Brazilian Gumbo

Carurú is a delicious and vitamin rich Bahian gumbo, this and other recipes below

Lets continue our travels through Brazil as part of celebrating Hispanic Heritage month through the prism of food and history. The noted Brazilian historian Gilberto Freyre argues that enslaved Afro Brazilian women enriched Brazilian foodways with the introduction of African ingredients such as peanuts, peppers, okra, yarbs, inexpensive, calcium rich, and easy to grow greens leafy vegetables, palm or dendê oil, and coconut milk. The yarbs provide a rich source of fiber and vitamins that cleansed the colon. Afro Brazilian women cooks also used an abundance of vitamin C rich pepper, vitamin A rich coconut milk, and vitamin E rich palm oil which they used in making soups. Hence the palm oil, coconut milk, and pepper provided liberal amounts of vitamin C, A, and E. Carurú is an example of a Bahian gumbo dish containing many of these African introduced ingredients listed above: “‘Carurú’ is a dish eaten by the blacks, but is much esteemed by the whites, and is, to my taste, very delicious," writes traveler to Brazil James Wetherell in 1860. Here is a traditional Carurú recipe that can be adapted to make a vegetarian version.

Traditional Carurú Recipe: http://flavorsofbrazil.blogspot.com/2009/10/recipe-caruru.html

Hispanic Heritage Month Series: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=Hispanic+History+Month+Series

Brazil: A Racial Paradise? (PBS Full Length Episode): http://www.pbs.org/wnet/black-in-latin-america/featured/black-in-latin-america-full-episode-brazil-a-racial-paradise/224/

Crazy for Coconut in Brazil

Beijinhos de Coco (Coconut Kisses) this and other recipes below

As part of Hispanic Heritage month I want to talk about dulceras who were largely enslaved women who sold sweets in urban centers. One saw enslaved Afro Brazilian women hawking sweet on the streets of Rio and Bahia in Brazil. In the intersections of the main streets along the walls in lower town of Bahia there “fruit-sellers, venders of sausages, black-puddings, fried fish, oil, and sugar cakes,” writes the British traveler Maria Graham in the 1820s. Speaking now of Rio she goes on to say, “and for dainties [sugary deserts], from the noble to the slave, sweetmeats of every description, from the most delicate preserves and candies to the coarsest preparations” made with coconut “are swallowed wholesale.” One see’s similar scenes in sugar based plantation societies throughout the Americas with African American women making sugar based sweets out of the most plentiful and inexpensive ingredients they have on hand such as nuts and coconut. Here is a recipe for a Brazilian street venders product made with grated coconut, which is indigenous to South America, called Beijinhos de Coco or coconut kisses.

Beijinhos de Coco recipe

Ingredients

A can of sweetened condensed milk (vegans, I substitute plant based products for this and the other ingredients in this recipe)
2 egg yolks
1 tbsp butter or margarine
1 lb freshly grated coconut
1 tsp vanilla extract

Method

Mix all the ingredients together completely. Cook using a heavy saucepan and keep stirring until you see the bottom of the pan. Pour into a plate and let it cool completely. Grease your hands then make small balls, roll them in sugar and put them on small pieces of wax paper. Recipes makes 30 kisses.

Here is related link: http://www.thecapitolbaker.com/2010/08/coconut-laddoos.html

Hispanic Heritage Month Series: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=Hispanic+History+Month+Series

Brazil: A Racial Paradise? (PBS Full Length Episode): http://www.pbs.org/wnet/black-in-latin-america/featured/black-in-latin-america-full-episode-brazil-a-racial-paradise/224/

