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SERVICE. FOOD. COMMUNITY. THESE ARE THE VALUES WE‘VE BUILT JIM ‘N NICK’S AROUND AND THAT‘S WHY WE SUPPORT THE WORK OF THE SOUTHERN FOODWAYS ALLIANCE. WE ARE PROUD TO CALL THEM FRIENDS AND WE RAISE OUR FORKS TO A JOB WORTH DOIN’ AND A JOB WELL DONE. Dine In • To Go • Drive Thru Private Dining • Catering jimnnicks.com @jimnnicksbbq FALL 2018 • NO. 69 CALENDAR OF EVENTS My grandfather, Roosevelt Crowder, owned and operated a farm near OCTOBER 1 Kenbridge, Virginia, from the 1950s through the 1970s. He farmed tobacco, Visit SFA’s shiny new raised livestock, and grew fruits and vegetables. The tobacco was their cash website launch crop; they often gave away the produce ISSUE NO. 69 • FALLand meat 2018 to friends, neighbors, and strangers. During a summer break from college in 2009, I began documenting his life and that of my grandmother, Easter OCTOBER 8 Crowder, as they worked their 20 acre farm in Lunenburg County. I had an CELEBRATE LOUIS OSTEEN, instinct to catalog their voices, their daily A SOUTHERN CULINARY LEGEND routines, the wrinkles of their hands and 6:00 p.m., The Farm at Old Edwards Inn and Spa, faces. I wanted to regard the lives they Highlands, NC built for themselves and their children. I wanted to pay attention to these people who meant so much to me and document for a larger audience how their lives OCTOBER 1113 mattered. —Nicole Crowder, photographer EXPERIENCE SFA’S 21ST FALL SYMPOSIUM Oxford, MS Gravy is a publication of the Southern OCTOBER 18 Foodways Alliance, an institute of the JOIN KELLY ENGLISH AND CAMRON RAZAVI Center for the Study of Southern Culture FOR FRIENDS OF THE CAFÉ BENEFITING SFA at the University of Mississippi. 6:30 p.m., Alabama Chanin @ The Factory, Florence, AL The SFA documents, studies, and explores the diverse food cultures of the changing American South. Our work sets a welcome DECEMBER 5 FEATURE table where all may consider our history HERON’S ROOTED IN THE SOUTH VINEGAR AND CHAR:and VERSE our future FROM in a spirit THE of respect and reconciliation. BENEFITING SFA, 6:30 p.m., SOUTHERN FOODWAYS ALLIANCE The Umstead Hotel and Spa, Cary, NC 27 JOHN T. EDGE Editor-in-Chief [email protected] 2 Poetry, in Motion 18 What a Way to Make a Living Sara Camp Milam MARYElizabeth BETH LASSETERCatte Publisher [email protected] 4 Featured Contributors 60 Comfort Food SARA CAMP MILAM Editor [email protected] Gipe 6 Director’s Cut John T. Edge 68DANIELLE Tex-Mex A. SCRUGGSKashmira Visuals Editor FEBRUARY 9, 2019 [email protected] Bhatt SFA WINTER 8 Well Versed, Well Fed RICHIE SWANN Designer JANUARY 1013, 2019 SYMPOSIUM Lora Smith [email protected] Last Course TASTE OF THE SOUTH 8:30 a.m.–6:30 p.m., Nicole Crowder Blackberry Farm, Haven 12 In the Spirit KATHERINE W. STEWART Fact Checker Walland, TN Birmingham, AL Demczuk Art Gabriella by Gustavo Arellano Cover art by GABRIELLA DEMCZUK LETTER FROM THE EDITOR at the end of 2016, shortly Hand-pulled linocuts by before I went on maternity leave, John Julie Sola accompany the T. Edge floated the idea of compiling an poetry in Vinegar & Char. SFA poetry anthology—an idea he cred- ited to the poet Kevin Young (a good friend of John T. and of the SFA). It would be published in the fall of 2018 to coincide to me. There were female, male, and with our food and literature symposium. nonbinary voices. Voices from the Texas He asked me what I thought about the borderlands, from the hills of Appalachia, idea. What I thought was, Books take two from the Cuban districts of Miami. Black years, minimum. This is not happening. voices, white voices, Latino and Asian What I said was, “Sure! We can do that!” American voices. Their poems spoke of I felt slightly less daunted when the won- gender. Of labor. Of class and race. They derfully talented Sandra Beasley, a long- dealt with the past and the present. They time SFA collaborator and frequent were peopled with family, friends, and Gravy contributor, agreed to serve as the strangers. With one exception, these editor. Then, I became a mother and poets are all living, all still writing. Across forgot the whole thing. geography and generation, two things Toward the end of my leave, John T. connect their work: food and region. texted to say that Sandra would be in It was a pleasure to work with Sandra town for a week at the end of April, and on the selection of these poems, and a could we put our heads together about luxury to revel in their language and the poetry book? I was probably doing rhythms. Ultimately, fifty-five of them at least two of the following at that constitute Vinegar & Char: Verse from moment: holding Sally, strolling Sally, the Southern Foodways Alliance. Let me singing the