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                Liberty Lane, Conway, South Carolina, USA
               
                Liberty Street, Conway, South Carolina, USA (Sharath Palathingal)
                 Ocean Fish Market - Conway, SC by AroundCarolina YouTube      

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The location of Washington D.C. is relevant to us understanding the poem "Carlo Flunks the Seventh Grade" because it is the political center of the America and plays a significant part in the discrimination experienced by non-white races.As the heart of the government of the United States, Washington has had a significant impact in American culture.
Brought from the continent of Africa, plantation slaves developed their own culture in order to survive their harsh situation. After the Civil War, slavery changed to discrimination, and throughout the 1900s, many African Americans were discriminated against. Stores and restaurants refused to serve African Americans and many public services separated their services between whites and negros. As a result, African Americans developed their own culture and cuisine. In order to survive discrimination, many Africans must have had to start their own businesses, such as restaurants, serving African Americans in place of those businesses that did not.

However, discrimination in America was not just present in the form of black versus white. Other races, such as the Chinese and the Hispanics are also discriminated against. Historically, women were also discriminated against and were refused privileges that were automatically given to men.

In the poem, rather than being discriminated by skin color, both the speaker and one of the characters are discriminated by their choice of lunch. BothSplendi Pretti and the speaker’s lunch are singled out to be placed on the windowsill by the teacher.The owners of these “smelly” lunches are ridiculed by the class. However, the speaker himself notices no odor in his lunch, firing back that it “must be [the teacher’s] lunch” instead. This act of rebellion against discrimination parallels the efforts of those who fought against discrimination throughout the history of America.
In adding the source of The Negro Motorist Green Book(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7_cy7uUcqk) to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by displaying a first-hand account of discrimination present in the United States during the 1900s and the steps people took in order to combat it.

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National Trust for Historic Preservation

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The Green Book: A Historic Travel Guide for Black America, Part I

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eech” by Lynn Powell is a well-designed parody of such kind of speeches. Knowing the content of Tony Awards’ acceptance speeches and comparing them to the “acceptance speech” in the poem could help readers comprehend the sense of achievement that the woman in the poem feels after making an excellent, as she believes, pot of marrow bone soup for her family. While those who receive a Tony Award give acceptance speeches that typically includes “thanking everybody for making everything so possible” such as the director, producer, or cooperating companies of the production that helped the performer earn the prize, the woman in the poem imagines that she is on the stage of a kitchen sink and gives an acceptance speech thanking her mother for providing knowledge about okra, her family that makes her cooking the soup “a starring role”, the various kinds of food in her soup that adds up to a delicious mix, and even the salt and knives that are not easily seen but play important roles in her cooking.
In adding a video clip that recorded the acceptance speech of the 2019 Special Tony Award-winner Sonny Tilders to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by helping them feel the pride of the Tony Awards receivers in their acceptance speeches and understand the empowerment that the woman in the poem feels after making the marrow bone soup for her family.
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Great Big Story. “This Chef Keeps the Flavors of Ancient Mexico Alive.” YouTube, YouTube, 17 Oct. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_-NRMYO1Ak. 

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The North Forest region of Vermont is relevant to us understanding the poem “Family Style” by George Ella Lyon because of its long history of producing maple syrup. In a line in the poem, the speaker says, “Jo drank syrup.” While this might be perceived as a silly joke, holding little importance, it actually conveys some important information about the speaker’s family’s relationship with food. Throughout the poem there are certain references to sugary foods, from pies, icing, “cone of cream,” domestic tea, and jam cake. Common within modern—starting at the twentieth century—culture of the south is the popularity of sugary foods. Once thought to be a commodity in the previous centuries, sugar and sugary foods became popular in the United States once food production became almost fully industrialized. One of the products that became accessible to American households is syrup, which has roots in the region of Northern Vermont and Canada. A middle to lower class family in the rural South (representative of the speaker’s family demographic) would typically consume locally produced products such as syrup, making it the most likely location of origin.

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Forest Park, North, Vermont, USA || Lauren Wilson

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Forest Park, North, Vermont, USA || Lauren Wilson

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The North Forest region of Vermont is relevant to us understanding the poem “Family Style” by George Ella Lyon because of its long history of producing maple syrup. In a line in the poem, the speaker says, “Jo drank syrup.” While this might be perceived as a silly joke, holding little importance, it actually conveys some important information about the speaker’s family’s relationship with food. Throughout the poem there are certain references to sugary foods, from pies, icing, “cone of cream,” domestic tea, and jam cake. Common within modern—starting at the twentieth century—culture of the south is the popularity of sugary foods. Once thought to be a commodity in the previous centuries, sugar and sugary foods became popular in the United States once food production became almost fully industrialized. One of the products that became accessible to American households is syrup, which has roots in the region of Northern Vermont and Canada. A middle to lower class family in the rural South (representative of the speaker’s family demographic) would typically consume locally produced products such as syrup, making it the most likely location of origin.

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Movies Preview

remove-circle Internet Archive's in-browser video player requires JavaScript to be enabled. It appears your browser does not have it turned on. Please see your browser settings for this feature.

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Miraculous Maple Tree : Vermont Development Commission : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

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The Indian state of Assam is relevant to our understanding of George Ella Lyon’s poem “Family Style” because it provides context for the popularization of tea within the United States. During the early 17th century, tea became popularized among the European elite after Dutch merchants brought the product over from China. However, it was not until the establishments of sugar cane plantations in the New World—America and the Caribbean specifically—combined with an increase of African slave labor, that sweet tea increased in accessibility and exploded in popularity throughout Great Britain. After the Opium Wars, the East India Company worked to establish the first tea estate in the Indian state of Assam in 1830, utilizing indentured servitude to grow black tea in mass quantities. Eventually, as production of tea grew and the prices decreased, tea became a popular drink among the people of India as well. Like Great Britain, tea was a defining cultural food product in the United States from the creation of its first colonies, highlighted in historical events such as the 1773 Boston Tea Party. During the 1950’s, when “Family Style” takes place, sweet tea was already a defined staple of southern culture and cuisine. Within the poem, the speaker states, “Papa Dave for his ulcers ate| cakes of yeast… Ruby’s remedy was milk toast,| domestic tea.” The reference to drinking tea not only validates the idea that the speaker’s family lives in the southern United States, but also highlights the family’s connection to stereotypical southern American culture. This history of tea from British-occupied India and the early formation of the United States is essential to understanding the importance of tea within southern culture.

Image found at:
Colonial Office, Commonwealth and Foreign and Commonwealth Offices, Empire Marketing Board, and related bodies; The National Archives Image Library

https://www.bloomsburyfoodlibrary.com/museumobject?docid=TNA_CO956_443.

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Northeast, United States || Lauren Wilson

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Northeast, United States || Lauren Wilson

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Northeast America is relevant to us understanding the poem “Family Style” by George Ella Lyon because it provides important context for the origin of many of the foods/ dishes eaten by the speaker’s family within the poem. Specific examples of this would be certain berries and produce, but specifically maize. There is a long history of the growth and consummation of maize throughout North America, from Mexico to the Northeast United States, by the indigenous peoples living there before European colonization. Farming maize was a fundamental part of Native American culture and lifestyle in the Northeast. In fact, certain tribes had ceremonies centered around maize and corn. Indigenous cultivators created more bountiful harvests by breeding maize based on size, color, taste, and many other characteristics. This practice was passed on to European colonizers and became a common practice of traditional American farming. In the late 1850’s the first hybrid breeds of maize were cultivated, and cross-breeding maize with the goal of increasing yield sizes became popularized throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Understanding this background is essential in context of the history of United States food culture, as many of the practices surrounding the farming of corn were adopted by European colonizers upon arriving within North America. However, rather than being passive consumers, as one would expect from modern American family, the speaker’s family’s ties to rural America give them a connection to growing their own food. In the poem, there is the line, “Jo’s recipe for corn:| Boil the water while you go to the field.” This small bit of information that the speaker gives to us shows readers that the family, to some extent, is growing their own food and therefore has a connection to the land and practices adopted by Europeans during the colonization of the east coast of North America.

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NativeTech: Native American History of Corn

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Native American Technology & Art: a topically organized educational web site emphasizing the Eastern Woodlands region, organized into categories of Beadwork, Birds & Feathers, Clay & Pottery, Leather & Clothes, Metalwork, Plants & Trees, Porcupine Quills, Stonework & Tools, Weaving & Cordage, Games…

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Raghavendra Bharadwaj
1.      Chihuahua, Mexico is relevant to us understanding the poem "Menudo" because it is also essential to understanding the author’s connection behind this poem. Analyzing the recipe, it is clear that the menudo outlined in the recipe is the red version, which uses red Guajillo chilies, which are the mainly produced in the state of Chihuahua. The author of this poem, Natalie Scenters-Zapico is also from Chihuahua. This connection clearly demonstrates the significance of menudo (specifically the red variety) to the author. Menudo is a very culturally significant dish in Mexican culture, as it is usually reserved for special occasions and usually serves as the center of a social gathering. Menudo is also seen as a cure for a hangover. In this poem, the menudo is seen to be made for a character who appears to be drunk. This use of menudo as a hangover cure in the poem establishes a deeper meaning of menudo.

