Next Tuesday, June 8 (6:30 PM) Eatonville Restaurant‘s Food & Folklore dinner series is focusing on Moonshine! I’ve been talking with Max Watman, author of Chasing the White Dog: An Amateur Outlaw’s Adventures in Moonshine, the special guest speaker for the evening. [Books will be available for sale and for signing.] I’ve never been big on hooch, though it was a beverage of choice of my grandfather’s back in the day. Watman has conducted his own experiments in distilling as he describes in the book. Earlier this year, The Atlantic featured an article on the cocktail renaissance.
The Eatonville Food & Folklore event won’t be as formal as this clip especially with shrimp and grits and chicken fried steak on the menu (peach pie for dessert). But it’s worth noting that Washington, DC is one of the thoroughfares for illegal moonshine distribution. This story isn’t new. I know of a raid in the 1950s of a laundry business. Can’t divulge the details or names.
But apparently grandpa’s hooch is making a comeback as are little hole-in-the-walls (a little more chic than the jook joints) where a new generation can get a taste of what the old timers threw back to cut loose. Jook joints haven’t disappeared either. You need to know someone who goes there to get there.
Is this some kind of “folksy chic” people are trying on. You betcha.
WHAT: Food & Folklore – Moonshine
with Max Watman, author of Chasing the White Dog: An Amateur Outlaw’s Adventures in Moonshine WHEN: Tuesday, June 8 at 6:30 PM WHERE: Eatonville Restaurant, 2121 14th Street, NW FEE: $45 plus tax and gratuity. Four-course prix fixe meal with moonshine tasting. CONTACT: 202-332-6432 or email foodandfolklore@eatonvillerestaurant.com
The Washington Post’s Peeps Show/Contest has become one of my favorite spring traditions. And this year is no exception in terms of creativity and talent. I never thought Peeps were food in the first place. Always left them in my Easter basket. My favorites were the chocolate anything and the colored eggs. This year the winning Peeps diorama went to an Arlington pair (girlfriend and boyfriend) for their rendition of the 2009 animated film “Up.” Check out the full story on the Washington Post.com.
My “Copyright Criminals” screening community partners The Future of Music Coalition and Words Beats & Life Inc. have teamed up to present “If I Ruled the Blogesphere” Saturday, April 3 from 4 to 7 PM at Busboys and Poets (2021 14th Street, NW). The event will feature prominent hip-hop bloggers in a dynamic conversation about how artists are gaining traction online, the impact of technology on music promotion and how bloggers and artists can raise awareness about important issues in the hip-hop community and beyond. It’s free for WBL Cipher members; $10 for non-members. Register or get more information here.
And the “Copyright Criminals” documentary now has a “Classroom” version available for FREE from ITVS. Check it out here. TREME premieres on HBO April 11th
Unfortunately, I don’t have HBO. I’m not crying about most of the other offerings on cable. But I’ll have to be patient, or depend on the kindness of Undercover Black Man and his colleagues on the team for the new David Simon series “Treme” which premieres in April. Great write up in The New York Times Magazine March 21st. I cringe thinking HBO programming executives had to be sold on Mardi Gras Indians with the woo-woo-woo thing. (sigh!) But buzz is generating. “Treme” is a new drama set three months after Katrina in a community just outside New Orleans proper, primarily populated by musicians.
Next FOOD & FOLKLORE – April 19 at Eatonville Restaurant – “Sophisticated Ladies and Food of the Harlem Renaissance”
I believe I’m introducing A’Lelia Bundles Monday, April 19th at 6:30 PM for Food and Folklore at Eatonville Restaurant (2121 14th Street, NW). A’Lelia is the great-great grand daughter of the pioneering hair care entrepreneur and African American millionaire Madame C.J. Walker; and the great grand daughter and namesake of A’Lelia Walker, a socialite, hostess and “It Girl” of the Harlem Renaissance. (Zora Neale Hurston was one of A’Lelia Walker’s artistic guests and admirers.)
The theme for the Food and Folklore event is food and parties of the Renaissance and a nod to the Arena Stage production of “Sophisticated Ladies” starring and choreographed by Maurice Hines opening April 9 (two tickets will be given away as a doorprize). The cost is $45 (plus tax and gratuity). The price includes a prix fixe 4 course “rent party” menu served “family style” and thematic drink specials. Reservations required. Call 202-332-6432 or email foodandfolklore[at]eatonvillerestaurant.com for more information. Don’t you just love the graphic by Michael Chan?
I don’t know if Kaira “Nikki” Johnson is positioning herself to be a curator, promoter, or impresario for a new generation of visual artists, including herself (graphic artist) but she’s pushing an exhibit of new work by women artists in DC titled “Art of the Soul.” Workshops are included presented by Words Beats & Life, Inc.
Nikki’s vision is this:
Art of the Soul is an 18 day exhibit that explores the unspoken thoughts and feelings of those often unheard; in this case, women! Our goal is to serve the community as an artistic voice for justice and empowerment for all! This exhibit celebrates the power and struggles of women collectively around the world.
