Winter Reading
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$7 • WINTER 2015 • A QUARTERLY PUBLICATION FROM THE SOUTHERN FOODWAYS ALLIANCE Winter Reading MAHALIA JACKSON’S GLORI-FRIED CHICKEN PAGE 39 PEACHES AND CIVIL RIGHTS IN MIDDLE GEORGIA PAGE 39 FEATURES 24 32 38 FLAG GLORI-FRIED THE GEORGIA ISSUE #58 PIZZA AND PEACH IN BLACK WINTER 2015 Chris Offutt GLORI-FIED AND WHITE Alice Randall Tom Okie 2 FIRST HELPINGS 48 SOME LIKE IT HOTTER Sandra Beasley 6 SOMBREROS OVER THE SOUTH 50 INDIANOLA SUNRISE Gustavo Arellano Sandra Beasley 10 THE CORNBREAD 52 LOST FAST FOOD QUESTION FRANCHISES Allison Burkette Brooke Hatfield 12 CORNPONE 57 DEEP FRIED FORTUNE Allison Burkette Sandra Beasley 14 ELECTRIC JELL-O 58 FULANI JOURNEY Lora Smith William Boyle 20 LAGOS OR BUST 62 2015 SFA AWARD Courtney Balestier WINNERS Cover photo by ALLISON V. SMITH Denny Culbert southernfoodways.org 1 Winter 2015 Every Christmas Eve, my mother TRADITIONS ARE serves a congealed salad. She fills in- NOT ACCIDENTS. GRAVY #58 WINTER 2015 dividual dome-shaped tin molds with THEY ARE THOSE cherry Jell-O, chopped nuts, and fruit cocktail. When it’s time to set the table, RITUALS OF she turns each mold out onto a bread- THE PAST THAT and-butter plate lined with a leaf of WE CHOOSE TO Bibb lettuce. Had I stopped to think CARRY FORWARD First Helpings about it when I was younger, I might WITH US. have guessed that this tradition be- longed to my grandmother, and that forging our own food traditions. (It my mother continued the practice out turns out that I’m more like my mom A WIGGLY TRADITION of respect. Now, a dozen years after than I thought, and Kirk takes after my grandmother passed, the dish lives his own mother, a talented and joyful crusty, beloved dive bar on Hillsbor- on. It doesn’t matter whether anyone home cook.) I hope the New Year is a ough Street by the N.C. State campus. actually eats the congealed salad, but time for you to reflect on your tradi- Maybe we were hip all along, and I it wouldn’t be Christmas without it. tions, to revive the ones that you love, just didn’t know it.) We ate at home As we celebrate our first wedding and maybe to implement something six nights a week, and my maternal anniversary, my husband and I are new. —Sara Camp Milam grandmother usually joined us on two or three of those nights. We went through a baked spaghetti phase, a grilled chicken sandwich phase, a n my work for the sfa, turkey burger phase. I’M WITH THE BRAND I often read stories in which the During those years, my parents GENERIC TRADEMARKS I author lovingly recalls the maintained some culinary traditions IN THE KITCHEN Southern foods of his or her child- from their own upbringings—country hood—homemade biscuits, collard ham biscuits for special occasions, When we adopt a brand name as the greens, chicken and dumplings. Brunswick stew on cold winter common name for a product, a generic Usually the author recalls a mother nights, black-eyed peas on New Year’s trademark is born. Many of these from store to store looking for gelatin or grandmother preparing these Day—while others fell to the side. I reside in your kitchen: Crock Pot, that my legs turned to Jell-O.” Jell-O dishes, scooping bacon grease from bet your family did, and does, the Tupperware, and—believe it or not— was an aspirational food in mid-twenti- a tin can by the stove into a genera- same. In graduate school, I read an TV Dinner. Generations of Southeners eth-century Kentucky, writes Lora tions-old cast-iron skillet. academic explanation for this com- recognize Coke as a generic trademark Smith in her article on page 14. I have few such memories from my mon-sense practice: Traditions are for soda. Another generic trademark served childhood, and I turned out just fine. not accidents. They are those rituals Tabasco® has waged several trade- as the icon for our 2015 programming It was the 1980s, and then the ’90s, in of the past that we choose to carry mark battles to defend its status as theme, Pop Goes the South. You’ve Raleigh, North Carolina, at least a forward with us. More recently, I more than a generic term for hot sauce probably noticed the bright pink image decade before the Triangle got hip. (I heard SFA board member Francis in popular use. When we want gelatin, we feature alongside the words. And was away at college and many years Lam tell an assembly of SFA folk the we say “Jell-O,” but Kraft owns the you might want to call it a “Popsicle,” too late before I learned that a young same thing. Which brings me to con- Jell-O brand. It has also entered the but the Popsicle company wishes you Ryan Adams had spent those same gealed salad (a topic you’ll read more vernacular to describe sore, fatigued wouldn’t. It’s a frozen ice treat on a years gigging at Sadlack’s Heroes, a about later in this issue). muscles: “I was so tired after walking stick, thankyouverymuch. Tip No. 58 It’s time to update your SFA membership! Join or renew for 2016 at southern foodways.org to keep receiving Gravy. In 2016, we explore the Corn-Fed South, from bread to syrup. 