In adding source of a personal significance of the author to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by helping them understand the author’s possible source of inspiration when writing this poem.

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Como Hacer Menudo De Mi Rancho a Tu Cocina

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Raghavendra Bharadwaj
1.      Oaxaca, Mexico is relevant to us understanding the poem "Menudo" because it ties in heavily with the culinary theme of the poem. The poem “Menudo” is written in the form of a recipe, with a list of ingredients at the top, and a list of fifteen steps that follow. The recipe that is used as a base for the poem is for a traditional Mexican soup called Menudo (hence the name of the poem). Menudo is found all throughout Mexico and is traditionally made for special occasions, such as weddings and social gatherings. Oaxaca is described as the culinary capital of Mexico, where various foods and cuisines from all parts of Mexico can be found, including menudo. Various kinds of Menudo exist, such as Menudo blanco (white menudo) as well as menudo which is made with guajillo chilies.

In adding the source of culinary history present in this poem to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by allowing them to not just analyze the poem and its meaning, but to also explore the history and culture behind the inspiration and structure of this poem.

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1.      Oaxaca, Mexico is relevant to us understanding the poem "Menudo" because it ties in heavily with the culinary theme of the poem. The poem “Menudo” is written in the form of a recipe, with a list of ingredients at the top, and a list of fifteen steps that follow. The recipe that is used as a base for the poem is for a traditional Mexican soup called Menudo (hence the name of the poem). Menudo is found all throughout Mexico and is traditionally made for special occasions, such as weddings and social gatherings. Oaxaca is described as the culinary capital of Mexico, where various foods and cuisines from all parts of Mexico can be found, including menudo. Various kinds of Menudo exist, such as Menudo blanco (white menudo) as well as menudo which is made with guajillo chilies.

In adding the source of culinary history present in this poem to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by allowing them to not just analyze the poem and its meaning, but to also explore the history and culture behind the inspiration and structure of this poem.

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I switched up my one of my pons from the last time from New Orleans to Destin. I felt this was fitting as the poem revolved around various sorts of food, including shrimp, and family. I am from Destin, Florida and Harbor Docks is one of my families favorite places to eat. They do such a good job with the atmosphere in the place and the shrimp is amazing. I felt as though my connection to New Orleans wouldn't be strong enough to continue down that path so I switched it up to my good ole hometown favorite that hits the category of family and shrimp.

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Colombia is relevant to us understanding the poem "Vocabulary Lesson" because Colombians are using corn’s history in their country to help fight for their identity. Specifically, Colombians are currently fighting against the use of GMOs in corn crops. Their main argument is that altering corn crops belittles the indigenous cultures and embodies modern-day imperialism in their country, affecting politics, natural resources, cultures, and the economy. The book lists slogans the activists fighting against GMOs use: “We are a people of corn” and “Without corn there is no country.” These slogans tie corn to all aspects of their lives, saying genetically modified corn is a foreign threat to Colombia’s identity. The United States produces genetically modified corn, and they do so quite publicly. Small traditional Colombian farms grow twenty-five types of corn, so Colombians view mass producing one type as parallel to stripping them of their unique cultural identities. Large Colombian corporations have also started importing corn to use as food for livestock and other industrial purposes. This further crushes the Colombians because corn is their identity, so they believe they should not have to import it from countries like the Unites States.

In adding the source of a Science Rules! with Bill Nye podcast episode about GMOs to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by offering an electronic audio that explains a basic overview of how GMOs affect crops and offers the opposing opinion that GMOs are good for growing crops.

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About This Show

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Bill Nye is on a mission to change the world &mdash; one voicemail at a time. Bill and science writer Corey S. Powell take your burning questions and put them to the world's leading experts on just about every topic in the universe. Should you stop eating cheeseburgers to combat climate change? Could alien life be swimming inside the moons of Jupiter and Saturn? Does your pet parakeet learn to sing the way that you learned to speak? Bill, Corey, and their special guests will answer those questions and convince you that... science rules!Read more "

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Listen to Science Rules! with Bill Nye episodes free, on demand. Bill Nye is on a mission to change the world - one voicemail at a time. Bill and science writer Corey S. Powell take your burning questions and put them to the world's leading experts on just about every topic in the universe.

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Costa Rica is relevant to us understanding the poem "Vocabulary Lesson" because it offers a perspective on how the corn crop plays a role in a nation’s identity. Corn originated in Mexico about 7,000 years ago, where indigenous people grew maize that evolved from Teosinte grass. As people migrated, corn moved with them, eventually reaching Costa Rica and other Latin American countries. At the end of the 19th century, Costa Rica was beginning to experience an identity crisis. Other Latin American countries viewed Costa Rica as white like European Nations. This led to a further internal crisis because many Costa Ricans are not white. To try to collect and authenticate their culture, the Costa Rican government began to name and document aspects of their culture, including what they wanted to consider “traditional” Costa Rican cuisine. This proved to be a challenge because even though corn was a staple across the country, different regions had different views and opinions on the crop. The Guanacastecan region views themselves in a Mesoamerican context, being more similar to countries such as Nicaragua and Mexico, and apart from the “whiteness” of other regions such as the Central Valley. To oversimplify, the Guanacastecan people believe they had corn first, and other Costa Ricans “learned corn” from them. They also often claim Costa Ricans from the Central Valley prepare corn dishes wrong. People view this as a marginalized group of people claiming an identity to try and “exclude the ones that had formerly excluded them” (Nikolić).

In adding the source of a photo of Gallina Achiotada to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by offering a visual look at a traditional corn dish of the Guanacastecan people.

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Rhode Island is one of the first states where British settlers interacted with Native Americans. It took corn thousands of years to spread from Mexico throughout Central and North America via migrating people, but once it reached New England, the Native Americans there embraced the crop and were even the first to grind the corn into cornmeal. Rhode Island often experiences harsh winters, so cornmeal was stashed in dry locations to be used in the winter when crops did not grow. Local Native Americans also were able to adapt the crop, so it matured quicker to fit the shorter, local growing season.

Indian pudding, hasty pudding, hush puppy,

grits—some words for what can be made

of cornmeal, simplest food a person

can grow and grind herself. (McLarney, lines 5-8)

Women did the work of preparing and preserving food for the family, like grinding corn into cornmeal. That role of a woman in a kitchen has been diminished in modern culture, but in history it was integral for survival, as mentioned in “Vocabulary Lesson”. When British settlers arrived in America, they adapted the Native American’s corn-based dishes into their own custom dishes. Hasty pudding was a common British dish made from wheat that resembled a thick batter. Once introduced to corn, the settlers made a similar dish with cornmeal and sweetened it with molasses, calling it Indian pudding. Other common corn-based dishes from the Rhode Island area include pone (corn cakes made from pounding kernels into a fine powder that is mixed with water or bear oil and baked over coals) and hominy (whole kernels boiled in water). Dishes like these of the Native Americans and British eventually evolved to many of the corn dishes such as cornbread, corn on the cob, and succotash we enjoy today. These corn dishes represent the new identity of America: a melting pot of overlapping cultures from different groups of people.

In adding the source of a recipe for Indian Pudding to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by offering an electronic and visual view into the steps it takes to make a corn dish that combines the identity of two different groups of people.

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Preparation

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees and butter a 2-quart baking dish. In a large pot, warm milk over medium-high heat until hot but not boiling. Whisk in cornmeal and molasses and cook, whisking, 2 minutes. Reduce heat to medium-low.

2. Crack eggs into a medium bowl and lightly beat. Very slowly add 1/2 cup of the hot cornmeal mixture to the eggs, whisking constantly. Pour tempered egg mixture into the pot, whisking constantly to keep eggs from scrambling, and cook 3 minutes. Remove pot from heat.

3. Stir in sugar, raisins, vanilla and ginger. Pour mixture into prepared pan, then place in a larger baking dish or roasting pan. Transfer to oven and carefully pour water into the larger dish until it comes about halfway up the sides of the smaller baking dish.

4. Bake until pudding is set, but still jiggles slightly in the center, 45 minutes to 1 hour. Serve warm, topped with whipped cream or ice cream.

Adapted from George Crowther, Commons Lunch, Little Compton, R.I.