Ecuadorian Foodways

Encebelloado de pescado, this and other recipes below

Speaking of indigenous foodways in Guayaquil, Ecuador in early 1700s, Captain Jorge Juan Antonio De Ulloa of the Spanish Navy writes, “The first course consists of different kind of sweetmeats, the second of high-seasoned ragouts; and thus they continue to serve up an alternative succession of sweet and high seasoned dishes . . . The coasts and neighboring ports abound in very delicious fish, [which] . . . constitute a considerable part of the food of the inhabitants of Guayaquil.” One finds “very large and fine lobsters, of which they make delicious ragouts,” which they season . . . with Guinea pepper, which, though small, is so very strong” says the Captain. He adds, the “person, not accustomed to it, suffers either way. If they eat, their mouths seem in a flame; if they forbear, they must endure hunger, they have to overcome their aversion to this seasoning; after which they think the Guinea pepper the finest ingredient in the world for [seasoning] their food. Here is a recipe for encebollado de pescado, a popular fresh tuna soup made with cassava, olive oil, onions, garlic, cilantro, and limes from Guayaquil.

Encebollado de pescado récipe: http://laylita.com/recipes/2008/03/01/encebollado-de-pescado-or-tuna-soup/

Africans in Mexico and Peru Video:  http://www.pbs.org/wnet/black-in-latin-america/featured/full-episode-mexico-peru/227/

Hispanic Heritage Month Series: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=Hispanic+History+Month+Series

Jerked Meat and the Inca

Peruvian Olluquito con Charqui, this and other recipes below

As part of my for Hispanic History Month series let's talk about the Inca today. In the Indigenous societies of the Andes, women planted and harvested the fields and prepared the food. Men hunted animals and raised like stock including alpaca and llama. The women would slaughter the animals and prepare it for eating. Pre-Columbian Inca women developed dishes using a cured, slated, and dehydrated meat they called charqui. The English word Jerky comes from the Andean word charqui. The women would salt cure the meat and dry it in the hot sun and freezing cold for about a month and thereby increasing its longevity. From the Jerked meat Andean women made a soup called Olluquito con charqui made with ollucos (a yellow Andean tuber), traditionally women used slices of jerked alpaca and llama, but today its more often made with jerked beef, and served with rice. Jerking meat (salting and drying it in the sun) to conserve it has a long history and that extends around the globe. Growing up in New York's majestic Hudson Valley region in the 1960s and 70s I loved buying Slim Jims-a long piece of jerked beef with salt and spices that tasted delicious at the corner store across the street from the rear of the then JFK little league baseball field. Adolph Levis invented the Slim Jim in 1928 and later sold its rights to the General Mills foods company for around 20 million dollars in the late 1960s.

Olluquito con Charqui Recipe

Ingredients

4 ysp oil
1 tsp cayenne pepper
¼ kg “charqui” or jerked meat/vegan substitute
1 kg ollucos chopped in fine strips
½ cup onion
Chopped parsley
2 garlic cloves
Salt and pepper
ground chilly

Method

Shred and fry pre-soaked/hydrated Charqui. After browned, remove, and in the same oil fry onions, garlic, chilly and cayenne pepper. Add ollucos (soaked for 1 hour with salt). Cover the pot and cook at low heat. Sprinkle with parsley. Serve with white rice. Makes eight servings

BBC Radio Food Program on Preserving Meat: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/foodprog/foodprog_20110314-1630a.mp3

Hispanic History Month Series: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=Hispanic+History+Month+Series

Colonial Mexico City

Nopalitos with tomatoes and onions, this and other recipes below

As part of my Hispanic History month series lets turn to Mexico City one of my favorite places for great food. In colonial Mexico City indigenous women gradually shaped the cookery and preferences of Iberian owned homes and eateries. This happened despite the attempt of Iberian born wives to teach their Indian cooks how to prepare meals according to Spanish culinary styles. In Mexico City the women servants who cooked for elite families slipped local ingredients like tomatoes into Spanish recipes believing no one would notice any difference in taste. However, Spanish women realized the change but also recognized that it “turned out much cheaper [and easier] to feed everyone” in a large household on meals made with available and less expensive local ingredients than scarce and expensive imported ones from Spain. In short, the culinary and economic savvy of Indigenous women, some free and some enslaved, resulted in the transformation that occurred in the diet of new arrivals from Europe. Here is a traditional Mexican recipe that illustrates the influence of indigenous women on Mexican cuisine. It's also a great recipe for all those tomatoes your garden is producing. You can most likely find the necessary ingredients from Mexico for this recipe in stores near Mexican American communities and or international markets like the great one they have in around most cities.

