The Cooking Gene: A Preview

In April of 1865, a white man in his 30’s, a former Captain in the Confederate forces pondered his fate and his small family plantation in Alabama having spent several months imprisoned in Vicksburg, Mississippi.  In Alabama awaited a little biracial girl, barely a to.ddler, with steel grey eyes like his.  She ate wild greens and potlicker and buttermilk mashed up for her in a gourd.  Hundreds of miles away in Texas lived her brother, barely a few years older than she, with the same skin color and steel grey eyes–and she would never know of him her entire life.

In April of 1865, Washington and Adaline were making ready for the spring cotton crop when they were told they were free.  That night they and their fledgling family and others got together to feast on a shoat and whatever else they could pull together after the South was starved into defeat.    In two generations, in the lifetime of Washington, his son William would come to own 100 acres of prime cotton land which he passed down to his descendants.  On that land, 144 years later,  his great-great-great-great grandson made a promise to Washington and William to tell their story.