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Indian pudding was a compromise A mass of cornmeal, milk and molasses, baked for hours, it was born of the Puritans' nostalgia for British hasty pudding and their adaptation to the ground-corn porridges of their Native American neighbors Originally served as a first course, it grew sweeter (but not too sweet; Puritanism runs deep) and migrated to the end of supper

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Nikhil Nandikanti- updated
Jerusalem is relevant to us understanding the poem, because it is the primary location associated with Christianity, an idea that is presented throughout my poem, "Singing to Make Butter Come". The butter making process which is illustrated in great detail in the poem is displayed with all the potential hurdles one may face while attempting to produce butter from buttermilk. A lack of exact knowledge connects the hurdles with religion to find some answers. The writer includes many allusions and ideas drawn from Christianity to describe some of these challenges. A more implicit example is "evil in the air" and "curses" which connect to Biblical references to the devil and mythical verbal invocations with supernatural power. Later in the poem, one of the song choices chosen to sing to the buttermilk is a hymn, which is a form that is typically used for prayer and worship purposes, especially in Christianity. The most direct connection to the Christian religion is when the writer compares the flecks of butter joining into one piece to people rising from the dead at Resurrection. The capitalization of Resurrection and the basic idea itself both are strong Biblical allusions. Jerusalem is associated not only to the birthplace of Christ, but also to the Resurrection place, dually connecting to both the overall Christian concepts included in the poem and the significance of the word ‘Resurrection' which helps create the image of separated pieces of butter coming to life as a united mass. Additionally, Jerusalem is in close proximity to the location of the ancient Mesopotamian civilization, where butter is thought to be invented, as milk was unintentionally churned on long journeys. Although butter was not widely adopted into cuisine until it reached Europe, Mesopotamians still used it for basic foods like bread and as an addition to simple soups.

In adding the source of the Garden Tomb video clip (located in article) to this pin, it increases the multi-modal rhetorical situation for readers by including an audio/video source discussing Jerusalem and its relation to Christianity overall which is alluded to multiple times in the poem, along with the location's identity as the Resurrection place, establishing its significance and relation to the concept of life and renewal.

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JERUSALEM -- On Easter Sunday, millions of Christians around the world will be celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In Jerusalem, thousands of Christian pilgrims visit what many believe to be the site of that resurrection.

Located near the heart of Jerusalem is a place called The Garden Tomb, what some believe was the Garden of Joseph of Arimathea. Here is where some believe Jesus died, was buried, and then rose from the dead.

The garden is a two acre oasis in the often hectic city of Jerusalem. British Christians bought the garden 125 years ago and formed The Garden Tomb Association. For years, they've allowed visitors here free of charge.

"What we do have here in the Garden is a perfect representation of the Biblical accounts at the end of the four Gospels. Everything in those four Gospels matches what we show people here in the Garden," Richard Meryon, director of The Garden Tomb, said.
Touring the Garden
Today, nearly a quarter of a million visitors pour into The Garden Tomb each year. Guide Steve Bridge took CBN News on a tour visitors get when they come to the garden.

"What we plot out is the basic geography that we have in the Bible," he explained. "Jesus was crucified outside of the city walls at a place called Golgotha. And in the immediate area to where Jesus was crucified there was a garden that belonged to a rich man by the name of Joseph of Arimathea."

We came first to the place the Bible calls "Golgotha," where the book of Matthew says "and when they had come to a place called Golgotha, that is to say, Place of a Skull."

"What are some of the main questions people ask you when they come here?" we asked Bridge.

"Some of the main questions, certainly from Christian groups would be can we be certain that this is the place where Jesus died and He was raised to life," Bridge said. "People often ask how come there are two places, here and there is the Holy Sepulcher?"
Weighing the Evidence
The question arises because some believe Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulcher is the actual place of the crucifixion and resurrection, not the Garden Tomb. Constantine's mother Queen Helena helped build the church in 326 A.D.

The archeological weight supporting the church's claim is substantial. For example, the Roman emperor Hadrian built a temple on the site in the second century because local Christians venerated the site as the place of Golgotha.

But the evidence for the Garden can be compelling. The gospel of John says, "... at the place where jesus was crucified, there was a garden ... " (John 19: 38; 41)

If you have a garden, you need lots of water, especially in the dry Middle East. The Garden Tomb contains one of the oldest and largest cisterns in Jerusalem. It's 2,000 years old and holds about 200,000 gallons of water.

"So the tomb we have here is a typical of a first century Jewish rolling stone tomb. It's dated at least 2,000 years, possibly older," Bridge explained to CBN News.

The Empty Tomb

In the Garden, the Bible also says there was a tomb.

"It is carved out of solid rock. It's a man-made tomb and that's how the Bible describes the tomb in which the body of Jesus was laid," Bridge said of the tomb, while we we standing next its entrance.

"This channel that you can see in front of the tomb entrance is where the stone would have sat that would have been rolled to seal the entrance to the tomb. So finally, the most important thing about this tomb itself is that it's empty."

We went inside for a look.

"What we're looking at when we're looking at this direction is through into the burial chamber itself," Bridge explained. "And what you have inside the burial chamber are these two areas where a body would be laid, one just down here and one on this side."

The tomb itself seems to fit the Bible's description. But whether The Garden Tomb or the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is the site of the resurrection of Jesus, many Christian pilgrims take with them a profound affirmation of their faith

"I'm a Bible teacher in the states. And want to take some of this passion back, that Jesus is who he says he is, that he is the son of God, and he did walk this earth," Kelcey Gillespie, a Christian who made a pilgrimage here to Jerusalem, told us.
Celebrating the Person
As people celebrate Easter, those at The Garden Tomb stress it's not the place, it's the person.

"The Bible writers really weren't that interested in establishing where Jesus died. We have very little information," Bridge said. "The Bible writers themselves were much more interested in Jesus Christ himself who he is. Why He died."

"That's what we want people to take away, that the tomb is empty. And we as Christians, of all the world's faiths, serve a living God who's overcome death, who's has dealt with the sin in our life," Meryon said. "And Jesus is the centrality of our Christian faith, is He not?"

"And so here at the Garden that's what we want people to take away is the living Lord Jesus. The Easter weekend is the weekend that changed the world," he added. "The weekend that Jesus died and was buried and rose again for me and for you."

-- Originally aired March 31, 2010.

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The Garden Tomb: Where Jesus Rose Again?

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JERUSALEM -- On Easter Sunday, millions of Christians around the world will be celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In Jerusalem, thousands of Christian pilgrims visit what many believe to be the site of that resurrection. Located near the heart of Jerusalem is a place called The Garden Tomb, what some believe was the Garden of Joseph of Arimathea.

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San Antonio, Texas is relevant to us understanding the poem "Going for Peaches" because it is the place that Naomi Shihab Nye, the writer of the poem, calls home. She grew up in several cities and locations, including St Louis and Jerusalem, but San Antonio is where she feels her true home is. While understanding the significance of locations within a body of work is certainly very important, knowing where and under what circumstances the writer of that work has lived is also crucial to getting a better look at the meaning being conveyed. Having lived across multiple cultures and being exposed to more of the world than most children are, Nye often focuses on attempting to understand those differences and on finding the similarities humans from all over the world have. While this poem may seem to be only relatable for a relatively small number of people, the idea of getting out with friends and doing or finding something important for the sake of memories is something nearly everyone can relate to. She uses her own cultural ties to convey that message, but that absolutely does not mean only people who have had those exact same cultural experiences can appreciate and relate to the theme of the poem and the visceral emotions it evokes.

In adding the source of this audio clip of Nye to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by providing insight into the events in her life that have impacted the way she writes her works, and by detailing what exactly inspires her poetry.

