Southern Food and Family
“Come on in,” Uncle George yelled to my cousins, Terry and Savannah. On a cool November day, Thanksgiving to be exact, all of the women in my family were gathered in the kitchen preparing dinner. Aunt Debby was making yams and washing the collard greens before placing them in the pot to be cooked. Aunt May and Aunt Janet were working on the dressing and macaroni while all of the other women of the family are doing everything possible to make this festive holiday a success. “Turn the TV up and be quiet!” Uncle George was now grumpy! The McDonald’s Thanksgiving parade was broadcasting on the television and it is his favorite thing to watch the morning of Thanksgiving, but for the rest of the day the television would
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be on ESPN for some pro-football. Other than watching parades and football on thanksgiving, another family tradition was for my grandmother to be over the task of stuffing the turkey, but we all decided that it was time for my mom to be a part of this.
While everyone was scurrying around frantically, we heard a yell from the kitchen. “Mom,” my mother yelled. “What?” my grandmother shouted. “How exactly do I stuff this turkey?” stated my mom. You could sense the amount of frustration and slight panic in her voice. Tensions were already high because my grandmother was known in the family for her amazing stuffed turkey and those expectations were stressing my mother out. My grandmother thoroughly explained the tedious process once again. The look on my mom’s face made it apparent that she did not understand and possibly meant she wanted more than a verbal explanation to help her finish this tedious task successfully. Trying not to draw unwanted attention to her anxiety, my mother tried her best to stuff the turkey the way she had been instructed. She placed the turkey into the preheated oven. After about an hour or so, the aroma of the turkey filled the house and I was blinded by the succulent smell. I could tell that a weight had been lifted off of my mother’s shoulders. We all gathered around to say a prayer and then to eat. As everyone started putting food out, my mom went to the kitchen to take the turkey out. “KLAT!” We all ran to the kitchen to see a freshly stuffed turkey splattered across the
floor. Although the turkey was ruined and we thought thanksgiving was a disaster, it was also a moment that will be remembered. I drove to the store to get a new turkey while my aunts and grandmother tried to console my mother. We all re-stuffed the turkey together and laughed about the previous event. Moments like these are what make food a vital part of southern culture. Cooking home cooked meals and smelling the Southern foods like collard greens and cornbread are what make memories like this a part of Southern traditions in a lot of families. Getting together and just making small things like watching a parade together or watching football on Thanksgiving or Christmas make up Southern traditions. The tension in the kitchen was high but we still made the best out of the situation. We simply came together as one to overcome the obstacle at hand and still have a successful Thanksgiving. Tension is a part of family and food but it can still make an incredible results. The term “South” is often thought of as a region. This term goes deeper than that. I believe that one can be of a place but not from it. One can be tied to the place by food, family, heritage, etc. Even though a certain food is not produced where one is from it may make them feel as if they are a part of something special. Southern food has connected families especially, in the black culture dating back to slavery days. The only time slaves were able to come together was at the dinner table at night. This was a time when they could escape their harsh realities and act as one. Food and eating together is very important in not only my family but in a lot of other African American families because it was emphasized to be an important part of our culture and they passed that down to their children and so forth. Food is the thread that weaves family traditions together and keeps it running throughout the family for generations. The amount of sacrifices that ancestors had to make just for them to be able to eat together is what makes it so much more important for us to bond and for that bond not to be broken over meniscal arguments or other disagreements. A family should always stay together and endure everything, good and bad standing side by side, knowing that they had support from each other. I know that my family would probably be not as close if we did not eat and prepare meals together on big holidays. Even just random Sunday meals or cookouts not spent together to eat and bond, we would not be nearly as close to one another as we are today. Southern food truly connects us to family. The bond that we have with each other is primarily based around the tradition of Southern home cooked meals makes us a stronger unit and able to better connect and understand each other which would be a lot more difficult to do so if we had not gotten the opportunity to get close and know how to deal with things as one instead of as an individual.
Many wonderful memories come to mind when I think about my life growing up in the South. Family barbeques, friendly people, and neighbors that will help you in a time of need are only a few of the good things about growing up in the South. Neighbors will knock on your door and ask to borrow some sugar. Friends will bring you homemade soup when you are sick. There is almost always a kind person to help you if you are stranded on the side of the road with a flat tire. The South if full of wonderful people. If there were ever a natural disaster such as a hurricane, the best place to be is in the South because we pull together and help one another in times of need. Southern culture has taught me many good values that I live by even today.
