Ice Cream and Political Stability

 Eating ice cream at Coppelia Ice Cream Parlor in Havana  

In the final installment in this years ice cream series, lets go abroad to Cuba. In January of 2004 I took a group of U. S. students to Cuba as part of a winter session course abroad on Cuban History.  Our hotel was just blocks from the famed Coppelia Ice Cream Parlor which is located in a park like setting that takes up an entire city block. There is nothing like this in the United States. The Cuban revolution began in 1959 and the construction of Coppelia happened in 1960. You can purchase ice cream in the national currency in contrast to the hard currency which doesn’t often happen in Cuba making it inexpensive. For example at Coppelia one can purchase an Ensalada—four scoops of some of the best ice cream I've ever had covered with chocolate syrup for 5 pesos around 20 cents! Coppelia's ice cream makes me wonder what role food quantity and quality plays in a government’s support, stability, and longevity? How does change in food policy such as food subsidies for milk, tortillas, or bread change overtime and subsequently shape political changes? I am thinking most recently for example of the bread riots in Mozambique and the increasing long bread lines in Egypt that in part contributed to the revolutionary changes there.

Series Feeding the Revolution: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=Feeding+the+Revolution

Ice Cream Series: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=Ice+Cream+Series%3A

Vanilla Ice Cream Recipe: http://scrumptiousandsumptuous.wordpress.com/2011/05/22/ice-cream-sunday-french-vanilla/

Vegan Vanilla Ice Cream Recipe: http://www.elanaspantry.com/vegan-vanilla-ice-cream/

Eating Ice Cream South of the Border

Paletas de Michoacán, water or cream based coconut, lemon, guava, strawberry, mango, Kiwi, and pineapple popsicles. And as pictured  above, chocolate dipped frozen banana and other frozen fruit treats. Recipes below  

Where coming to the end of July and National Ice Cream Month! In closing out my ice cream series, I wanted to end with some ice cream experiences from abroad rooted in my North American culinary interpretations. Here one from south of the border. In the 1990s I spent several summers as a graduate student living in Guadalajara, Mexico studying Spanish. Eating paletas de Michoacán (popsicles from Michoacán) represented one of my favorite Guadalajara memories.  Paletas are indigenous to the region of Michoacán, Mexico. These are water or cream based popsicles on steroids made with pieces of fresh tropical fruit like coconut, lemon, guava, strawberry, mango, Kiwi, and pineapple.  Coconut still remains my favorite; it’s like eating chunks of coconut in coconut creamed milk frozen solid. After I purchased one the hot Guadalajara sun quickly softened the rock hard coconut treat on a stick enough so I could take bites out of it. Just thinking about it makes my mouth water.  About five years ago, I started seeing Mexican street venders like the one pictured above pushing small white freezer carts advertising paletas de Michoacán on the streets of Harlem and the South Bronx in New York City. Their presence is a good indicator that the population of Mexican migrants had increased significantly in New York City and the variety of ice cream in the big apple has improved.  

Mexican town runs on ice cream: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-01-12-icecream_N.htm

Ice Cream Recipe From Mexico: http://www.npr.org/2012/02/07/146474135/helado-de-cajeta-cajeta-ice-cream

Ice Cream Series: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=Ice+Cream+Series

Food in My Ear This Week

Babson Professor of History and Foodways Frederick Douglass Opie shares his must  hear  food stories for this week including two great food related history books on the Great Depression and soul music and soul food

Food Files from the WPA: http://onpoint.wbur.org/2009/05/15/food-files-from-the-wpa

The Chitlin’ Circuit And The Road To Rock And Roll: http://www.npr.org/2011/12/20/140596530/before-rock-n-roll-the-chitlin-circuit-performed

Meat Producers And, Ultimately, Consumers Hurt By Drought: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/07/25/157355792/meat-producers-and-ultimately-consumers-hurt-by-drought