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Naomi Shihab Nye on What Inspires Her Poetry

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Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China - John Schmidt

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Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China - John Schmidt

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Hangzhou, China is relevant to us understanding the poem "Going for Peaches" because historically, it has been the location where peaches were thought to have been first cultivated. While that may seem rather unrelated to the poem other than the connection to peaches, it’s still important to get an appreciation for where peaches came from, especially because of how important they have become to many locations and cultures all over the world. The fact that a cultivated good from centuries ago has become a staple good to so many even here in America is incredible, and as such deserves to have more context behind it. Peaches have remained important to many Chinese families, especially within that region, so much so that a tradition still remains to give a peach as a gift to a close aging friend or family member to wish them a long life. This feels quite similar to the end of the poem, where Nye compares the ripening of the skin on the peach to human memory growing and aging and being evident within our skin as well. Whether intentionally done, a coincidence, or possibly that Nye was able to find the same comparison as the ancient Chinese, knowing that detail adds so much to the experience of reading this poem. In adding the source of that image to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by expanding their understanding of peach farming around the world, including the scale of what that may look like in modern times

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Fredericksburg, Texas is relevant to us understanding the poem "Going for Peaches" because it is the main setting for the work, giving more context to the vernacular, actions, and tone of the narrative within the poem. In any body of work, having a better understanding of the context of the setting can completely change the way it is read, and while that is not really the case here, it is still certainly important to know more about where the poem takes place. More specifically here, it’s very useful to know what kind of place Fredericksburg is; if it is a large city, the fact that the characters are driving out into the country to find peaches could be taken as some kind of message about the lack of connection to the food growing process in cities. Likewise, if it’s a small town, the poem could be speaking to the community that people in those areas have over shared interests in food. In reality, Fredericksburg is a fairly mid-sized town, making it possible for both of those ideas to be valid. Furthermore, knowing that Fredericksburg is a city in the American South adds even more richness to the understanding of the poem. Some of the word choice could be seen as embellished somewhat for a more interesting read, like “I gave up peachin’ for teachin’”, but it feels a lot more realistic that someone would say that in the South than the midwest for instance, where as few personal details are shared as possible in interactions like this one. In adding the source of this local guide for peach farms to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by highlighting just how important those peach stands and the people they bring together are to the community.

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Gillespie County is one of the largest peach-producing counties in Texas with some 600 acres of trees. Roadside peach stands line many of the roads leading into Fredericksburg, with a major concentration along Highway 290 between Fredericksburg and Stonewall and along Highway 87 South.

The peach season runs from mid-May through mid-August. The Hill Country Fruit Council produces a listing of its members in a brochure entitled Fredericksburg-Stonewall Peaches, which available at the Fredericksburg Visitor Information Center.

In addition to Texas Hill Country peaches, Fredericksburg and Gillespie County are home to a number of ranches, farms and pecan orchards. From wildflower farms like Windmill Meadows Farms to family-owned pecan orchards and Roam Ranch, which is focused on regenerative agriculture - Fredericksburg offers agricultural experiences aplenty.

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Fredericksburg Peaches, Produce and Farms

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Gillespie County is one of the largest peach-producing counties in Texas with some 600 acres of trees. Roadside peach stands line many of the roads leading into Fredericksburg, with a major concentration along Highway 290 between Fredericksburg and Stonewall and along Highway 87 South. The peach season runs from mid-May through mid-August.

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Fredericksburg, Texas is relevant to us understanding the poem "Going for Peaches" because it is the main setting for the work, giving more context to the vernacular, actions, and tone of the narrative within the poem. In any body of work, having a better understanding of the context of the setting can completely change the way it is read, and while that is not really the case here, it is still certainly important to know more about where the poem takes place. More specifically here, it’s very useful to know what kind of place Fredericksburg is; if it is a large city, the fact that the characters are driving out into the country to find peaches could be taken as some kind of message about the lack of connection to the food growing process in cities. Likewise, if it’s a small town, the poem could be speaking to the community that people in those areas have over shared interests in food. In reality, Fredericksburg is a fairly mid-sized town, making it possible for both of those ideas to be valid. Furthermore, knowing that Fredericksburg is a city in the American South adds even more richness to the understanding of the poem. Some of the word choice could be seen as embellished somewhat for a more interesting read, like “I gave up peachin’ for teachin’”, but it feels a lot more realistic that someone would say that in the South than the midwest for instance, where as few personal details are shared as possible in interactions like this one. In adding the source of this local guide for peach farms to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by highlighting just how important those peach stands and the people they bring together are to the community.

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Nikhil Nandikanti-updated
Wisconsin is relevant to us understanding the poem, "Singing to Make Butter Come", because it is generally known as one of the dairy and cheese making capitals of the world which directly connects to my poem considering it is centered around the butter-making process. The overall image of the setting that my poem displays is a self-sustained, rural dairy farm. I personally also associate the state of Wisconsin with the same image: a place with dispersed local dairy farms throughout. There is a significant amount of dairy-related tourism in the state as well. Specifically, many family farms welcome visitors to tour the small-scale, self-sufficient food production. A similar lifestyle is outlined in the poem, in which butter is prepared in small quantities by hand, presumably for consumption for the family/farm itself. Many of the operations in Wisconsin are not for commercial purposes and more traditional production processes are utilized. My poem also leaves small hints relating to the setting in which it takes place, given in the form of potential causes for butter not coagulating properly. The hints are cold weather and low air pressure. Both of which correlate with Wisconsin’s relatively low air temperatures, year round, and hilly areas with high elevations.

In adding the source of the National Historical Cheesemaking site picture to this pin, it increases the multi-modal rhetorical situation for readers by providing a visual/electronic mode to comprehend how traditional small-scale family farming is being preserved-- a lifestyle observed in the poem.

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Nikhil Nandikanti-updated
The Appalachian Mountain Range is relevant to us understanding the poem: “Singing to Make Butter Come” by Robert Morgan because it represents the origins of a significant, repeated word in the poem. The poem provides an interesting take on the process of making butter from milk in a very detailed manner, with all the potential challenges that may be faced which are seemingly fixed with the simple solution of singing to the butter churn. A repeated word Morgan uses is “clabber” which refers to a form of sour milk that has a thick texture. The word is used in the poem to indicate an unwanted product of the butter-making process as “clabber yields no butter” (6). Morgan also references it as the audience, as one sings “to the crock of clabber” (12), which turns into butter after being serenaded. The word clabber is a derivative of ‘bonnyclabber’ which has Irish roots. The food is common to the South but it was originally introduced by Irish migrants who traveled down from the North along the Appalachian mountains. These Appalachian migrant groups were a contributor to Southern food culture which is why I chose the Appalachian mountain range, the general path along which migration occurred, as my location. The range is not only a path by which Southern food culture was evolved, but also a symbolic connection between the Southern, middle, and Northern regions of the United States. Additionally, I connected the poem to the Appalachians from one of the potential problems with butter-making that the poem suggests: air pressure being too low.
In adding the source of  the vocabulary article to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by providing an electronic print source that readers can use to better understand the geography of Southern food evolution and linguistic migration.

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Revision of an essay originally published in Journal of East Tennessee History, vol. 67, 1-33 (1995).

By Prof. Michael Montgomery (copyright of the author)

" Scotch-Irish Pronunciation | Scotch-Irish Grammar "

For East Tennesseans, the vast bulk of their vocabulary (by which is meant their nouns, adjectives, most verbs, and most adverbs) consists of either terms that originated in the United States or that were brought by settlers from several regions of the British Isles. Some two to three dozen terms can be determined to have a Scotch-Irish origin-admittedly a relatively small number, but more than twice as many as those coming from Southern England. Some terms of Scotch-Irish origin are specialized or technical, such as ones from distilling: singlings "liquor that has been run through a still once" and double "to redistill"). Most can be described as traditional, some as now becoming old-fashioned. Here are the more common of these terms, with definitions and examples :

1) airish "windy, chilly": "It's right airish out today."

2) backset "a setback or reversal (in health)": "He took the whooping cough along about Christmas time and was out of school for a month, and then he took a backset and was out of school again."

3) beal, bealing "an abscess, boil, festering sore": "Mary had a bealing on her neck."

4) bonny-clabber "curdled sour milk."

5) bottom(s), bottom land "fertile, low-lying land along a river or creek": "The house was right out in the middle of a little bottom."

6) chancy "doubtful, dangerous": "It was a chancy thing to do."

7) contrary (as a verb) "to vex, oppose": "Don't contrary him any more."

8) creel "to twist, wrench, give way": "His leg creeled under him."

9) discomfit "to inconvenience": "I hope it won't discomfit you any."

10) fireboard "mantelpiece": "She got a big pistol and laid it up on the fireboard, and she said, 'you see this gun? If anything takes place here tonight,' she says 'I'll use this gun on you'."

11) hull "to shell (beans or peas)": "We hulled two bushels of butter beans last night."

12) ill "bad-tempered": "He was acting awful ill this morning."

13) kindling "twigs, pine needles, and scraps of wood to start a fire": "Before we began the fire, we made sure we had plenty of kindling."

14) let on "to pretend": "She let on that she didn't care."

15) mend "to improve physically": "He's mending very slowly."

16) muley "hornless cow": "Come on, Robert, let's get our little muley-cow to work again."

17) nicker "whinny": "Sure enough in a few minutes four lank horsemen were dismounting at the gate amid much nickering of horses and yapping of hounds."

18) palings "upright stakes (of a fence)": "That's what the mountain people called them, palings. They're split out just like boards."

19) piece "distance": "It's a far piece to town and back."

20) redd up "to tidy up, get a place ready": "I mean to wash and redd up the house before I do any special cooking."

21) soon (adjective) "early": "I hope that we can get a soon start in the morning."