2 | southernfoodways.org Winter 2015 | 3 First Helpings FEATURED CONTRIBUTOR ALICE RANDALL Tangled Up IN BLUE LAWS alice randall is the author of four novels, including The Wind Number of SOUTH CAROLINA Done Gone, which retells Gone with states that block the Wind from Mammy’s perspective. Sunday retail She is also the first African American liquor sales woman to write a #1 country music song: the 1994 Trisha Yearwood hit “XXX’s and OOO’s (American Girl).” You might catch a whiff of the chorus of that song—“She’s got a picture of was the last state to lift her momma in heels and pearls/She’s Number that its ban on election day gonna make it in her Daddy’s world”— are in the South liquor sales, in 2014. in her feature story for this issue. maid’s uniform, to choir robe, to busi- Most recently, Randall and her ness suit, and finally not a robe in glory, daughter, Caroline Randall Williams, but a self-respected black body. The wrote Soul Food Love, a cookbook more I learned, the more I understood distilleries that doubles as a love letter to the that the power of Mahalia Jackson was women in their family. To spend any the poetry of her face and form adored: KENTUCKY time with Alice Randall and her work a brown woman’s body that was inde- has the most, with is to take in a big hit of girl power. pendent, international, intelligent, (18.3% of the South’s total) Here’s what Randall has to say elegantly and unabashedly large. It breweries per capita about her subject, the late gospel sing- was a body that had transcended, on WAS THE FIRST er-come-fried chicken entrepreneur Earth, not on high, rebukes and scorn. There is one brewery for every FEDERALLY TAXED GOOD. 58,747 people in the state of Mahalia Jackson: Taking control of her kitchen and The tax led to the Whiskey Rebellion, “I am tempted to stop working on taking pride in her body, Mahalia ex- which historians say played a role in my new novel and write a biography ploded Mammy—for some of us, if not ranking it 1st in the Southeastern U.S. the creation of political parties. of Mahalia Jackson. She moved from for all. She is my kitchen saint.” Traipse through the In one big, beautiful book, GRAVY BOOK CLUB Naomi Novik serves up dining rooms of history Joe Dabney legitimized an SFA staffers read more than a magical novel packed and explore the practice often-forgotten Southern cookbooks. In this space, we share with modern girl power, and the philosophy of region. He also reminded old-world folklore, and modern hospitality. I this homesick eastern our favorites with you. Assistant just a dash of fairy tale re-read Jesse Browner’s Kentucky girl that she director Melissa Hall offers this (the Grimm kind). book every year, often used to know how to make issue’s recommendations. just before an SFA event. blackberry dumplings. 4 | southernfoodways.org Winter 2015 | 5 Good Ol’ Chico the buffoonery to come. book, Sombreros and Motorcycles SOMBREROS OVER Here’s the funny thing, though: in a Newer South: The Politics of Stateside, I rarely see a Mexican Aesthetics in South Carolina’s THE SOUTH wear one. Outside of folkloric Tourism Industry, P. Nicole King dance performances, soccer stadi- examined the notorious sombre- WHAT LIES BENEATH THE HAPPY HAT ums, or mariachi shows, we favor ro haven South of the Border, a by Gustavo Arellano tejanas (Stetsons) for everyday square mile of fiesta off I-95 in wear. We give the sombrero the Dillon, just across the line from respect it deserves. It’s headgear North Carolina. Towering over for a certain place and time—like the roadside kitsch is Pedro, a 77- revolutions, for instance, or to ser- ton, 100-foot-tall Mexican wear- enade a señorita in the moonlight. ing—yep—a sombrero. Here, I’ve noticed the prevalence of curious visitors can eat at a som- sombreros in the South ever since brero-shaped restaurant, book my first visit. In 2007, the kind their wedding at the Top Hat Club, students who hosted me at the or climb up the 200-foot Sombre- University of Memphis decorated ro Observation Tower to take in a lectern with a sombrero featur- views of the Carolina countryside.