Baltimore’s Arundel Ice Cream Company And The Civil Rights Movement

Chocolate double dipped ice cream cone, recipe 

In 1954 Arundel Ice Cream Company announced the opening of “Modern Kitchens” featuring “Jewish style” foot long hot dogs, submarine sandwiches, and regular sandwiches, with a Friday and Saturday special “including a jumbo double dip ice cream” and ice cream sodas. The company regularly advertised in the pages of the Baltimore, Afro American, and a paper that catered to African American readers. The placement of the add provides a clue that perhaps the Arundel Ice Cream operated stores in Black Baltimore and segregated ones in white sections of metropolitan Baltimore before 1959. To that clue we had sources that indicate that  in 1959, 156 members of The Civic Interest Group, made of students from Morgan State and Coppin State (two historical black colleges) and Goucher College and Johns Hopkins University (two historical white colleges), along with some local black high school students organized a sit in at an Arundel Ice store in the Northwood Shopping Center not far from Morgan State. Police arrested some protesters but in a short time the student protesters prevailed and the company integrated the facility in March of 1959. Its intriguing to me to see how the civil rights movement at consistent connection to eating in public spaces. 

Civil Rights Movement and Food: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=Civil+Rights+Movement

 Ice Cream Series: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=Ice+Cream+Series 

The Unlikely Ice Cream Sandwich Recipe: http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/jg/jg111209an_unlikely_ice_crea

Arundel Ice Cream in Baltimore, Maryland 1920-1950

A hand dipped ice cream cone, recipes below 

Our ongoing series on ice cream takes us to Baltimore, Maryland for a look at the history of the Arundel Ice Cream Company. The Arundel Ice Cream Company started in 1920 in Baltimore with a plant and ice cream store at 683 Washington Blvd. The plant relocated to 300Ba North Smallwood Street in 1931 where it produced both ice cream products and baked goods for its expanding chain of company owned ice cream stores most of them located within the city limits. The company gained its greatest notoriety for selling more “hand-dipped ice cream than any other manufacturer in Maryland” and for its assortment of flavors included for example Black Walnut. Until the late 1950s it also gained a reputation among local blacks as a company that practiced segregation in its eateries. It’s unclear in the written sources if segregation was a store specific policy or in all of its retail outlets; more on the history of Arundel Ice Cream Company tomorrow. Below is a great blog on how to make hand dipped cones and all kinds of great vegan ice cream toppings.

Black Walnut Ice Cream Recipe: http://honest-food.net/2011/11/06/black-walnut-ice-cream/

Hand Dipped Ice Cream Cone and (Vegan Ice Cream) Recipes: http://kblog.lunchboxbunch.com/2010/07/vegan-ice-cream-toppings-ricemellow.html

More Ice Cream History With Recipes: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=Ice+Cream+Series

Entrepreneur And Ice Cream Baron Tom Carvel

Tom Carvel's First Ice Cream  Stand in Hartsdale, New York 

I grew up in Westchester County in the 1960s through the early 1980s consuming lots of Carvel Ice Cream. But I never knew much about the founder of the company, Greek immigrant Tom Carvel.  Born in Athens, Greece 1906, Carvel migrated with his family to New York City in 1910. He borrowed $15 from his fiancé in 1929 to begin selling ice cream out of the trunk of a truck as a mobile street vendor. He built his first ice cream stand in the Westchester County village of Hartsdale New York after his truck broke down there in1934. He continued to sell ice cream out of the truck until he saved enough money could build a brick-and-mortar facility in 1936. Carvel’s story reminds me of what has happened with many entrepreneurs. Dating back to the 1700s one sees street venders of food or more lately food trucks evolve over time. The formula goes: build a reputation for customer service and great food, attract loyal customers, accumulate capital, transition to a more expensive brick-and-mortar eatery. Carvel experienced phenomenal growth and success, because his drive and ingenuity. He invented and patented his own airfree soft serve ice cream machine in 1939, began franchising his ice cream business in 1947 and subsequently produced prefabricated ice cream stores.  A marketing genius became the first CEO to advertise on the radio and television. Today I can find his products in grocery stores here in New, England.