22) take up "begin": "Has the meeting taken up yet?"

Just as the descendants of Scotch-Irish emigrants spread far beyond Tennessee and across much of the United States as the country grew, their vocabulary did as well. Some terms in the foregoing list, as well as other features cited in this essay, are or were known in parts of the Midwest, the Lower South, and the Southwest. Some diappeared where they had formerly prevailed. This is true for two intriguing terms brought by Ulster emigrants in the 18th century, both of which were applied initially to back country whites. One is cracker, now most often referring to a white native of Georgia or Florida. The other is cohee, once referring to a less-cultivated person in the backwoods from Virginia to the Carolinas. Cracker in 20th-century Ulster parlance refers to an expert talker or raconteur, a master of good crack or a boaster; in colonial America it was used in the latter sense. In 1766 a Mr. Gavin Cochrane wrote from the American colonies to The Earl of Dartmouth in England: "I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by Crackers, a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland." Cohee derives from co he or quo he, originally a phrase used in oral narration, whereby one reports another's speech by "quo he," "quo she," "quo I," etc. (literally "he said," etc.); this is still known in Ulster. In the 18th century the speech habit was brought to the American colonies, where it became a nickname for the people who had it. Thus, in an 1815 letter from western North Carolina a writer said, "The back country people [of Virginia] are called 'Co-hees' from some of the back country people using frequently the term 'quote he' or 'quote she' or as they usually speak 'coo he' and 'coo she'." Cohee did not catch on like cracker, apparently dying out a century ago. Neither is used in East Tennessee or elsewhere in the U.S. today with their traditional meaning.

" Scotch-Irish Pronunciation | Scotch-Irish Grammar "

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Revision of an essay originally published in Journal of East Tennessee History, vol. 67, 1-33 (1995). By Prof. Michael Montgomery (copyright of the author) " Scotch-Irish Pronunciation | Scotch-Irish Grammar " For East Tennesseans, the vast bulk of their vocabulary (by which is meant their nouns, adjectives, most verbs, and most adverbs) consists of either terms that originated in the United States or that were brought by settlers from several regions of the British Isles.

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Pin #3
I chose this poem based upon the use of chocolate in my poem called 'Why I Can't Cook for Your Self-Centered Architect Cousin'.  In this the speaker talks about chocolate around the dinner table and about how the table is supposed to shared with loved ones.  I felt a connection to this because I love chocolate, especially Godiva chocolate.  Godiva was founded in 1926 in Brussels, Germany.  I have since narrowed down my original pin from Belgium to Brussels now.  I felt as though a video talking about what makes this chocolate the best in the world would show you why this was my first thought when I thought of chocolate.  Godiva is among one, if not the best, chocolate brands there is.  Also another reason why this video appealed to me is that you can see just how many workers it takes going into the making process of the chocolate, so why not eat the chocolate with a lot of people at the dinner table as well!

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What makes Belgian chocolate the best in the world?

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Ayele Mivedor, “My Stove’s in good Condition” Pin 3
Haiti is relevant to us understanding Iain Pollock’s Poem “My Stove’s in good condition.” when looking at the poem, through the telescope of food and location, its easy to spot the connection with Catfish, cornmeal, and spices that connect to a location on a map. But if you were to look through a broad scope camera, readers can begin to see a connection with each element that incites a common idea. From the wide scope camera, I was able to see an umbrella of ideas that focused on both Assimilation and some underlying themes of hunger. Haiti became a standard location that I centered on. From the perspective of an outsider, we know Haiti for its delicious cuisine and its struggle with food insecurity. But you may be thinking, “how can these two aspects co-exist,” if Haiti is full of this unique cuisine, “why is it that they struggle to find food each day.”  Well, to understand this, readers can further bring their focus to the Poem in pertaining to the concept of Assimilation.

Regarding the United States, we always have, but, as societies began to change and people from other countries began migrating here, we have always appreciated the taste of spices and cuisine of the incoming countries. And even as the blend of countries like France, Spain, India, and Ghana continued to expand and shape its presence in the United States, many were more than hesitant to let people from those countries become accepted into the melting pot that is the US.” specifically, Haitian cuisine has had its fair shares of exclusion and marginalization. Many are open to eating the cuisine from this country, but the lack of enthusiasm in sharing in the culture of their people is ever seldom. This sense of invisibility/hostile environment demonstrates why the country struggles internally with food and maintaining a level of adequate self- sustainability. And to connect this back to the poem, the Poet gives us the connection between a home selling of frying catfish, cornmeal, and the smell of spices and herbs but introspect the ending provides us with an impression that all is not well in the stomachs and minds of the characters.

https://www.eater.com/a/mofad-city-guides/miami-audio#chef-creole

- In adding the source of “Food and Enterprise: Creating community in Miami.”  to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by sharing with readers audio clips of small-owned Haitian businesses in the Miami area. From the audio clips, listeners can hear from Haitians how they struggled with being invisible and their ways of finding recognition. One business, in particular, Chef Creole, in Miami, shares how it's able to connect its Non-Haitian customers to other creole and Haitian restaurants; from this branch, he shares for further successes can be achieved. From these interviews and anecdotes, readers can empathize and communicate with Haitians on their constant uphill battle.

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Miami's Haitian food businesses offer a sense of place and pride for the community here, which has struggled for recognition. In this audio guide, listen to a brief introduction to their story from Carla Hall, then click around to hear as local experts talk about Haitian food and community; we hope you use these to inform your own tours of the area.

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Food and Enterprise: Creating Community in Miami | MOFAD City

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Miami's Haitian food businesses offer a sense of place and pride for the community here, which has struggled for recognition. In this audio guide, listen to a brief introduction to their story from Carla Hall, then click around to hear as local experts talk about Haitian food and community; we hope you use these to inform your own tours of the area.

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Ayele Mivedor, “My Stove’s In good Condition” Pin 2
Nigeria is relevant to us understanding Iain Pollock’s Poem, “My stove’s in good condition.” Readers can instantly gauge that the culture present in the Poem matches that of the Music and cuisine of the South. As it also pertains to African Americas, and it reflects and connects to the generations upon generations of history and cuisine. The connection between this notion and a Western African country such as Nigeria is History. Ultimately in the poem, there is a strong sense of southern identity that holds to the ever indication of “soul food.” And just as we learned from history, readers can understand how southern cuisine is a complex web of origins that date back to slavery, towards the Jim crow era. For instance, Historians have dated the methods of maximizing sauce and oils towards the earliest west African slaves. So from the recipes passed down from generation to generation, west African countries, like Nigeria, have helped to shape not only the diversity of culinary practices in the south but also the class, race, and multiculturalism that have resulted from those southern regions. From the U.S. history Scene, there is an over-extensive analysis of the origins of cornmeal/cornbread, which is also mentioned in the poem. The text further demonstrates how Native Americans, Europeans, slaves have used the same preparation methods as Africans to prepare maize for the cornmeal/cornbread from that time. From the variety of corn recipes emerging, the new dishes of cornmeal were spread all across to countries like India that mixed in meat/ vegetables. Overall, this connection between Nigeria and the Poem stems from the origins of West African cuisine and how it has brought about different ways of cooking. And to the food and culinary practices mentioned in the poem, this is evident to readers.

- In adding the image from the Georgetown colony Library collection to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by sharing a visual of an African culinary practice that was adopted by slaves and southerners in the past. As someone born in a west-African country, I am shocked by this image. This is because the culinary practice shown by the woman is very common and still present and used in countries like my own, Togo, and Ghana to this day. The image exemplifies how history has allowed us to adapt and learn from other countries. And from my knowledge, it is truly astonishing to see how history has retained its traditions and held on to these practices to this day. Overall, this image should help readers get a sense of how southerners and slaves have learned from African predecessors and ancestors.

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Ayele Mivedor, “My Stove’s in good condition” Pin1
The Mississippi delta near (Belzoni, Mississippi) is relevant to understanding Iain pollock’s poem “My Stove’s in good condition.”  From the poem, readers can also immediately get a sense of longing for family and a home-cooked meal. From these resonating emotions, I can map a path towards the South area of the United States. From then one the mention of Catfish and Cornmeal brings forward a specific connection to Mississippi. This connection comes from the fact that Mississippi is one of the highest producers of catfish, and throughout the united states, they are known for this hearty fried meal and all its fixings. From the main focus of this shared meal, one can sometimes forget the economic struggles of the south. In the Poem, despite the sensory overload of the fried Catfish meal, the poet ends off with a message focused on the blues of singer Lil Johnson and the overbearing feeling of hunger. This can also further be connected to the south and specifically the State of Mississippi. Many in this state love when others come down to the “capital of Catfish,” but the state itself experiences times where the economy cannot provide for the growing need of its demand. And with the preservationist rhetoric, many cannot support much change and innovation. Therefore, a State as beautiful and diverse as Mississippi resonates and connects will with this Poem. Pollock’s poem “My Stove’s in good condition” wants readers to enjoy the poem for its spots of joy and pleasure and remind people of the ever-growing struggle with food in the south.