alphabet to Sally in an unsci- be clear: My role in this process was, at entific attempt at fostering early literacy, most, that of the little girl in the Shake folding laundry, or watching The West ’n Bake commercial. Sandra’s vision Wing. I read “April” as “August,” and shaped this collection. And it shapes an again replied, “Sure!,” and again forgot expansive, inclusive view of the South— the whole thing. (In my defense, I’d like of its people and their foodways. That’s to say that I put a stop to this pattern a view shared by the SFA, and it describes once I returned to work.) a place I want to live. A place I do live. April came around, Sally was four Here, we’ve gathered fourteen of those months old and reciting her ABCs poems to share with Gravy readers, as (kidding!), Kirk and I were moving well as a lagniappe: a new poem by houses, and all of a sudden it was poetry Sandra Beasley that, for now at least, week. Sandra doesn’t know this, but her you’ll only find in these pages. Gravy visit gave me the most satisfying, ener- image editor Danielle A. Scruggs com- gizing intellectual exercise I didn’t know missioned Gabriella Demczuk to make POETRY, IN MOTION I needed. the mixed-media art that accompanies We sat on my porch and read and the poems. Behind the scenes of Vinegar & Char talked about poetry while Sally napped. Savor this selection. Read each poem BY SARA CAMP MILAM Sandra brought with her sheaves of aloud. Share it with a friend, a coworker, poems from dozens of poets. Some of a loved one. And when you’re finished, them I knew as Gravy contributors or the rest of Vinegar & Char awaits at your Julie Sola Julie symposium presenters. Most were new local bookstore. 2 southernfoodways.org Fall 2018 3 FEATURED CONTRIBUTORS SANDRA BEASLEY Sandra Beasley is the author of Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life. Her essays and articles have been featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, Creative Nonfiction, The Oxford American, and elsewhere. She is also the author of three poetry collections: Count the Waves; I Was the Jukebox, winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize; and Theories of Falling, winner of the New Issues Poetry Prize. She edited Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. Beasley lives in Washington, DC. She teaches poetry and nonfiction with the University of Tampa low- residency MFA program. What were the hardest and easiest aspects of compiling Vinegar & Char? First and foremost, I was looking for great poems in a variety of aesthetic and formal modes. That was the easy part, because there’s so much talent out there. But I was also balancing in terms of identity, generation, and geographic Celestia Photos by Morgan distribution, all within a limited page count and an accelerated timeline. I’d start on a “Volume II” tomorrow if I could. GABRIELLA DEMCZUK Gabriella Demczuk is a Lebanese American photographer, printmaker, and journalist based TOPIC between Washington, DC, and Baltimore, Maryland. Her work looks at politics, policy, FRONT OF HOUSE / BACK OF HOUSE: and history in shaping American identities Restaurant Narratives and communities. How did you arrive on a concept for the images LOCATION DATE TICKETS that accompany this issue’s poetry feature? HAVEN SATURDAY $150 PER PERSON I was reading the introduction to the poems and was interested in the idea that Birmingham, AL February 9, 2019 (includes food & drink) meals are the stories and histories we share with one another at the dinner table, and so I made paper out of food, to reflect pages that we write our stories on. I was inspired by John Cage’s Edible Drawings. I used ingredients found in each poem to create a sheet of paper, some of which came from my own leftovers and THANKS TO BIRMINGHAM CVB AND ALABAMA TOURISM FOR THE SUPPORT. scraps from meals made with friends while in Texas, which I thought added to the idea of sharing our stories. Bottom: Demczuk Gabriella West; Milly Top: Tickets go on sale Thursday, November 8 at 10 a.m. CDT. 4 southernfoodways.org Neither an SFA membership nor a password is required to purchase tickets. DIRECTOR’S CUT home, dropping Chevron refuse as they three arrivals. go, leaving his yard “dotted with pellucid In the weeks leading up to the fi rst white bags as far as the eye can see, football game, I hear the University of greased to a ghostly glow.” Mississippi Pride of the South marching My ire is rooted less in the litter and band practice, cymbals crashing and more in the knowledge that these drums thudding as they march across a stick-mounted protein delivery vehicles fi eld that borders a patch of woods that don’t satisfy.

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