More Carvel Stories: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=Carvel

Ice Cream Series: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=Ice+Cream+Series

Street Venders and Food: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=Street+Venders

Food Trucks: http://www.foodasalens.com/2011/05/so-you-want-to-graduate-school-berkeley.html

Food History and the Food Project of Boston Part 1 of 2

Interview with Brandy Brooks of the Food Project, a metro Boston NGO

Food Project: http://thefoodproject.org/

Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class, and Sustainability: http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12697

Will Allen and Growing Power: [Watch 3 min 37 sec]  http://www.foodasalens.com/2012/05/will-allen-and-growing-power.html?spref=tw

Boston University Food and the City Conference Talks with Recipes:

http://www.foodasalens.com/2012/06/feeding-1968-student-movement-in-new.html

http://www.foodasalens.com/2012/06/food-1199-and-organizing-public.html

http://www.foodasalens.com/2012/05/food-and-punjabi-community-in-london.html

http://www.foodasalens.com/2012/05/cheesesteak-history-from-philadelphia.html

There Is No better Dessert Combination

Pecan Pie Alamode, recipes below   

July is national ice cream month as part of our ongoing series let's talk about ice cream, and pecan pie. I know the statement is quite opinionated but, I think many will agree that there is no better dessert combination then vanilla ice cream and pecan pie! Perhaps it’s the reason I liked Ben and Jerry’s old Rain Forrest Crunch ice cream flavor. Pecan pie makes me think of my southern heritage and the influence of Amerindians on American foodways. Amerindians gave the pecan its name; they knew and enjoyed them and introduced them to European settlers and the first Africans in North America. Pecans and pecan pies did not become popular in the south until the mid-20^th century when farmers began cultivating a domesticated and improved pecan plant. Below is a link to family pecan pie recipe a student shared with me. Try it with the ice cream recipes below. A good recipe is a family heirloom that should be both treasured and documented for the next generation.

Pecan Series With Pie Recipes: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=Pecans

Ice Cream Series: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=Ice+Cream+Series

Traditional Vanilla Ice Cream Recipe: http://scrumptiousandsumptuous.wordpress.com/2011/05/22/ice-cream-sunday-french-vanilla/

Vegan vanilla Ice Cream Recipe: http://www.elanaspantry.com/vegan-vanilla-ice-cream/

The Most Informative Food Stories I Heard This Week

Professor of History and Foodways Frederick Douglass Opie Share is favorite Foodie Downloads 

Author Interview, Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue: [Listen 19 min 45 sec]

http://wunc.org/tsot/archive/sot1112b08.mp3/view

http://wunc.org/tsot/archive/sot1112b08.mp3

Drought, Farming, and Food Prices: [Watch or Listen 9 min 6 sec] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/weather/july-dec12/drought_07-17.html

Salmon and Changing Native American Food Systems: [Watch or Listen 8 min 21 sec] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/climate-change/july-dec12/salmon_07-18.html

Nine Year Old Prompts Debate Over School Food: [Listen 29 min] http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/foodprog/foodprog_20120716-1600a.mp3

Eating As A PK (Preacher's Kid) in 1930s and 1940s North Carolina

Another story in our ongoing series on the life of Artist and Professor Emeritus Dr. David Driskell through the lens of food

Dinner on the Ground Stories with Recipes: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=dinner+on+the+grounds

Corn Series with Recipes: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=corn+series

More Fred Opie Interviews with David Driskell With Recipes: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=David+Driskell

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

Remembering the Ice Man and His Helper

Eating ice cream in downtown San Augustine, Texas in 1939

In writing my first food history book Hog and Hominy, I interviewed my father Fred Opie Jr. Out of that conversation came a story about an ice cream related job he had as a boy growing up in the Hudson Valley’s Village of North Tarrytown in New York. My father’s description of the job he had helping the town’s ice man make deliveries reminds me of an ice cream production and preservation system unknown to his two grandchildren.

Fred Opie Jr:

There were not too many black [owned] businesses [back when I was a boy growing up in North Tarrytown], I can almost count them on my hand. . . . most of the black businesses were moving businesses, moving companies. . . One company was operated by [Mr.] Grant [who also] had an ice business and sold coal by the bag. I actually worked for him when I was a boy . . . in the 40’s because back then everybody had ice boxes you know. And . . . there was a place where you would go and buy large chunks of ice [and he would haul it in his flatbed truck]. He had a real knack for cutting the ice . . . it was a real art to cutting whole pieces of ice . . .  a real science. [We delivered ice to the Glovers, a family that operated a candy shop on Courtland Street that] sold . . . ice cream.