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/11/11/garden/catfish-long-a-southern-delicacy-branches-out.html

- Adding the source “Catfish, long a southern Delicacy branches out” (from the New York Times) to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for the readers by giving them a bit of insight from the primary perspective of an individual during the late 1900s. Told from a time when Catfish was booming, the author gives off an impression of longing for a meal shared outdoors on a laidback Sunday outing. Then from a background on how local farms were adapting to this boom of Catfish, the author gives us a recipe to take back, make, and try for ourselves. I believe this source resonates the most with the poem because of the pleasure readers can emit and relate to. All the information given by the author in the source is relevant. Still, the most lasting effects come from the emotions that we can feel coming off the page.

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Credit... The New York Times Archives

This is a digitized version of an article from The Times's print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.

Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.

LIKE most Southerners I adore catfish. I remember that half a century and more ago my family would drive to the banks of Four Mile Lake near here and unload a picnic hamper. Gliding about on the water were small pleasure boats, many of whose passengers dangled fishing lines from cane poles, hoping a catfish would nibble.

In the crystal-clear water the lines could be seen all the way to the bottom. Many of the men wore white linen suits and black string ties and some wore white straw hats or boaters with wide brims. Some of the women carried parasols to guard their skin against that burning Mississippi sun.

Over the years catfish has remained a Southern regional specialty. But lately, thanks in large part to the abundant supply produced by catfish ''farms,'' it has become more widely available. (Catfish will be available later this week at Shopwell Food Emporiums at 1331 First Avenue (71st Street), 1498 York Avenue (79th Street) and 1052 First Avenue (57th Street) in New York and 261 Ridge Street in Rye.)

I'm not certain that my mother, who was a marvelous cook, ever prepared catfish at home; she was too aristocratic for that. Red snapper, yes; it was basted for an hour or longer with a Creole tomato sauce made with chopped green peppers, chopped onion and celery (a friend of mine once called the combination of chopped peppers, onion and celery the holy trinity of Creole cooking). But catfish was too common, something to be enjoyed outdoors, as at those Sunday outings.

Eating deep-fried catfish was a ritual. The cooking was done in large metal kettles that were heated with long-burning logs. When the fat in the vats was extremely hot, the pieces of catfish were dredged in a blend of corn meal (always white, never yellow), salt and pepper. When they were dropped into the fat, the vessel became a bubbling caldron until the fish were ready to be removed with perforated spoons and set to drain.

A catfish menu was - and is today - always the same: the cornmeal-coated catfish with its golden brown crusty exterior and moist white inner flesh; deep-fried hush puppies, deep-fried potatoes and coleslaw. And tomato ketchup. Deep-fried catfish without ketchup is like a hot dog without mustard.

In the course of a recent visit to my hometown here, deep in the heart of the Mississippi Delta about 100 miles south of Memphis, I discovered that many of the farmers in the region are moving into the field of pisciculture, converting their cotton and soybean acres into ponds that produce some of the sweetest-fleshed catfish in America.

I would go so far as to say that it is the finest freshwater fish in America, including pike and carp. It is the equal of most saltwater fish, including lemon or gray sole. Fillets of catfish can be used in almost any recipe calling for a white nonoily fish.

In days gone by, the catfish that was eaten in this country was channel catfish that had spawned and thrived in muddy river waters. It was said that the catfish smacked of the waters in which it had swum, and this was true.

The catfish that is raised in freshwater ponds is wholly different, remarkable not only for its flavor and texture but also for its nonfishy characteristics. Even after it is frozen and defrosted it remains snow white and as firm as when taken from the water.

During a visit to a fish-raising enterprise known as Delta Catfish, I was taken to numerous ponds for a look at the product known as Delta Pride. The ponds, which measure 20 acres square and are four or five feet deep, are filled with the fresh water for which the Mississippi Delta is famous.

The fish get a commercially prepared feed that is about 35 percent protein and no longer feed on the bottom. They are taken from the ponds directly to a surgically clean processing plant where they are skinned by machine. They are shipped around the country either fresh or frozen - whole, cut into steaks or as fillets.

A Delta Catfish spokesman estimated that his company would produce 100 million pounds this year. Though Mississippi is by far the largest producer for the retail market, there are also farms in Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee and Texas.

When I returned from Mississippi I brought with me about 30 pounds of frozen catfish fillets. After they were defrosted overnight, Pierre Franey and I experimented over the next few days, converting them into many appetizing creations, from deep-fried catfish with hush puppies to catfish meuniere and Grenobloise and catfish in a white wine sauce. We also duplicated a dish I had dined on in a country home near Sunflower: catfish baked with cheese, the recipe of Sybil Arant. Catfish Meuniere 4 catfish fillets, about 2 pounds 1/4 cup milk 1/2 cup flour Salt to taste, if desired Freshly ground pepper to taste 1/3 cup peanut, vegetable or corn oil 4 tablespoons butter Juice of 1/2 lemon 4 seeded lemon slices 2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley.

1. Dredge the fillets in milk. Lift the fillets one at a time from the milk and immediately dredge on all sides in flour seasoned with salt and pepper to taste.

2. Heat the oil in a skillet until quite hot. Add the fillets in one layer and cook about three minutes on one side or until golden brown. Turn and cook, basting often and liberally with oil, about six minutes.

3. Transfer the fillets to a warm serving dish. Pour off the oil from the skillet. Wipe out the pan.

4. Add the butter to the skillet and when it is foaming and starting to brown, swirl it around and pour it over the fish. Sprinkle with the lemon juice. Garnish the fish with lemon slices and sprinkle with parsley. Yield: 4 servings. Catfish Grenobloise

Follow the recipe for catfish meuniere, but add one-quarter cup drained capers to the butter as it is being heated to pour over the fish. Catfish Fillets In White Wine Sauce 6 catfish fillets, about 2 pounds 5 tablespoons butter 1/2 cup dry white wine 1/2 pound mushrooms, thinly sliced, about 2 cups Salt to taste, if desired Freshly ground pepper to taste 2 tablespoons flour 1/2 cup milk Juice of 1/2 lemon 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese 2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley.

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

2. Pat the catfish pieces dry. Rub a baking dish (a dish measuring about 2 by 13 by 8 inches is ideal) with one tablespoon of the butter. Arrange the fillets over the buttered dish in one layer.

3. Add the wine. Scatter the mushrooms over all and sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Place in the oven and bake 10 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, melt the remaining butter in a saucepan and add the flour, stirring with a wire whisk. Add the milk, stirring with the whisk. When blended and smooth, remove from the heat.

5. Pour the liquid from the baked fish into the sauce, stirring. Bring to the boil and cook, stirring often, about five minutes. Stir in the lemon juice. Pour the sauce over the fish and bake 10 minutes longer. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and parsley. Serve hot. Yield: 6 servings. Deep-Fried Catfish 3 catfish fillets, about 1 pound Fresh corn oil to cover 1/2 cup white cornmeal Salt to taste, if desired Freshly ground pepper to taste Lemon halves Tomato ketchup Hush puppies (see recipe).

1. Heat the oil for deep frying.

2. Cut each fillet in half crosswise.

3. Combine the cornmeal, salt and pepper.

4. Dredge the fillets in the cornmeal. Pat to make the cornmeal adhere. Drop the fillets in the oil and cook five to 10 minutes or until crisp and brown. Serve with lemon halves, ketchup and hush puppies. Yield: 2 to 4 servings. Mustard-Fried Catfish

Follow the recipe for deep-fried catfish but brush the pieces on all sides with mustard before dredging in cornmeal. Hush Puppies 1 1/2 cups white cornmeal 4 teaspoons flour 2 teaspoons baking powder Salt to taste, if desired 1 tablespoon sugar 1/4 cup grated onion 1 egg, lightly beaten 1 cup rapidly boiling water Fresh corn oil to cover.

1. Combine the cornmeal, flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, grated onion and egg and blend well. Add the water rapidly while stirring. The water must be boiling when added.

2. Heat the oil to 370 degrees. Drop the mixture by rounded spoonfuls into the oil. Cook until golden brown. Drain on paper towels. Yield: About 36. Sybil Arant's Catfish Baked With Cheese 6 to 8 catfish fillets, about 2 pounds 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese 1/4 cup flour Salt to taste, if desired Freshly ground pepper to taste 1 teaspoon paprika 1 egg, lightly beaten 1 tablespoon milk 1/4 cup melted butter 1/4 cup sliced almonds.