Many scholars have written about the particularly intimate connection between food and family prevalent in Italian-American culture. Herbert Gans interprets this to be a legacy of the traditional Southern Italian peasant culture that the immigrant generation successfully passed down to the younger generations in America. Thus, the connection is implied to be a “transplanted” cultural trait. However, when viewed in light of the social changes in America, this bond was inevitably affected by the Italians’ experiences in America. Italian-American food culture was a tradition shaped by changes outside and inside the family. An examination of the Italian-American family of the interwar years (c.1919-1940) demonstrates that the critical role food came to play in the family life of Italian-Americans was very much the product of inter-generational negotiation. The second generation , largely affected by public discourse, originally viewed “Italian” food as a marker of social inferiority. Therefore, food became a major source of family conflict between generations. But, through inter-generational negotiation, food was ultimately to become a fundamental unifying force of the Italian-American family. Today, in light of the rise of inter-ethnic marriage rates between Italians and Italian-Americans in America, a new form of negotiation centering on food is taking place within the Italian-American family—‘inter-spousal’ negotiation.
Michael Twitty is a food writer and culinary historian best known for preparing, preserving and promoting African American food ways and its origins in Africa. He emphasizes how African food culture has made a great impact on the American South. His cooking helped him to learn about his identity and culture. He describes “identity cooking” a way to better understand him and his culture as a Jewish-African American. A project he developed called “The Cooking Gene” is what he explains as a means of “exploring my family history through food, from Africa to America, from slavery to freedom.” Race, food and ethnicity all have a more complex and cultural meaning especially when fused together. Different
While this invitation produced anxiety for every person that attended this meal, the toll that it took on my nephew was rather difficult to watch. His father chose to attend the day before Thanksgiving; but a half-hour before the scheduled 2 p.m. time for dinner, he let his son know that his girlfriend and her children had decided to come as well. While the adults scrambled to add additional seating, my nephew excitedly stood outside on the porch anticipating his guests’ arrival. An hour later, this little boy dejectedly wondered whether his father had changed his mind. When his guests finally arrived, we all ate an awkward, cold dinner, and my ex-brother-in-law whisked them all (including my nephew) away to his family’s Thanksgiving meal, which meant that my disappointed nephew never got to share the chocolate pie that he had helped make.
In comparison to the northern colonies, the southern colonies were quite numerous in their agricultural diet and failed to have a central region of culture. The uplands and the lowlands created up the two main elements of the southern colonies. The slaves and poor of the south typically ate an identical diet, that consisted of the many of the native New World crops. salt-cured or smoke-cured pork typically supplement the vegetable diet. Rural poor typically ate squirrel, possum, rabbit and alternative forest animals. Those on the “rice coast” typically ate ample amounts of rice, whereas the grain for the remainder of the southern poor and slaves was Indian meal employed in breads and porridge. Wheat wasn't a possibility for many of those that lived within the southern colonies.
Four different people, four different lifestyles, all with at least one thing in common—their races (or so we have yet to discover). I began my interviews wanting to show the similarities and differences in eating habits and traditions with the African American perspective in mind. Although race is used as the combining factor in this situation, each individual’s lifestyle, cultural behavior, and even eating habits are all very unique. My interviewees consisted of four Americans, as mentioned before all of same race, with similar yet very distinct backgrounds. They range from a black Jew, to a “Jamerican,” to what I would call a “traditional southerner”, right on down to a modern day Muslim. They all agreed to fill me in and reveal to others the details of their personal history and family backgrounds. Geography, family tradition, and religion all play factors in what they eat as it always has dating back to ancestral times. I began with “JJ Alex;” a 20 year old African American male from the east coast. He is a middle class college student. JJ Alex sounds like your typical college student but he is far from typical. What singles him out from many of his other peers is his religion. You might ask, “How would his religion relate to his eating lifestyle unless he’s a Muslim?” “He couldn’t possibly be Jewish—or could he?” A black Jew—better known as a Seventh Day Holiness. His great grandfather was a Rabbi and the basic teachings in his religion are as followed: his faith believes the Sabbath (day of rest) to begin at sunset on Friday lasting until sunset on Saturday; some worshippers wear Yarmulke; his faith also follows the Old Testament of the Bible; and they wear the Star of David.
