A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South
Wow.... Sitting here right now its almost sunset in the DC area and this computer is about to be shut off in honor of the Sabbath. It's been a ride like no other.....this journey to making this dream of mine to find my roots and trace them through food--and bring people together across lines of …
Continue reading "Why this Project is Important to Me–A Last Call to Contribute and Act"
Name: Edward Booker Relation: Great-Great-Grandfather of Michael W. Twitty through his paternal grandmother, Eloise Booker Born: 1839 Died: 1953 Where: Prince Edward County, Virginia around the town of Prospect. Occupation: Former enslaved indivdual on the Booker tobacco plantation, Freedman and landowner, and tobacco farmer I need help telling his story--and finding out more about him …
Writer Andrea (Andi) Cumbo has a project in the same family of The Cooking Gene entitled "You Will Not Be Forgotten," a fascinating project that examines the history of the plantation where she lives in Fluvanna County, Virginia. It just so happens that Andi knows people with the surname Booker, which represents a large group …
Continue reading "Meet Andi Cumbo: “You Will Not Be Forgotten”"
In April of 1865 a seventeen year old house servant and his brother stood holding their Master's horse outside of a courthouse in central Virginia, when a bearded man dressed in blue and a bearded man dressed in gray emerged from a doorway. Within seconds their world as they knew it shattered when they were told …
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 …
Alabama.....Russell County, Coosa County, Clay, Monroe, Tallapoosa, Jefferson, Madison, Jackson.....North Carolina.....Nash, Edgecombe, Onslow, South Carolina...Charleston, Lancaster, Virginia....Richmond City, Henrico Co., Prince Edward, Appomattox, Buckingham, Lynchburg, Amelia, Surry, New Kent, Accomac....south central Tennesee, western Georgia.... "Where?" in the South is not an easy question... I guess I have always put these places in some mythical category …
Continue reading "Into another Country…..and into More Country…Charting our Journey"
The Cooking Gene 