Nopalitos with tomatoes and onions recipe: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/nopalitos_with_tomatoes_and_onions/

Hispanic History Month Series: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=Hispanic+History+Month+Series

Moorish Influences on Hispanic Foodways

Moroccan-Salmon with sweet and spicy barbecue sauce, recipe below

It is Hispanic Heritage Month and I doing a related series. Between 1450 and 1600, the Portuguese built trading posts on the West coast of Africa and slave labor sugar plantations on the African island of São Tomé in the Gulf of Guinea. By the sixteenth century, the Spanish had established settlements in the Americas. We know that Iberians arrived in Africa and the Americas with the cross in one hand and the sword in the other; but they introduced more than their religious practices and the repression of indigenous peoples where they conquered and colonized. Colonization meant the introduction of new foods. Many of the innovations in African and American foodways, particularly the introduction of exotic ingredients from the East, occurred as a result of 800 years of North African colonial rule on the Iberian Peninsula after the Moors seized power there in 711 A.D. In the first chapter of my book Hog and Hominy (http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14638-8/hog-and-hominy/webFeatures) I talk about how the Moors introduced a number of spices and herbs obtained through the Arabian spice trade into Iberian cookery. Moorish seasoning techniques called for using sugar, spices, and herbs to enhance, not dominate the flavor of vegetables, poultry, red meat, and fish. These spices and cooking philosophies of Moorish and Iberian origins became important to Latin American cookery. Moorish seasoning techniques directly influenced Iberian cookery from 711 to 1491 A.D. Here is a link to an incredible North African sweet and spicy barbecue sauce served with salmon.

Moroccan-Salmon recipe: http://www.oprah.com/food/Moroccan-Salmon-with-Cabbage-and-Couscous

Bananas, Asia, Africa, and Iberian America

Bananas vender in India above and banana muffins, this and recipes below 

As part of Hispanic history month lets talk about one of my children's favorite fruits. Banana and plantains are indigenous to India. We know that Asian traders introduced them to the Island of Madagascar off the coast of Africa during the Christian era and from there they spread to the mainland of Africa where cooks gradually made them a staple across West and Central Africa. African cooks used them in a variety of ways including steaming, boiling, grilling, and frying them.  It was after living in Mexico and Guatemala that learned that there so many varieties of bananas that other people around the world eat. One also learns that here in North America if you are fortunate to live in place that has a large population of immigrants from tropical regions of world and local grocery stores and bodegas stock red and yellow, short, and fat, and long and finger size bananas. My children always ask me where these different species come from and if they can try them. Now here is the Hispanic History month link, Centuries ago the Portuguese introduced bananas from Africa first to Brazil during the Atlantic slave trade. They used them as provisions on slave ships that carried slaves to Brazil and thereafter the Spanish did the same with cargoes of slaves sailing for Panama and Mexico. Bananas naturally became one of the staples foods for all sectors of society in South, Central America, and Mexico by the 16^th century. But it was not until the late 19^th century that the United Fruit Company of Boston began importing them through New Orleans, Mobil, and Galveston. Below is banana muffin recipe that I am baking for my children’s breakfast this morning. These guy love banana muffins and they are a great way to teach history too.