When you go to a soul food restaurant, you know exactly what to expect – fried chicken and pork chops, candied yams and corn bread, macaroni and cheese and barbecue ribs, all slow cooked and marinated, the good old fashioned way. But have you ever stopped to consider what soul food actually is? Well, we've got good news for you – Fusion East in Brooklyn, NY is hear to lay it out all for you, from its roots and beginnings to modern variations.
In Keillor’s “A Wobegon Holiday Dinner,” he describes both the present day realities of family Thanksgiving as well as the past history of his family’s Thanksgiving. Each circumstance, in the present day holiday, is unthinkably different from the next, whereas...
After reading different articles and learning more about African American culture, it made me want to find out more about my own family culture. There are different traditions that are pasted down in generations, which could have been a part of African culture that we don’t realize such as parenting styles. I don’t remember hearing too many stories about my past relatives growing up, so I had to find out more on my family experiences in the south. Also, I wanted to see how spirituality played a roll in my family choices. My goal in this paper is to show how I got a better understanding of the reason my family could be structured the way it is now.
On a humid afternoon in Georgia as you peacefully rock in your rocking chair you are approached with the irresistible scent of fresh barbecue, and sweet hickory chips. As the scent lingers on, you can’t help but crave a plate of this comfort food. To those in America, this is known as Barbecue. Barbecue has been a staple food of the south for as long as anyone can recall. Not only does barbecue taste good but it helps bring people together to enjoy a special occasion or to just have dinner together. In this essay I will give a general definition of barbecue, tell a brief history on it, discuss the various styles of it, and explain why it’s so popular in the South.
The culinary world of the American South has been heavily influenced by the culture and traditions of the Africans and other people of color who were brought to the United States as slaves. The traditions they brought with them, as well as the traditions they later developed based on the available food resources, contributed to a thriving food culture that still exists today. However, the food culture of the American South no longer tells the story of the African-American people who created it, and black chefs are rarely recognized for their contributions to the food traditions in this region. This begs the question: Where are the black chefs of the South? The lack of recognition among African-American chefs in the Southern culinary world
I want to cancel my birthday celebration at nan’s house. I’ve decided that I want to help collect food for the Manna Food Center.” The room suddenly had a tense and awkward atmosphere. It was so silent that you could hear a pin drop. “Hear me out, okay? Don't get mad, please. I just wanted to help because I wanted to have a special birthday where I help out and have something to be proud of! Please don't be mad!” I was panicking. I prepared for the worse, but nothing could have prepared me for this. Out of nowhere, everyone burst out laughing. Timothy, my brother even started giggling. I was so lost and confused. “What’s so
The place where I would like to call me second home is located all the way down in Savanna Georgia. I can remember way back about nine years ago in the summer of 2008. The plane ride was a long and hot, and I spent the whole ride playing on my PSP. When I got off the plane I remembered walking through the freezing cold Savanna International Airport seeing all the flags of different countries hanging from the ceiling, but then taking one step out of the airport front doors looking for the car services that was rented and feeling the crushing 100°F heat and deathly humidity. But it is all worth the painful heat to spend time in the beautiful city.
American culture is changing dramatically. In some areas it’s a good thing, but in other areas, like our food culture, it can have negative affects. It is almost as if our eating habits are devolving, from a moral and traditional point of view. The great America, the land of the free and brave. The land of great things and being successful, “living the good life.” These attributes highlight some irony, especially in our food culture. Is the American food culture successful? Does it coincide with “good living”? What about fast and processed foods? These industries are flourishing today, making record sales all over the globe. People keep going back for more, time after time. Why? The answer is interestingly simple. Time, or in other words, efficiency. As people are so caught up in their jobs, schooling, sports, or whatever it may be, the fast/processed food industries are rapidly taking over the American food culture, giving people the choice of hot
As usual I woke up to the sound of my father pounding on my bedroom door, hollering, “Get up! Get on your feet! You’re burning daylight!” I met my brother in the hallway, and we took our time making it down the stairs, still waking up from last night’s sleep. As we made our way to the kitchen, I thought about what to have for breakfast: fried eggs, pancakes, an omelet, or maybe just some cereal. I started to get hungry. As usual, mom and dad were waiting in the kitchen. Mom was ready to cook whatever we could all agree on, and dad was sitting at the table watching the news. The conversation went as usual, “Good morning.” “How are you today?”