Making Ice Cream From Scratch Series With Recipes: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=Making+Ice+Cream+From+Scratch+

Ice Cream Tips: [4 min 4 sec] Listen http://www.npr.org/2012/06/30/156034895/the-season-of-ice-cream-tips-from-the-top

Eating Ice Cream and Eating Jim Crow: http://www.foodasalens.com/2010/07/black-zagat-guide-and-eating-jim-crow.html

Pharmacies and Ice Cream Sodas During Prohibition

Interior of Fennell's Greater Pharmacy at Druid Hill Avenue and Biddle Street, Baltimore 1928 

A pharmacy soda jerk serving up an ice cream soda, related recipe below

Doing a series on ice cream for July which is national ice cream month. I found a 1928 image of Fennell's Greater Pharmacy at Druid Hill Avenue and Biddle Street in Baltimore. Prohibition period pharmacies commonly sold medicines along with candies and light refreshments including non-alcoholic drinks like carbonated ice cream sodas. Fennell’s, which one 1920s source called “Baltimore’s biggest and best colored drug store,” had a soda fountain where one could purchase an ice cream soda a sandwich and perhaps a slice of apple pie. The growth and popularity of the drugstore soda fountain can be traced to the development of carbon dioxide in tanks which made carbonated drinks available in the early 1900s and to the start of prohibition in 1919. Thereafter taking a date out to a pharmacy for an ice cream soda and sandwich became a courting ritual. Here are some soda fountain recipes from the 1920s and 30s


Prohibition Era Soda Fountain Recipes: http://www.masterstech-home.com/The_Kitchen/recipes/Reminiscent_Recipes/SodaFountainRecipes.html

Interview with author Daniel Okrent on Prohibition:

http://www.npr.org/2011/06/10/137077599/prohibition-speakeasies-loopholes-and-politics

Ice Cream History: http://onpoint.wbur.org/2010/08/19/the-art-of-ice-cream

Foodways This Week

Babson Professor of History and Foodways Frederick Douglass Opie shares what  he enjoyed listening to this past week

Food Venders and Foot Traffice in the UK: [20 mins] http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/foodprog/foodprog_20120709-1600a.mp3

Ball Park Stadium Food in Philly: [ 2 min 58 sec] http://www.npr.org/2012/07/11/156595344/take-me-out-to-the-ballgame-for-some-vegetarian-food

Nora Ephron The Foodie: [Listen 10 min] http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/gf/gf120707frito_pie_nora_ephro

The Price of Free Donuts During WWII: [5 min 2 sec] http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/07/13/156737801/the-cost-of-free-doughnuts-70-years-of-regret

Making Ice Cream From Scratch Then and Now Part 2

Coal miners' wives making ice cream to sell on Saturday afternoon after payday, Osage, West Virginia, 1938  (photos courtesy of the Library of Congress)

 In the South folks most often made ice cream in late June and the month of July because that was the fruit picking season when the fruit would be sweet—peaches raspberries, cherries (perhaps my favorite summer fruit), strawberries, or whatever local fruit grew in abundance where you lived. The in season fruit would be picked on say a Saturday and the ice cream made for the Sunday the evening dessert following a long hot church service and dinner on the grounds. As the photo above shows entrepreneurs, particularly women, made additional money selling ice cream in urban centers.

Traditional Peach ice cream recipe: http://www.whats4eats.com/desserts/peach-ice-cream-recipe

Vegan strawberry ice cream video recipe: http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=jwWuL1m1T1M&feature=related

Ice Cream Recipe From Mexico: http://www.npr.org/2012/02/07/146474135/helado-de-cajeta-cajeta-ice-cream

Ice Cream Tips: [4 min 4 sec] Listen http://www.npr.org/2012/06/30/156034895/the-season-of-ice-cream-tips-from-the-top

Making Ice Cream From Scratch Then and Now Part 1

Making ice cream in 1940 Caswell County North Carolina 

I learned from oral histories and sources, like this 1940 Caswell County North Carolina image from the library of Congress, that long ago, rural folks would purchase a block of ice and chip off what they needed with an ice pick to make homemade ice cream. Making ice cream from scratch required lots of churning of the dasher filled with ice, fresh cream, sugar, and the local fruit in season.  The ice cream series I did last year inspired reader Jackie Garvin to write, “I have vivid memories of homemade vanilla ice cream . . . The ice cream freezer was hand cranked by everyone that expected to eat the ice cream. We all had to take turns. The ice and ice cream salt was replenished as needed as the cranking went on and on and on.” She adds that childhood impatience would not allow us to wait “for the ice cream to properly “ripen.” As a result, “we dished it out in Dixie cups while it was a milkshake consistency.” With electric, and I would not be surprised to see solar powdered ice cream makers, children today don't have work so hard to enjoy delicious ice cream made from scratch. 