Banana muffin recipe: http://www.thecleaneatingmama.com/2010/03/vegan-banana-bread-muffins.html

Banana bread recipes: http://www.mybananabreadrecipes.com/

Pork-mania in Iberian America

Caribbean Mafongo, recipes below 

As part of Hispanic Heritage Month, I will be sharing stories on the Caribbean, mainland Latin America, and various Latin American diasporas in places like New York City and my home region, the Hudson Valley just North of the Big Apple. As a college professor, I've been teaching Latin American history courses for more than ten years and I've published extensively on Central America. What follows are my musing on Hispanic foodways from written sources, oral histories, and my own field work in  Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Columbia. Today let's start discussion in the Caribbean. When the Spanish started establishing settlements in the Caribbean, they imported large numbers of domesticated pigs which quickly became the center of the regions culinary culture. Enslaved West and Central African came later and with them plantains and dishes like mafongo. The recipe calls for using pounded green plantains in a parallel way to West African make foo foo. Hispanic Caribbean cooks most often make mofongo from fried green plantains mashed together with garlic, olive oil, a broth, and some kind of fried pork. Below find traditional and vegan mofongo recipes.

Traditional Mofongo Recipe
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/01/dining/011mrex.html

Vegan Mofongo Video Recipe
http://veganricans.blogspot.com/2008/11/vegan-mofongo-w-fried-tempeh.html

"Something You don’t Hear Talked About": Race Relations and Food in the Depression Era South

A slice of sweet potato pie, this and other recipes below

As part of my fall gardening series I want to continue to share from the interview I did with artist and educator Dr. David Driskell. As mentioned in an earlier post, Driskell was born in 1931 and grew up in the Foote Hill, Blue Ridge region of the Appalachian Mountains in Rutherford County, North Carolina. As he gave me a tour of his garden which includes allot of the food plants his family raised in North Carolina. In speaking about his childhood and race relations he said in Rutherford County, North Carolina blacks and whites lived “side by side our property was continues with [whites]. . . it was something you don’t hear written about or talked about. But everybody had to be depended on each other.” With that in mind, I asked him a question that I’ve wrestled with in my study of American foodways: were you all as black and white southerners eating differently?  Referring to “dinner on the grounds,” a communal meal a rural church, he said, “I don’t think we were eating differently, I think we were eating the same thing [often the produce from the garden] in some cases . . . the sweet potatoes, the sweet potato pie, greens, white potatoes, potato salad all those kind of things. . . . I suspect we had some dishes that they didn’t have without our aid. Very seldom did I know of them making sweet potato pie and things like that, they would get someone to come in and do it for them. . . My mother would often go up and cook things for [our white neighbors] the Elliots . . .  as a way of making money [preparing] a pie, cake, or fried chicken.” I have more from Dr. Driskell tomorrow. Here a pie recipe that goes well with this story and this time of the year.

Sweet potato pie story and recipe: 

http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/2011/04/easter-history-and-food-series-chris.html

Dr. David Driskell: http://www.visionaryproject.com/driskelldavid/


More pie stories and recipes:

 http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/2011/05/my-guatemalan-kitchen-give-them-pie.html

http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/2011/05/my-guatremalan-kitchen-developing-my.html 

http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/2011/04/historic-poems-and-food-series-rhubarb.html

