Friendly Reminder: Sunday May 6th at 11:59 pm our campaign is done. Its going to mean cutting places, venues, community service opportunies, and losing time to do genealogical research if we don't make our goal--so please please please don't take my work here for granted and all the sweat our team has put into this …
Are You Really What You Eat? Or are You the Meals that You Cook?
"Over Yonder" Cooking at the GreenmarketWe have four days left to raise some 3,000 plus for our campaign. Over 600 people viewed this blog yesterday. If only 180 had made a contribution to our Campaign of 18$ or more, the Campaign would have been an overnight success…We need you—Now. Please contribute 18 or more today: www.indiegogo.com/The-Cooking-Gene-Project-The-Southern-Discomfort-Tour When I …
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Explaining: Looking for My Families’ Slaveowners
This project is sacred to me and the people who have elected to spend time working on it with me. Making that video was not easy. Although I treated it as though it were a matter of routine, I began to feel emotionally wound up and hurt as I stammered out the names. I realized …
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More Good Press!!!!
http://www.indiegogo.com/The-Cooking-Gene-Project-The-Southern-Discomfort-Tour If you want to see me at work in the “field” tune into the Roger Smith Cookbook Conference live broadcast from 501 Lexington NYC between 1:30-2:45 PM EST…Panel: Cookbooks and the African American Experience with Donna Pierce, Toni Tipton-Martin, and our moderator, Tonya Hopkins. Link to Broadcast: http://cookbookconf.com/. I'm the first one up--so don't miss …
The Cooking Gene in the Media
I hope that the many people viewing this blog--we are going about a hundred views a day--know about The Cooking Gene (www.cookinggene.com) and the Indiegogo.Com campaign we've been launching ( http://www.indiegogo.com/The-Cooking-Gene-Project-The-Southern-Discomfort-Tour )---we REALLY need your help! You don't have to be a big spender to donate--donations start at ten bucks! However, the more you donate …
African American Genealogy: The Cooking Gene As Contextual/Culinary Genealogy
I believe they call this delayed gratification. I am not resting the same as I once was. I am sleepless at times. I don't know what day it is. The television in the background provides a soundtrack of cooking shows, news programs, sitcoms and political punditry. Every now and then my mind comes back to …
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A Gallery of Interpretive Work
“Slave Food” The Sweet Potato Pumpkin
SWEET POTATO PUMPKIN Although it sounds exotic, the sweet potato pumpkin (Cucurbita moschata) was the late fall glory of the African Virginian’s table and as our ancestors were sold South they carried its seeds with them. Thomas Jefferson stated clearly that it was "On account of the extreme resemblance of its taste to that of the …
The Cooking Gene: Identity and Food and Family History
"Tell me what you eat and I'll tell you what you are." Those are the famous words of Brilliat-Savarin that everybody seems to have morphed into "You are what you eat." I like the "original" translation a lot better. It's more accurate....it's not so much that we are what we eat than it is true …
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My Grandmother’s Fried Green Tomatoes
Fried Green Tomatoes: Grammy Style According to my Mother, "Mama raised some beautiful, fist-sized tomatoes. We'd go out to the garden at Kennedy Street in D.C. and get baby squash, a few green beans, greens, and one time you wanted to plant like the Indians, so we planted broccoli each with a sardine." INGREDIENTS 2 …
The Cooking Gene 