Ice Cream History: http://onpoint.wbur.org/2010/08/19/the-art-of-ice-cream

George Washington’s Ice Cream Recipe: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/02/20/147054700/george-washingtons-ice-cream-recipe-first-cut-ice-from-river

Mark Twain's Ice Cream Favorites: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2011/11/23/142669973/oyster-ice-cream-a-thanksgiving-tradition-mark-twain-could-get-behind

Eating Ice Cream in 1940s Central New York and California

A King Cole Ice Cream Stand in 1940s Syracuse, New York , related ice cream recipes below (photo courtesy of the Library of Congress) 

The King Cole Ice Cream and Candy Company prospered during the WWII era with ice cream stands and a truck delivery service in Central New York. The available sources indicate that the company had its headquarters in Utica, a city with a rich culinary history. There is evidence that singer Nat King Cole invested in a similar Ice Cream Company with his name attached to it on the west coast during the same period. One person recalled her father stopping “at King Cole's Ice Cream Parlor in Noe Valley, California for [delicious] orange sherbet.” However, most of the sources I found are on Central New York accounts of the company. Those who grew up in the region recalled the high quality of its “soft ice cream called custard,” hot fudge sundaes, shakes, and free soft serve cones on Halloween. A person who grew up in 1940s Utica recalled that King Cole ice cream parlor there had the best pistachio ice cream she’s ever had and she eagerly sought a recipe. 

Pistachio Ice Cream Recipe: http://www.browneyedbaker.com/2009/08/12/pistachio-nut-ice-cream/

Vegan pistachio ice cream recipe: http://catesworldkitchen.com/2010/06/vegan-pistachio-ice-cream/

Raw Food Pistachio Ice Cream Recipe: http://rawon10.blogspot.com/2010/04/april-25-2010.html

Ice Cream and Popsicles on the Brain

Home Made Popsicles  

Today's ice cream story comes from writer Langston Hughes. Born in 1902 in Joplin Missouri, Hughes grew up in Lawrence, Kansas, and several other Midwestern communities, at the turn of the century before making his way to Harlem. He served as a war correspondent  in Spain during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Reflecting on eating hardships in Madrid during the War and what he missed most about home, Hughes wrote “I found myself thinking a great deal about hamburgers, hot dogs, sugared doughnuts and ice cream—things one can get on almost any American Corner. . . .” His mention of ice cream reminds of the home made popsicles I make with fruit, juice, a touch of sweetener if necessary and a quick spin in the blender. Frozen strawberries, pineapples, and mangoes from Trader Joe or Costco work well.  It time again for me to purchase some new popsicle molds which are inexpensive. This is a time tested natural way to enjoy popsicles. 

Popsicle Molds from World Market: http://www.worldmarket.com/home/index.jsp?ab=header:logo

More Langston Hughes Stories: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=Langston+Hughes

Food Stories and Interviews With Great Chefs This Week

Babson Professor of History and Foodways Frederick Douglass Opie Shares is Favorite Downloads This Week

Memphis Barbecue Tips From with the Neelys: [Listen 8 min 56 sec] http://www.npr.org/2012/07/04/156221006/down-home-with-the-neelys-for-a-4th-of-july-bbq

Marcus Samuelsson, On Becoming A Top Chef: [Listen 38 min 51 sec] http://www.npr.org/2012/06/28/155909328/marcus-samuelsson-on-becoming-a-top-chef

Julia Child On France, Fat And Food On The Floor: [Listen 10 min 13 sec] http://www.npr.org/2011/09/01/139793130/julia-child-on-france-fat-and-food-on-the-floor

A Pie For All Regions: [Listen 6 min 3 sec] http://www.npr.org/2012/07/04/156200880/a-pie-for-all-regions-serving-up-the-american-slice

Mark Bittman on Cooking Basics: [Listen 16 min 28 sec] http://www.npr.org/2012/07/04/156186039/cooking-everything-bittman-gets-back-to-basics