Possession of Okra While Shopping White Up North

Fried okra, this and other recipes below

Last week I delivered a paper titled “Juke Joints, Rum Shops, and Honky-Tonks:  The Politics of Leisure in Agrarian Societies,” at Program in Agrarian Studies Colloquium at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. The night before my talk I had the pleasure of sitting next to Yale History Professor Glenda Gilmore, a white southerner born and raised in North Carolina. Glenda shared a very interesting okra story that in part addresses a question I’ve raised in my work on food history. Is there any difference between how white and black southerners have eaten over the years? Glenda attended undergrad, graduate school, and taught in the Carolinas until taking her current job in The History Department at Yale in 1994. Like New York City, New Haven has a sizeable population of African Americans that migrated to the city from the south between the 1940s and the 1960s, many of them from the Carolinas and Virginia. One day Glenda picked some okra to cook for dinner in the produce section of a New Haven super market and noticed an older black women puzzled by her selection of this very southern food plant, which by the way comes from Africa. “The women followed me around the supermarket to the checkout counter,” says Glenda understanding right away what was going and chuckling on the inside about being tailed for possession of okra while shopping white. Then the women’s curiosity got the best of her and at the checkout line she asked Glenda, “Accuse me, but what are you going to do with that?” pointing to the okra. Glenda had not spoken until then, and she replied with in a deep but natural Carolina accent, “I am going to do the same thing you are going to do,” and smiled. When the African American women heard her southern accent, she understood and the two of them smiled, then laughed out loud and bonded over their mutual love of okra. Here is typical southern way to cook okra from your garden, farmers market, or grocery store below as well as other recipes. My daughter just reminded me how much she and her older brother love when I cook southern fried okra.

Southern fried okra recipe: http://www.olsouthrecipes.com/okra.html

 Okra recipes:

African okra recipes: http://www.ifood.tv/network/african_okra/recipes

Indian okra recipes: http://indianfood.about.com/od/vegetarianrecipes/tp/bhindirecipes.htm

Southern okra recipes: http://southernfood.about.com/library/weekly/aa081401b.htm

Sweetest okra recipe (vegan): http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=10974.0

My gardening series: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=gardening+series

Eating From One's Garden in Brazil

A vegetable rich Bahian gumbo full of vitamins, recipe below

The noted Brazilian historian Gilberto Freyre argues that enslaved Afro Brazilian women enriched Brazilian foodways with the introduction of African ingredients such as peanuts, peppers, okra, yarbs which are inexpensive, calcium rich, and easy to grow greens leafy vegetables, palm or dendê oil, and coconut milk. The yarbs provide a rich source of fiber and vitamins that cleansed the colon. Afro Brazilian women cooks also used an abundance of vitamin C rich pepper, vitamin A rich coconut milk, and vitamin E rich palm oil which they used in making soups. Hence the palm oil, coconut milk, and pepper provided liberal amounts of vitamin C, A, and E. Carurú is an example of a Bahian gumbo dish containing many of these African introduced ingredients listed above: “‘Carurú’ is a dish eaten by the blacks, but is much esteemed by the whites, and is, to my taste, very delicious," writes traveler to Brazil James Wetherell in 1860. Here is a traditional Carurú recipe that can be adapted to make a vegetarian version.


Traditional Carurú Recipe: http://flavorsofbrazil.blogspot.com/2009/10/recipe-caruru.html


My gardening series: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=gardening+series


Radio Interview on Hispanic Foodways, Listen: http://www.wpr.org/hereonearth/archive_101008k.cfm

Gardening Alabama Style to Fend off the Recession

recipe for grilled peaches below 

A handful of southerners went through the Depression without the need for government relief. One was civil rights leader Ralph David Abernathy, who recalled his childhood as the son of an independent black farmer in Marengo County, Alabama, about ninety miles southwest of Montgomery. At this time of the year as a child he and his family would be busy in the family subsistence garden planting “corn, beets, tomatoes, black-eyed peas, beans, Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, okra, collard greens, turnips, mustard greens,” and the family orchard “peaches, plums, pears, figs, and apples.” Consequently, Ralph Abernathy recalls, “Everything I learned about the Great Depression was from a college textbook.” Peaches are in season. Some folks grow them in their yard and you can also get them on the cheap now at many local farmers markets. I came across a website that provides “three ways to enjoy ripe local peaches on the BBQ.” Now that’s really thinking outside the box and a great example of soul food: inexpensive great tasting food made easily with what you have on hand in abundance.