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Wipe the catfish dry.

3. Blend together the cheese, flour, salt, pepper and paprika.

4. Combine the egg and milk in a flat dish.

5. Dip the fillets in the egg mixture and then coat with the cheese mixture. Arrange the fillets in one layer in a baking dish and pour the butter over all. Sprinkle with the almonds. Place in the oven and bake 20 minutes. Yield: 6 to 8 servings.

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CATFISH, LONG A SOUTHERN DELICACY, BRANCHES OUT

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This is a digitized version of an article from The Times's print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions.

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The location of Washington D.C. is relevant to us understanding the poem "Carlo Flunks the Seventh Grade" because it is the political center of the America and plays a significant part in the discrimination experienced by non-white races. As the heart of the government of the United States, Washington has had a significant impact in American culture. 
Brought from the continent of Africa, plantation slaves developed their own culture in order to survive their harsh situation. After the Civil War, slavery changed to discrimination, and throughout the 1900s, many African Americans were discriminated against. Stores and restaurants refused to serve African Americans and many public services separated their services between whites and negros. As a result, African Americans developed their own culture and cuisine. In order to survive discrimination, many Africans must have had to start their own businesses, such as restaurants, serving African Americans in place of those businesses that did not. 

However, discrimination in America was not just present in the form of black versus white. Other races, such as the Chinese and the Hispanics are also discriminated against. Historically, women were also discriminated against and were refused privileges that were automatically given to men. 

In the poem, rather than being discriminated by skin color, both the speaker and one of the characters are discriminated by their choice of lunch. Both Splendi Pretti and the speaker’s lunch are singled out to be placed on the windowsill by the teacher. The owners of these “smelly” lunches are ridiculed by the class. However, the speaker himself notices no odor in his lunch, firing back that it “must be [the teacher’s] lunch” instead. 
In adding the source of The Negro Motorist Green Book (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7_cy7uUcqk) to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by displaying a first-hand account of discrimination present in the United States during the 1900s and the steps people took in order to combat it. 

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Sicily, Italy is relevant to us in understanding the poem “Salat Behind Al’s Mediterranean and American Food” because it is the heart of the Mediterranean. Due to its central location in the Mediterranean Sea, it has historically been a significant location for trade, and consequently, the diffusion of Mediterranean culture and food. Like the subject of the poem, the ancestors of Sicilians migrated from their Mediterranean origins to colonize Sicily because of its ideal location and opportunity.  Though it is a part of Italy, this melting pot of diversity has created a distinctness from the mainland.  Sicilian cuisine includes fried food, like described in the poem, dried fruit, olive oil, and other popular Mediterranean foods. The uniqueness of Sicily is its variety due to its geographical and historical context; every dish has dozens of versions reflecting the cultural diversity of the island. In the poem, the subject is also migrating from the Mediterranean and bringing with him/her the unique recipes of their origin. Like Sicily, America is considered a melting pot where the subject is able to share his/her culture through the food they make.

In adding the source of a map of Sicily from Britannica to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by giving context to the location of Sicily. Through the map, the reader is able to better understand the significance of Sicily’s location and how it has contributed to the diversity and variety of the island. Its unique location makes it the heart of Mediterranean culture and cuisine.

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Sicily, Italian Sicilia, island, southern Italy, the largest and one of the most densely populated islands in the Mediterranean Sea. Together with the Egadi, Lipari, Pelagie, and Panteleria islands, Sicily forms an autonomous region of Italy. It lies about 100 miles (160 km) northeast of Tunisia (northern Africa). The island is separated from the mainland by the Strait of Messina (2 miles [3 km] wide in the north and 10 miles [16 km] wide in the South). The capital is Palermo.

History

Sicily was inhabited 10,000 years ago. Its strategic location at the centre of the Mediterranean has made the island a crossroads of history, a pawn of conquest and empire, and a melting pot for a dozen or more ethnic groups whose warriors or merchants sought its shores. At the coming of the Greeks, three peoples occupied Sicily: in the east the Siculi, or Sicels, who gave their name to the island but were reputed to be latecomers from Italy; to the west of the Gelas River, the Sicani; and in the extreme west the Elymians, a people to whom a Trojan origin was assigned, with their chief centres at Segesta and at Eryx (Erice). The Siculi spoke an Indo-European language; there are no remains of the languages of the other peoples. There were also Phoenician settlements on the island. The Greeks settled Sicilian towns between the 8th and 6th centuries bce. The mountainous centre remained in the hands of Siculi and Sicani, who were increasingly Hellenized in ideas and material culture.

In the 3rd century bce the island became the first Roman province. The Byzantine general Belisarius occupied Sicily in 535 ce, at the start of hostilities with the Ostrogoths in Italy, and after a short time Sicily came under Byzantine rule. In 965 the island fell to Arab conquest from North Africa, in 1060 to Normans, who progressively Latinized the island. In the 12th and 13th centuries the island formed a part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (or Naples), and in the 18th century Sicily was ruled by the Bourbons. During the 19th century the island was a major centre of revolutionary movements: in 1860, as a result of Giuseppe Garibaldi's revolt, it was liberated from the Bourbons and in the following year was incorporated into the united kingdom of Italy. In 1947 Sicily gained regional autonomy.

Physical and human geography

The island is mostly mountainous, and seismic and volcanic activity is quite intense. Europe's highest active volcano is Mount Etna (10,900 feet [3,220 metres]). The only wide valley is the fertile Plain of Catania in the east. The climate is subtropical and Mediterranean. Annual precipitation on the plains is 16-24 inches (400-600 mm), and in the mountains 47-55 inches (1,200-1,400 mm). Underground water and springs are plentiful. The natural vegetation of Sicily has been greatly reduced by human influence, and forests occupy only 4 percent of the territory.

Sicilians are a diverse people, having had contact with a great variety of ethnicities and physical types through the centuries. Despite its position at the crossroads of many Mediterranean civilizations, it retains many characteristics of more rural regions bred of its isolation and distance from mainland Italy. One peculiar feature of the separateness of Sicilian life is the persistence of the Mafia, an organization dating from the Middle Ages that gradually evolved into a paralegal criminal brotherhood. It gives certain parts of the island virtually a dual government, standard of conduct, and system of enforcement-one is the legitimate regime and the other a shadow, but a pervasive social, economic, and political network maintaining its powers through violence.

Sicily's strong cultural traditions can be seen in the development of Italian lyrical poetry as well as in the works of modern writers such as Giovanni Verga, Luigi Pirandello, and Leonardo Sciascia. Several examples of folk art-such as embroidery, painting, and puppetry-and popular religious festivals also mark Sicily's contribution to Italian culture.

The island's economy has remained relatively underdeveloped, but heavy industrial activity, based on the oil-refining and chemical industries, expanded markedly in the latter decades of the 20th century. Large quantities of natural gas and sulfur are produced, although the latter has been declining. Other industries include food processing, salt extraction, wine making, textiles, and shipbuilding. The region is mainly agricultural. Wheat, barley, corn (maize), olives, citrus fruit, almonds, wine grapes, and some cotton are produced, and cattle, mules, donkeys, and sheep are raised. Area 9,830 square miles (25,460 square km). Pop. (2011) 5,002,904.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Adam Zeidan.

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Sicily, island, southern Italy, the largest and one of the most densely populated islands in the Mediterranean Sea. Together with the Egadi, Lipari, Pelagie, and Panteleria islands, Sicily forms an autonomous region of Italy. The capital is in Palermo.

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The epic begins 10,000 years ago in an Asian jungle and ends today in kitchens all over the world

The chickens that saved Western civilization were discovered, according to legend, by the side of a road in Greece in the first decade of the fifth century B.C. The Athenian general Themistocles, on his way to confront the invading Persian forces, stopped to watch two cocks fighting and summoned his troops, saying: "Behold, these do not fight for their household gods, for the monuments of their ancestors, for glory, for liberty or the safety of their children, but only because one will not give way to the other." The tale does not describe what happened to the loser, nor explain why the soldiers found this display of instinctive aggression inspirational rather than pointless and depressing. But history records that the Greeks, thus heartened, went on to repel the invaders, preserving the civilization that today honors those same creatures by breading, frying and dipping them into one's choice of sauce. The descendants of those roosters might well think-if they were capable of such profound thought-that their ancient forebears have a lot to answer for.

Chicken is the ubiquitous food of our era, crossing multiple cultural boundaries with ease. With its mild taste and uniform texture, chicken presents an intriguingly blank canvas for the flavor palette of almost any cuisine. A generation of Britons is coming of age in the belief that chicken tikka masala is the national dish, and the same thing is happening in China with Kentucky Fried Chicken. Long after the time when most families had a few hens running around the yard that could be grabbed and turned into dinner, chicken remains a nostalgic, evocative dish for most Americans. When author Jack Canfield was looking for a metaphor for psychological comfort, he didn't call it "Clam Chowder for the Soul."