We strive to envoke communal dialogue surrounding female related issues and explore ways we can contribute to overturning these injustices through empowerment, both collectively and individually. Art of the Soul will highlight and discuss the topics of self-esteem, judgment, sexism, AIDS, beauty, domestic violence, FGM (female genital mutilation), and many other issues affecting women.
Note: Eve Ensler (The Vagina Monologues) will be signing her new book, I Am An Emotional Creature, at Busboys and Poets February 24.
The blizzard slowed down the opening last week; so tonight (February 19), they’re having a re-do at Busboys and Poets at 486 K Street, NW in DC starting at 8 PM. The exhibit runs through March 1.
There will be an extension in March (5-28) at the CR8 Art Space at 1314 9th Street, NW. Contact Kaira Johnson at theartofthesoul.dc[at]gmail.com.
WOMEN AND WINE
And speaking of women’s art, the March Food and Folklore event at Eatonville Restaurant will feature women winemakers. Deborah Brenner, author of Women of the Vine, and founder of Women of the Vine Cellars, will be the special guest for a wine dinner. I’m tooting my horn as well. I’ve been hosting “Food and Folklore” for 4 months, and it seems to be the anticipated monthly event for people who enjoy good food and good talk. Personally, I get a kick out of dressing Zora Neale Hurston up for the thematic occasion.
A WEST AFRICAN FEAST FOR THE BODY AND SOUL
On February 26 my friend and storyteller Vera Oye Yaa-Anna of Palaver Hut and some friends are hosting a storyteller’s feast featuring cuisines of West Africa, traditional storytelling, and drumming and dancing from Guinea, South Africa, and Haiti. This event takes place at The Corner Store on Capital Hill. The price is $35 for adults; $15 for children 12 and under. Family friendly. Make checks payable to Oye Palaver Hut, Inc. and mail to 317 E Street, SE, Washington, DC 20002
In Freetown, fried chicken was a very special dish.
— Edna Lewis, The Taste of Country Cooking 1976
This week’s Black History month moment appears to be the flap over the menu in NBC’s cafeteria at the Rock in New York City. Questlove, a member of The Roots (Jimmy Fallon’s house band), took a pic of the menu and posted it on his Twitter feed. Apparently, Questlove took offense with the menu prepared by another NBC employee, Leslie Calhoun, whom, like Questlove, is black and works as a chef in the kitchen.
I just wish Questlove had talked with Calhoun before he tweeted his followers. [This is where all food conversations begin.] This video with Leslie Calhoun, posted on the NBC hosted site the Grio (an African American news and entertainment zine) explains her thinking behind the menu…and it’s personal:
I may have said this before on this blog. “Talking about somebody’s food is like talking about their mamma.” I wouldn’t call this black-on-black crime, but I definitely can say the dividing line between north and south still stands out in the African American community when it comes to culture especially food. And we thought it was the east coast/west coast thing. That’s called rivalry. This one seems to have its roots in shame.
Even in the film Precious, which garnered 6 Oscar nominations including Best Picture, we see the main character stealing a bucket of chicken and binge eating it before throwing it up in a trash can. Is she purging the shame of the fried chicken; or does eating fried chicken lead to criminal and erratic behavior? Precious’ story (based on the novel Push by Sapphire) takes place in 1980s Harlem, one of the stops of the Great Migration of African Americans in the early 20th century from the rural or small town segregated south to the industrial north. Surely there were chicken boxes in their laps to make the journey. Even coming back home, you had that chicken box in your lap because few restaurants welcomed black customers in those days. I’m sure the southern migrants had no clue their fried chicken eating would lead to criminal behavior among their descendants. I guess the glasses of wine Precious’ tutor enjoys in the evening wouldn’t lead anyone on the road to ruin as fried chicken would. There’s more I could say about this film’s class and north/south issues just on the handling of the food alone.
Both Questlove and “Precious” director Lee Daniels are from Philadelphia. That’s considered north. They are not the first to translate southern cuisine (which became “soul food” in African American urban communities in the 1960s) or culture into racial stereotyping. I blame it on fast food. No one eats homemade chicken the way they eat it from the fast food chains. Who’s hands prepare it? The NBC moment came right on the heals of the Australian “KFC Cricket Survival Guide” commercial featuring a white man who makes friends with drum rocking black people when he pulls out a bucket of fried chicken pieces. This is how fast food corrupts.
If the only fried chicken you’ve eaten was from a box or bucket, you’ve probably missed that labor intensive process for Sunday only dinner, family reunions, 4th of July picnics, or the repast after a funeral. You missed people claiming their favorite pieces, i.e. one piece per person. Frying chicken is work; work that must be appreciated. You couldn’t and didn’t sit on it to have it. Edna Lewis, in her landmark book The Taste of Country Cooking writes:
The first fried chickens were served at Sunday morning breakfast when the outside work was finished. It was leisurely enjoyed with hot biscuits and delicious browned gravy.
