizardry at Cafe Bella
New Orleans Red Jambalaya smokey and hot
On account of Tasso-spice-pork that it's got


Jambalaya is for parties and family days
See from my descriptions its myriad ways
The creation a timeless testament living
Sharingcelebrations with bountiful giving

Patrick Mackeown link: http://www.patrick-mackeown.com/

My grandfather’s Louisiana Jambalaya: http://www.jerryodom.com/jambalaya.html

Vegan jambalaya recipe: http://www.veganmeat.com/recipes2/jambalaya.html

Historic Poems and Food Series: Jonathan Swift on Onions

French Onion Flatbread pizza, this and another onion recipe below

The Irish author Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was born in Dublin into a wealthy Protestant Anglo-Irish family that provided him with the best possible education. His father died while he was an infant and his uncle raised him. He earned a BA from Trinity College in Dublin after which time he moved to England and studied to become an Anglican Priest. Swift later returned to his native Dublin where served as a priest and wrote extensively. He most well known for his book Gulliver’s Travels published in 1726. But as a foodie I really like his poem Onion based on the calls of venders selling them on the streets.

ONIONS

Come, follow me by the smell,

Here are delicate onions to sell;

I promise to use you well.

They make the blood warmer,

You’ll feed like a farmer;

For this is every cook’s opinion,

No savoury dish without an onion;

But, lest your kissing should be spoiled,

Your onions must be thoroughly boiled:

Or else you may spare

Your mistress a share,

The secret will never be known:

She cannot discover

The breath of her lover,

But think it as sweet as her own.

French Onion Flat Bread Pizza: http://worldplates.wordpress.com/2010/11/02/french-onion flatbread/

Caramelized Onion Quiche: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/caramelized_onion_quiche/

Historic Poems and Food Series: Apple Dumplings

Apple Dumpling, recipes below 

I know I am late to the game, but I heard on the radio yesterday that April is poetry month! My father loved poetry and my son at eight years old already shows a talent for writing poetry. What follows is series of post starting today on historic poems that caught my eye. As a food historian I will share related history and recipes.

The Apple Dumplings and a King

"Very astonishing indeed! strange thing!"

(Turning the Dumpling round, rejoined the King),

"'Tis most extraordinary, then, all this is;

It beats Penetti's conjuring all to pieces;

Strange I should never of a Dumpling dream!

But, Goody, tell me where, where, where's the Seam?"

"Sire, there's no Seam," quoth she; "I never knew

That folks did Apple-Dumplings sew."

"No!" cried the staring Monarch with a grin;

"How, how the devil got the Apple in?"

By Dr. John Wolcot (1738-1819)

Dr. John Wolcot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wolcot

Traditional Apple Dumplings: http://acookandherbooks.blogspot.com/2010/10/classic-apple-dumplings-with-appearance.html

Pioneer Woman’s Apple Dumplings: http://catchingpennies.wordpress.com/2008/11/17/pioneer-womans-apple-dumplings/

Food and Religion in the U. S. South in 1880

Cajun Mobile Alabama Grillades and Grits, recipe below

After settling the question with his bacon and cabbage, the next dearest thing to a colored man, in the South, is his religion. I call it a ‘thing,’ because they always speak of getting religion as if they were going to market for it. —William Wells Brown, 1880

African-American religion historically nourished the soul, just as food nourished the body. This is primarily based on the evidence that religious traditions and eating on special occasions became even more established in African-American communities after emancipation. There are many different churches within most African-American communities but the food celebrations remain consistent. These events increased the association between soul and food in black communities. African Americans at the turn of the twentieth century were largely an agricultural group made up of hard-working farmers and farmhands. Thus, working off a heavy breakfast, lunch or dinner was much easier than in the industrial society of the late twentieth century. Below is a traditional down home Cajun Mobile, Alabama recipe that would work well for Easter (traditional and vegan interpretations included).

Cajun Mobile Alabama Grillades and Grits Recipe

Ingredients

2 lbs. round steak (or vegan steak substitute) cut into 2-inch strips

2 tsp. salt, divided

1/2 tsp. ground pepper, divided

1/2 Cup all-purpose flour

1/2 Cup vegetable oil, divided

2 Cups chopped Vidalia onion

1 Cup chopped green bell pepper

1 Cup chopped celery

1/4 tsp. ground ancho chili pepper

2 Cups canned diced tomatoes

1 tb. Chopped fresh chopped garlic

5 whole bay leaves

1/4 tsp. thyme

1/4 tsp. oregano

1/4 tsp. basil

2 Cups beef stock (or vegetable stock)

1/2 Cup dry red wine or 1/4 Cup red wine vinegar

2 TB. finely chopped, fresh parsley

Grits

2 Cups water

11/4 Cups milk (or soy milk)

1 tsp. salt

1 Cup quick-cooking grits

1/4 Cup butter (butter substitute)

Method

Place the meat strips in a bowl. Add 1 tsp. of the salt and 1/4 tsp. of the pepper and toss to coat. Add the flour and toss again to evenly coat the meat. In a large stock pot, heat 1/4 cup of the oil over medium-high heat. When hot, add the meat, in batches if necessary, and brown evenly on both sides, about 5-6 minutes. Remove the meat to paper towel-lined plates to drain. Add more oil to the pan as needed while browning the meat, making sure to let the oil get hot before adding the meat. Once all the meat has been browned, add the onion, bell pepper and celery to the pot along with 1/2 tsp. of the salt and the ancho peppers. Cook, stirring constantly, scrap the bottom of the pot to loosen any browned bits. Cook until the vegetables are softened, approximately 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes and garlic. Cook, stirring often, for about 3 minutes. Add the bay leaves, thyme, oregano, basil, beef (or vegetable stock) wine and chopped garlic. Return the browned meat to the pot and season with the remaining salt and pepper. Bring to a simmer, cover, and reduce the heat to low. Cook for about 2 hours, stirring occasionally, or until the meat is tender. Remove the bay leaves before serving and stir in the parsley. Serve over grits (cook the grits like cream of wheat). Stir in the butter before serving and season with hot sauce if you like. Grillades is also wonderful served with rice