Grilled peach recipes: http://hubpages.com/hub/Grilled_peaches_Three_ways_to_enjoy_ripe_local_peaches_on_the_BBQ

My gardening series: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=gardening+series

Back to School Series: HBCU Food and Jim Crow

Southern chicken and rice soup, recipe below

In the midst of a series on school food based on oral histories I did for research on my book Hog and Hominy. Several theories explain why African American students have historically complained about the food at Historical Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Most college students white or black complain now and then about college cafeteria food. The chief complaint of HBCU students was the bland taste of the food and repetitive menu. Southern students were raised on elaborately seasoned traditional down home food, food that far different than the cuisine that black students with parents native to the north or acculturated to the north grew up on. A lot of the complaints of southern students at HBCUs were related to school funding. Students wanted more variety in cafeteria menus but college budgets were quite restricting. As Lamenta Watkins Crouch a 1970 Virginia State alum recalled, “If there was chicken and vegetables served one day, we knew there was going to be chicken vegetable soup the next day.” Most scholars accept the argument that HBCU’s like other colleges and universities, before the end of Jim Crow customs and traditions, depended on government funding but do to racist state legislators they received far less than white institutions in their same state. As a result HBCU administrators had to use leftovers in soups and stews to reduce their expenditures. Here are some recipes that go well with this post: 

Southern chicken and rice soup recipe: http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Southern-Chicken-Rice-Soup

Vegetarian chicken and rice soup recipe: http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=576785

My back to school Series: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=back+to+school+series

Italian Foodways in Westchester

Ray's (Goomba's) Deli, Riverside Ave, Croton-on-Hudson, Westchester County, NewYork. One of the many delis in my home town (Photo Courtesy of Bill Tuttle)


Delis like Goomba's above were a big part of my home town of Croton-on-Hudson, New York and like pizza parlors, part of a larger defining aspect of Hudson Valley foodways that tell one about the Italian immigrants that settled in the region. I grew up with Italians and as result I know bit about a good deli sandwich. When making a wedge, the deli employee first took the provisions out of the display case, took the wraps off, and cut it on that large funky silver automatic slicer that cut the meat and cheese into thin slices like nothing. Customers watched as the person behind the counter caught the falling meat from the machine making sure they didn’t skimp on the cold-cuts layered gently on the wedge. There also the piping egg and peppers sandwich that's out of this world. I thought that everybody described these foot long sandwiches made with Italian bread (courtesy of the old Ossining Italian bakery of course!) as a wedge. Since graduating from high school in 1981, I have lived in many parts of the North East, Atlanta, and traveled a lot for work. When I asked for a wedge (sandwich on a long piece of Italian bread) outside of Westchester I kept getting this strange looks. It took a long time to realize that people called my wedge a sub, grinder, hero, hoagie, Italian, po' boy (New Orleans), zep, torpedo, outside of Westchester.

My back to school series: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=back+to+school+series

Children’s breakfast, lunch, and snack ideas: 

http://www.gov.ns.ca/hpp/publications/05092_BreakfastLunchSnackIdeasBooklet_En.pdf

http://familyfun.go.com/back-to-school/back-to-school-lunches-snacks/

http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/everydaycooking/family/schoollunchesforkids

