A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South
"African Americans are innately wired to want to know who we are. Its almost being like an adopted child."---Sharon Malone, commentator, "Slavery by Another Name." A few days ago I almost gave up on The Cooking Gene. I will admit, I am an impatient man. I am not attracting significant support from African Americans. I …
Continue reading "Watch Blair Underwood/The Nike Galaxy Shoe/And Why I Want this Project to Succeed"
The Project: http://www.indiegogo.com/The-Cooking-Gene-Project-The-Southern-Discomfort-Tour It’s crucial to bring our family together again through food—our family meaning Africa and her Diaspora and all those who admire and appreciate the contribution to world cuisine. However, our family needs to understand why this knowledge system is important and how its practical for us today. Sullivans Island Sign 2004 For …
Continue reading "Twenty Reasons Why This Project and This Research is Important"
So in this process, there are hills and valleys. The other day ago I was a zombified automaton living dangerously on no sleep for 2-3 days trying desperately to get up the courage to get the Indiegogo Campaign page done, get my website up, and make sure that everybody knows whats going on...It wasn't pretty. …
Continue reading "I am Thankful, I am Grateful, I am Excited"
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 …
Continue reading "African American Genealogy: The Cooking Gene As Contextual/Culinary Genealogy"
We are now officially a campaign. http://www.indiegogo.com/The-Cooking-Gene-Project-The-Southern-Discomfort-Tour
While the rest of my team happily sleeps away until morning, I have insanely elected to stay up and work. Now please understand that I am absolutely insane for keeping such long hours these past few weeks, luckily I have no car so nobody is the worse for my blend of creative insomnia and micro-sleeps. …
Special and Heartfelt thanks goes out to the Ebony Hillbillies for allowing us to use their music in our video for Indiegogo. Rique and I have done interpretation for several years on Pinkster Day at Phillipsburg Manor in Tarrytown and I had NO idea that he was one of my heroes until he mentioned I …
It has been two days and I've gotten four hours of sleep. No rest for the weary. The Ancestors are working me overtime. Our Indiegogo Campaign launches on Wednesday, February 1, 2012. Yes, the first day of African American Heritage Month. We are posting the link and blogging the page here and at http://www.Afroculinaria. We …
Continue reading "The Indiegogo Campaign Launches In One Week"
Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi.---Twi Proverb (It isn't wrong to go back and get what you have forgotten.) Food is incredibly political and so is history. Politics doesn't feed, but activism does. That's why we're doing this. We're inspired to use knowledge to make change even as we seek to preserve our …
Continue reading "The Cooking Gene: Activism and Relevance–Why This Matters"
"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 …
Continue reading "The Cooking Gene: Identity and Food and Family History"
The Cooking Gene 