Ice Cream's Asia Minor Roots

Ice cream merchant, Constantinople, Turkey, 1898 (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)  

Dondurma/Turkish Ice Cream, recipes below 

In celebration of ice cream month, lets delve deep into some of the history of this frozen delight. The Turkish have been making ice cream for some 300 years. Called dondurma in Turkey, it's made from milk, sugar, and thickening agent called salep which is flour made from the root of the Early Purple Orchid which blossoms in the spring. Salep his native to Asia Minor but can be found in India and Germany. The recipe also includes mastic which gives the ice cream a unique chewy and delightful texture. Turkish ice cream takes hours to make and it contains the medicinal quality of improving gastro-intestinal problems. It has a much slower melting point than North American style ice cream and it’s traditionally eaten with a knife and fork; although cones are popular too.  It's sold in store fronts, on street carts, and by street vendors like the one in the image above. As advertisement street venders cry out phrases such as “ICE CREAM Ice cream, ice cream that sends you to the Heaven! Ice cream, the herald of spring has come! As the YouTube link below illustrates, ice cream venders in Turkey play a game of catch it if you can as they mix and scoop the ice cream with a special long utensil. This is a surprise to most tourists and something you have to see for yourself!

Video of Turkish Ice Cream Vender: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlFZxqj5DJU&feature=player_embedded#at=17

Dondurma Recipe: http://www.cookingissues.com/2010/03/20/fake-fryable-brulee-able-salep-dondurma-ice-cream-a-legal-recipe/

July Is National Ice Cream Month: http://www.foodasalens.com/2011/07/ice-cream-truck.html

July His National Ice Cream Month!

Good Humor ice cream truck, Washington, D.C., 1942, Courtesy of the Library of Congress Collection 

President Ronald Reagan gets the credit for naming July national ice cream month! We North Americans consume more ice cream than anybody else on the globe. This month I will be doing a historical series on Ice Cream delving into written sources, oral histories, images, and literature. A reader from my hometown inspired me to post this anonymous poem titled simply “Ice Cream Truck.”

Ice Cream Truck

I was at the park as happy as can be,

When I heard that truck, the truck that makes me scream,

"Ice Cream! Ice Cream! Oh boy, ICE CREAM!"

I grab my money and run after the ice cream,

I chase and chase and chase,

till' I hardly had any breath,

I screamed "ICE CREAM!"

and stopped right at the spot

Then slowly and steadly walk slowly back to the park,

Huffing, puffing, with the music in my head,

I sadly dream of ice cream

the creamy taste and coldness,

No ice cream for today,

but tomorrow is the day,

where I get ice cream.

Poem source: http://creativityunleashed.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Lunaspuffle/Ice_Cream_Truck

Ice Cream Truck Documentary: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/schlarb/we-scream-voices-from-the-ice-cream-underground

Who Cooks and Serves At Your July 4th Barbecue

Here is part two of the history of July 4th food and culture that I started yesterday. Using a wide range of sources, including oral histories, traditional archival materials, and images I maintain that knowledge of who cooks and serves food and what and where on eats is a good indicator of one's social position and status. I'm a guy who loves to cook and serve food at home and at barbecues away from home. It's always amazing to see how both men and women respond to that aspect of my personality as strange, admirable, and praiseworthy. My wife educated me about the reality that people take women for granted when they perform the same task that our society as defined as a women's responsibility. Similarly I note who the employees at restaurants, cafeterias, or catered events are. I note their gender, ethnicity, and indicators of their power. Often we the public treat such employees like Ralph Ellison's character the invisible man or woman.  I wondered Who cooked and served the food at the collective July 4th barbecues that had become a tradition in many North American rural communities after the end of the American Revolution and English colonial status? In communities with enslaved Africans, slaves ran the barbecue pits and served the food and drink. In communities without slaves, free local men and women of different ethnic origins who had developed reputations performed the task. Traveler John James (1785 –1851) description of a 19th century July 4th country barbecue near Louisville, Kentucky tells us, “Fifty cooks or more” with no ethnic description provided, “moved to and fro as they plied their trade; waiters of all qualities,” says James, perhaps an indicator of ethnic, class, and gender equality here, “were disposing the dishes, the glasses, and the punch-bowls, amid vat[s] filled with rich wines. . . . [T]he roasted viands [food] perfume the air, and all appearances conspire to predict the speedy commencement of a banquet such as may suit the vigorous appetite of American woodsmen.” Today we North Americans tend to do our July 4th barbecuing with family and a few invited friends from the same class and ethnic group. I argue that diversity exist around the evening fireworks ritual of the July 4th celebration more so than the breaking of bread and consumption of sumptuous barbecue and side dishes. 