Comparison Breeds Contempt: School Lunches in Croton Part 2

Roast beef wedge

This is a continuation of a high school food story; I graduated from a high school in Westchester county, a suburb of New York City in 1981. As mentioned yesterday, school administrators in my town had an open campus policy that permitted students to purchase food in the village. The school cut the hot lunch program which resulted in a daily parade of students into the village in search of good but cheap eats. My father preferred to make me lunch while most of my peers ate at delis in town. So here I am “eating healthy” while my classmates are throwing down on great New York deli lunches like hot ziti, eggplant “parm” or meat ball sandwiches made with fresh baked bread from the Ossining Bakery and wonderfully smelling Italian sauce made from scratch. Others devoured  wedges made on the same bread layered with fresh lettuce, tomato mayo or mustard with freshly delivered Boar’s Head cold cuts. My father's culinary rational back then was I’ll make you lunch, save some money, and be assured you’re eating a healthy meal. I think about my dad, who passed in 2009, almost every time I make school lunches for my eight and six year children. I try hard to make them fun, good tasting, and wholesome peanut-free lunches (too many classmates with allergies).  But I also wonder whose going to be sitting around them during lunch time and what are their classmates eating that’s going to compete with what I packed as deli meals competed with my dad’s lunch for me? My pop made up for my frustrating lunches in high school in other ways: he paid and fed me well for doing custodial work on the weekends as part of his side business; he rewarded my mastery of a multiplication table with a new pair of red, black, and green, Puma Clydes (the 70s and black power folks!); he paid for me to attend summer lacrosse camps every year until I graduated from high school; on occasion he allowed me to buy a great lunch at the delis in town. Dad now that I have children of my own, I understand how you worked double shifts at Sing Sing from 3:00 pm to 7:00 am several times during the week day, came home exhausted, and still stopped in the kitchen to make me a “healthy affordable” lunch for school before you went to bed. Love and commitment is a powerful motivator. 

My back to school series with recipes: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=back+to+school+series

Comparison Breeds Contempt: School Lunches in Croton

One of the many great Delis I grew up with in Croton-on Hudson, New York (Photo courtesy of Bill Tuttle)

As part of my back to school series I must talk about the deli food in my hometown in the late 1970s. My high School, Croton Harmon is located just up the street from the village of Croton on Old Post Road. School administrators had an open campus policy that permitted students to purchase food in the village. The fact that the school cut the hot lunch program that most other area schools had also facilitated the daily parade of students into the village in search of good but cheap eats. Now my situation was problematic to say the least because my father took on the task of making my lunch instead of forking over five dollars like allot of the parents of my classmates did. Two experiences shaped my dads view of an acceptable lunch: He never forgot the poverty he experienced as a child in the Great Depression and during the 1970s he listened to allot of Dick Gregory on the radio talking about eating to live instead of living to eat as he sat in his tower as correctional officer perched over looking the inside of Sing Sing prison and ironically a spectacular view of the Hudson River. Gregory in part inspired my dad to make me lunches with fruits and vegetables, sandwiches with whole grain bread, and "carob bars" and sesame and honey snacks he'd buy at the Chilmart Health Food store in Briarcliff for dessert. Part 2 tomorrow

My back to school series with recipes: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=back+to+school+series


Earth Eats Radio podcast and blog series on back to school:

• http://indianapublicmedia.org/eartheats/school-part-1-start-day/
• http://indianapublicmedia.org/eartheats/school-part-2-good-food-campus/

POSTED BY DR. FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Back to School Series and North Carolina Style Barbecue

Pulled barbecue pork sandwich with sauce, recipe below

Founded in 1909, North Carolina Central University (NCCU), is an HBCU not far from Duke University in the city of Durham, North Carolina. NCCU was the state’s first liberal arts college for African Americans and it is located in Pettigrew an African American community in Durham. Parrish Street in Downtown Durham gained the name Black Wall Street because of the number of prosperous black owned businesses there including the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company. Thriving African American businesses built a strong middle class in the town made of business titans and professors at NCCU. Two favorite restaurants of NCCU students in the 1950s were “Our Campus Grill” located on the campus of NCCU and the “Off Campus Grill” in the heart of Durham’s African American community. Both restaurants specialized in burgers and barbecue. It's Labor Day weekend so naturally I had to talk about barbecuing. Barbecue in North Carolina means pulled beef or pork barbecue with Carolina style barbecue sauce. Here is a link to Carolina barbecue sauce recipe.