Lewis was born in Freetown, Virginia in 1916, a farming community whose first residents were free persons after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by Lincoln. Frying chicken was a time consuming task, as well as seasonal in Lewis’ Freetown. Lewis also migrated to the north where she was the chef at the Cafe Nicholson in Manhattan, frequented by southern writers Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams, and other writer and artists in search of real Southern food. You can watch Lewis in action in “Fried Chicken and Sweet Potato Pie” by Bailey Barash featuring Edna Lewis and Alabama chef Scott Peacock here. Alert – there’s a whole pig prepared for cooking in this film. Lewis spent her last years with Peacock who became her close friend and culinary collaborator. She died in 2006.
Food always has a story, and memory gives it breath. Let me be clear. Fried chicken’s been around for a long time in the USA. It travels well and it tastes good hot or cold. Who wouldn’t like it. It’s a labor of love in Ernest J. GainesA Lesson Before Dying. Miss Emma sends food to her godson, Jefferson on death row for a murder he didn’t commit. Grant, the teacher, brings the food to him and hopefully will teach Jefferson to read at Miss Emma’s request. Jefferson has been unresponsive to the teaching and the food. Grant tells him:
I’m going to tell her that you and I sat on the bunk and ate, and you said how good the food was. I won’t tell her what you did. She is already sick, and that would kill her. So I’m going to lie. I’m going to tell her how much you liked the food. Especially the pralines.
Ms. Calhoun reminds me of Miss Emma or even Grant’s Tante in A Lesson Before Dying. You can hear the hurt in her voice having her food rejected by “one of her own.” I remember my aunt who looked after me as a child, asked me to visit her when I got home from college. She made me fried chicken wings from Murrays in a stainless steel pot.
Camille Akeju, director of the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum and former director of the Harlem School of the Arts, shared her stories about growing up and having fried chicken for Christmas or other special occasions with her family in Virginia during Eatonville Restaurant‘s Food and Folklore event on African American holiday celebrations and traditions. Part of the prix fixe meal included…you guessed it… “fried chicken.” I was also one of the panel judges to choose Eatonville’s chef. The entree for that competition was fried chicken.
Zora Neale Hurston, who had a talent for raising the ire of a few New Negroes and black intellectuals of her time, collected stories that became part of her folklore collections. In Mules and Men she describes a dance she’s taken to in a Florida town not far from her childhood home in Eatonville. Fried chicken is the life of the party:
Then the men would stick their arms out with a flourish and ask their ladies: “You lak chicken? Well, then, take a wing. ” And the ladies would take the proffered “wings” and parade up to the long table and be served. Of course most of them had brought baskets in which were heaps of jointed and fried chicken, two or three kinds of pies, cakes, potato pone and chicken purlo. The hall would separate into happy groups about the baskets until time for more dancing.
The NBC incident is probably about more than just food. The fact that it took Ms. Calhoun and her colleagues several years to have a Black History Month menu says something about the organization and perhaps deeper employee tensions that may have a tight lid on for now. Other than that, make me a plate with Ms. Calhoun’s fried chicken, black eyed peas and rice, collard greens with smoked turkey (the healthier alternative to ham hocks), cornbread, or any food made by loving hands. I think Ms. Calhoun is owed or at least deserving of some kind of appreciation for her effort, and an opportunity to tell the story of why she chose these foods. There’s no need to jump from the frying pan into the fire.
Note: The Big Read DC will conduct a city read of A Lesson Before Dying in April/May. More information in a future post or update.
Update: In all fairness, I’m posting this clip with Questlove (from Gawker.com) who says the twitpic he posted was intended to be a joke. I’m still confused as to where the joke lands. Was it supposed to be funny to feature a menu like this for Black History month (which is still a put down)? Or was the menu a fake (still a put down). But I’ll let the brotha have his say. He also treated Ms. Calhoun to a bouquet of flowers and a spa certificate.
I’m glad Questlove and Ms. Calhoun are cool. But I still stand that there was nothing wrong, funny or ironic about the menu from the beginning.
This is one year I wish I was in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. The city’s already pumped about the Saints being in the Super Bowl. And as UndercoverBlackman told me “The city really needs this.”
But I’m working Fat Tuesday on another Mardi Gras celebration at Eatonville Restaurant for Food and Folklore. I asked John Franklin from the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and a culinary griot in his own right (someone I just love to hear talk), to be our guide through the foods of the Americas that somehow found their way on the Mardi Gras supper table; that’s where Nona Martin takes over, a native of New Orleans and also a member of the Smithsonian team (like John) at the American Art Museum. She’s going to give the real deal about the Mardi Gras meal. And of course there will be food and Hurricanes to drink. Mardi Gras attire encouraged.
I’ll update this post with the final menu. Price still $45 (plus tax and tip) and includes a 4-course prix fixed themed menu. Reservations required. Email foodandfolklore@gmail.com or call 202-332-3264 (ask for Michael C.)
How ’bout this graphic? That’s Zora Neale Hurston. She wears the mask.