My Barbecue Stories with Recipes: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=barbecue


Barbecue sauce music video—a must see! http://filmshare.info/view/812/the-bbq-song/

Collective July 4th Barbecues

Collective Beef Barbecue Event in The Midwest Circa 1940s

Here’s traveler John James (1785 –1851) description of a 19th century July 4th country barbecue near Louisville, Kentucky. The source shows that July 4th represented one of those special occasions when just about every member of a rural society had access to good food in abundance which reminds me of those lean times during graduate school, in which I ate well. An invitation to a July 4^th barbecue in Syracuse or Washington, D. C. for me in the 1990s meant a reprieve from my affordable but often no frills eating regime. James writes, “The free, single-hearted Kentuckian, bold, erect, and proud of his Virginian descent, had arranged for the whole neighborhood to celebrate Independence Day with one consent. No personal invitation was required where everyone was welcomed by his neighbor, and from the governor to the guider of the plough all met with light hearts and merry faces . . . . For a whole week or more, many servants and some masters had been engaged in clearing an area. . . . Now the wagons were seen slowly moving along under their load of provisions, which had been prepared for the common benefit.” James goes on to describe the food and beverage that members of this rural community contributed toward this collective July 4^th barbecue. “Each denizen [citizen] had freely given his ox, his ham, his venison, his turkeys, and other fowls. Here were to be seen flagons [jugs] of every beverage used in the country . . . the melons of all sorts, peaches, plums, and pears, would have sufficed to stock a market.” Fresh colorful sweet fruit, that’s one of the things I craved the most in grad school during summer months.  Try grilling some fresh fruit this year in addition to the traditional items on your barbecue menu.

Grilled Peach Recipes: http://hubpages.com/hub/Grilled_peaches_Three_ways_to_enjoy_ripe_local_peaches_on_the_BBQ

Southern sweet tea and lemonade recipes: http://www.soulfoodandsoutherncooking.com/southern-beverage.html

The Regional barbecue sauce variatons: http://www.bbq-sauces.com/

Some Barbecue History for July 4th

Mound Bayou, Mississippi roadside BBQ  Smoker Made From a  Oil Drum

Eugene “Hot Sauce” Williams operated perhaps the best barbecue stands in 1950s Cleveland, Ohio. In 1920, Williams, a childhood friend of Louis Armstrong and a one-time fish peddler in Louisiana, migrated from New Orleans to Chicago, where he became a cooper. Four years later he migrated to Cleveland in search of a business opportunity. With no previous professional experience, he started a barbecue rib business after taking out a loan for $58 from “Cleveland’s first barbecue czar,” Henry “the Black King” Burkett. Williams returned to his native New Orleans around 1934, spending days “just drifting among cooks, gathering bits of information here and there on barbecue. One of the city’s oldest chefs took an interest in him and let him in on his secret method of preparing tasty ribs.” First flavoring the ribs with a “a dry spice powder and taste-tantalizing hot sauce.” Second cooking the ribs with the right timing and the right amount of heat something that takes time to learn how while apprenticing of an experienced pit master. Further instructions including cook the ribs slowly over a low-burning charcoal flame, taking care to thoroughly cook them, but not so far as to let them dry out. Williams returned to Cleveland with the culinary secret of making excellent ribs and developed two thriving rib stands, which employed twenty-five people. By 1950 he had grossed about $100,000 each year in sales as customers packed the two stands he operated “almost any hour during the six nights” per week they were open. He offered no delivery service, “but his spots often fill large orders from private parties and clubs,” said an article in Ebony magazine. Even Louis Armstrong was said to have phoned in an order for “300 large boxes of the flavory ribs [sic].”

More Eugene “Hot Sauce” Williams with Related Recipes: http://www.foodasalens.com/2010/05/new-orleans-and-secret-to-making-great.html

More Barbecue History With Related Recipes For Fanatics: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=barbecue+sauce