Eastern North Carolina barbecue sauce recipe: http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/291/NorthCarolinaEasternStyleS64780.shtml

My back to school series: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=back+to+school+series

Back to School Series: Virginia Union

Orange, Pineapple, Banana Smoothie, recipe below

I conducted some thirty interviews with African Americans most of them born before 1945 for my book Hog and Hominy. These are oral histories of southerners talking about food and eateries they frequented during Jim Crow. Some never left the South, and others were southerners or the children of southerners who migrated North. Some shared memories of great cheap eats during their college years. As part of my back to school series, I want to share a story fromYemaja Jubilee an alum of Virginia Union a HBCU in Richmond, Virginia. Located just a couple blocks from Virginia Union were two popular eateries for African Americans called the Greasy Spoon and Johnnie B’s. Johnnie B’s made the best baloney burgers, served with “fried onions, lettuce and tomato, and if you want to, throw a little piece of cheese on there too, that’s good right,” recalls Jubilee a native of Virginia who attended the college in the 1960s. “And the buns were big! They weren’t like the buns now! I get excited talking about it,” says Jubilee. They also sold milk shakes, “all different kinds of milk shakes.” It was the kind of place where there were often lines going out the door to order food “and it was black owned.” Here’s shake/smoothie recipe I made from my 5 and 7 year children as part of there before school breakfast

Orange, Pineapple, Banana Smoothie recipe:

Ingredients

About 3 cups of orange juice or more

2 cups frozen pineapple bits

1 frozen banana

½ cup vanilla soy or regular yogurt

1/3 cup of honey if desired

Scoop of vitamin enriched protein powder

Method

Combine ingredients in a blender and crush on high, had additional orange juice if needed but best when served thick rich. Makes 5 servings

My back to school series: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=back+to+school+series

Children’s breakfast, lunch, and snack ideas: 

http://www.gov.ns.ca/hpp/publications/05092_BreakfastLunchSnackIdeasBooklet_En.pdf

http://familyfun.go.com/back-to-school/back-to-school-lunches-snacks/

http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/everydaycooking/family/schoollunchesforkids

Back to School Series: Bigger, Fatter, Slower

Lobster Thermidor   

Today is my first day of class this fall semester. I am teaching a really interesting course that I've developed over the years called African History and Foodways. During an interview a reporter recently asked me: 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 I am more than “a nerdy academic” and in fact was a “jock” who played in two national championships (losing both by the way) as a Syracuse University lacrosse player. As part of my back to school/work series I want to talk about the summer before the start of my first semester at Syracuse. I set my mind on earning a position as starting defensemen during fall ball I somehow got in my head that a division 1 defensemen had to bigger and stronger than I was at the time—6’ 1’’180 pounds. Today I would be small by division one standards where the average defensemen are taller than me and over two hundred pounds; but today players are also quick and fast. Without consulting any strength trainer I went on this self-inflicted weight and strength gaining regiment. In retrospect, I lifted my fork and spoon more than I lifted weights. That summer I worked for a catering company doing grunt work for the chiefs at the Con Ed facility luncheonette on the out skirts of Tarrytown. Like Verizon workers this summer, that summer unionized Con Ed workers went out on strike for better wages and benefits. The luncheonette staff had to serve three meals a day to Con Ed managers covering the striking workers. That summer I made lots of money working overtime and I ate like a champ downing lobster thermidor and Reuben sandwiches. I also had unlimited access to desserts galore! Over the summery my weight went from 178 to 205. Moreover, in late August, I underwent surgery on both knees to remedy a very painful case of tendinitis. So between my summer job working in a corporate kitchen and the long recovery from knee surgery, I arrived at Syracuse in the fall of 1983 looking like a butter ball turkey ready for Thanksgiving Day team meal! I had become bigger, a little bit stronger, and a lot slower then what Coach John Desko expected. That's a back to school memory that I will never forget.

Lobster Thermidor Recipe: http://www.cuisine-france.com/recipes/lobster_thermidor.htm

My back to school series: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=back+to+school+series

Earth Eats Radio podcast and blog series on back to school :

http://indianapublicmedia.org/eartheats/school-part-1-start-day/

http://indianapublicmedia.org/eartheats/school-part-2-good-food-campus/