How did the chicken achieve such cultural and culinary dominance? It is all the more surprising in light of the belief by many archaeologists that chickens were first domesticated not for eating but for cockfighting. Until the advent of large-scale industrial production in the 20th century, the economic and nutritional contribution of chickens was modest. In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond listed chickens among the "small domestic mammals and domestic birds and insects" that have been useful to humanity but unlike the horse or the ox did little-outside of legends-to change the course of history. Nonetheless, the chicken has inspired contributions to culture, art, cuisine, science and religion over the millennia. Chickens were, and still are, a sacred animal in some cultures. The prodigious and ever-watchful hen was a worldwide symbol of nurturance and fertility. Eggs hung in Egyptian temples to ensure a bountiful river flood. The lusty rooster (a.k.a. cock) was a universal signifier of virility-but also, in the ancient Persian faith of Zoroastrianism, a benign spirit that crowed at dawn to herald a turning point in the cosmic struggle between darkness and light. For the Romans, the chicken's killer app was fortunetelling, especially during wartime. Chickens accompanied Roman armies, and their behavior was carefully observed before battle; a good appetite meant victory was likely. According to the writings of Cicero, when one contingent of birds refused to eat before a sea battle in 249 B.C., an angry consul threw them overboard. History records that he was defeated.

But one major religious tradition-ironically, the one that gave rise to matzo-ball soup and the Sunday chicken dinner-failed to imbue chickens with much religious significance. The Old Testament passages concerning ritual sacrifice reveal a distinct preference on the part of Yahweh for red meat over poultry. In Leviticus 5:7, a guilt offering of two turtledoves or pigeons is acceptable if the sinner in question is unable to afford a lamb, but in no instance does the Lord request a chicken. Matthew 23:37 contains a passage in which Jesus likens his care for the people of Jerusalem to a hen caring for her brood. This image, had it caught on, could have completely changed the course of Christian iconography, which has been dominated instead by depictions of the Good Shepherd. The rooster plays a small but crucial role in the Gospels in helping to fulfill the prophecy that Peter would deny Jesus "before the cock crows." (In the ninth century, Pope Nicholas I decreed that a figure of a rooster should be placed atop every church as a reminder of the incident-which is why many churches still have cockerel-shaped weather vanes.) There is no implication that the rooster did anything but mark the passage of the hours, but even this secondhand association with betrayal probably didn't advance the cause of the chicken in Western culture. In contemporary American usage, the associations of "chicken" are with cowardice, neurotic anxiety ("The sky is falling!") and ineffectual panic ("running around like a chicken without a head").

The fact is that the male of the species can be quite a fierce animal, especially when bred and trained for fighting. Nature armed the rooster with a bony leg spur; humans have supplemented that feature with an arsenal of metal spurs and small knives strapped to the bird's leg. Cockfighting is illegal in the United States-Louisiana was the last state to ban it, in 2008-and generally viewed by Americans as inhumane. But in the parts of the world where it is still practiced, legally or illegally, it has claims to being the world's oldest continual sport. Artistic depictions of rooster combatants are scattered throughout the ancient world, such as in a first century A.D. mosaic adorning a house in Pompeii. The ancient Greek city of Pergamum established a cockfighting amphitheater to teach valor to future generations of soldiers.

The domesticated chicken has a genealogy as complicated as the Tudors, stretching back 7,000 to 10,000 years and involving, according to recent research, at least two wild progenitors and possibly more than one event of initial domestication. The earliest fossil bones identified as possibly belonging to chickens appear in sites from northeastern China dating to around 5400 B.C., but the birds' wild ancestors never lived in those cold, dry plains. So if they really are chicken bones, they must have come from somewhere else, most likely Southeast Asia. The chicken's wild progenitor is the red junglefowl, Gallus gallus, according to a theory advanced by Charles Darwin and recently confirmed by DNA analysis. The bird's resemblance to modern chickens is manifest in the male's red wattles and comb, the spur he uses to fight and his cock-a-doodle-doo mating call. The dun-colored females brood eggs and cluck just like barnyard chickens. In its habitat, which stretches from northeastern India to the Philippines, G. gallus browses on the forest floor for insects, seeds and fruit, and flies up to nest in the trees at night. That's about as much flying as it can manage, a trait that had obvious appeal to humans seeking to capture and raise it. This would later help endear the chicken to Africans, whose native guinea fowls had an annoying habit of flying off into the forest when the spirit moved them.

But G. gallus is not the sole progenitor of the modern chicken. Scientists have identified three closely related species that might have bred with the red junglefowl. Precisely how much genetic material these other birds contributed to the DNA of domesticated chickens remains a matter of conjecture. Recent research suggests that modern chickens inherited at least one trait, their yellow skin, from the gray junglefowl of southern India. Did a domesticated breed of G. gallus spread initially from Southeast Asia, traveling either north to China or southwest to India? Or were there two separate heartlands of domestication: ancient India and Southeast Asia? Either scenario is possible, but probing more deeply into chicken origins is hindered by an inconclusive DNA trail. "Because domesticated and wild birds mixed over time, it's really difficult to pinpoint," says Michael Zody, a computational biologist who studies genetics at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.

The chicken's real star turn came in 2004, when an international team of geneticists produced a complete map of the chicken genome. The chicken was the first domesticated animal, the first bird-and consequently, the first descendant of the dinosaurs-thus honored. The genome map provided an excellent opportunity to study how millennia of domestication can alter a species. In a project led by Sweden's Uppsala University, Zody and his colleagues have been researching the differences between the red junglefowl and its barnyard descendants, including "layers" (breeds raised to produce prodigious amounts of eggs) and "broilers" (breeds that are plump and meaty). The researchers found important mutations in a gene designated TBC1D1, which regulates glucose metabolism. In the human genome, mutations in this gene have been associated with obesity, but it's a positive trait in a creature destined for the dinner table. Another mutation that resulted from selective breeding is in the TSHR (thyroid-stimulating hormone receptor) gene. In wild animals this gene coordinates reproduction with day length, confining breeding to specific seasons. The mutation disabling this gene enables chickens to breed-and lay eggs-all year long.

Once chickens were domesticated, cultural contacts, trade, migration and territorial conquest resulted in their introduction, and reintroduction, to different regions around the world over several thousand years. Although inconclusive, evidence suggests that ground zero for the bird's westward spread may have been the Indus Valley, where the city-states of the Harappan civilization carried on a lively trade with the Middle East more than 4,000 years ago. Archaeologists have recovered chicken bones from Lothal, once a great port on the west coast of India, raising the possibility that the birds could have been carried across to the Arabian Peninsula as cargo or provisions. By 2000 B.C., cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia refer to "the bird of Meluhha," the likely place name for the Indus Valley. That may or may not have been a chicken; Professor Piotr Steinkeller, a specialist in ancient Near Eastern texts at Harvard, says that it was certainly "some exotic bird that was unknown to Mesopotamia." He believes that references to the "royal bird of Meluhha"-a phrase that shows up in texts three centuries later-most likely refer to the chicken.

Chickens arrived in Egypt some 250 years later, as fighting birds and additions to exotic menageries. Artistic depictions of the bird adorned royal tombs. Yet it would be another 1,000 years before the bird became a popular commodity among ordinary Egyptians. It was in that era that Egyptians mastered the technique of artificial incubation, which freed hens to put their time to better use by laying more eggs. This was no easy matter. Most chicken eggs will hatch in three weeks, but only if the temperature is kept constant at around 99 to 105 degrees Fahrenheit and the relative humidity stays close to 55 percent, increasing in the last few days of incubation. The eggs must also be turned three to five times a day, lest physical deformities result.

The Egyptians constructed vast incubation complexes made up of hundreds of "ovens." Each oven was a large chamber, which was connected to a series of corridors and vents that allowed attendants to regulate the heat from fires fueled by straw and camel dung. The egg attendants kept their methods a secret from outsiders for centuries.

Around the Mediterranean, archaeological digs have uncovered chicken bones from about 800 B.C.. Chickens were a delicacy among the Romans, whose culinary innovations included the omelet and the practice of stuffing birds for cooking, although their recipes tended more toward mashed chicken brains than bread crumbs. Farmers began developing methods to fatten the birds-some used wheat bread soaked in wine, while others swore by a mixture of cumin seeds, barley and lizard fat. At one point, the authorities outlawed these practices. Out of concern about moral decay and the pursuit of excessive luxury in the Roman Republic, a law in 161 B.C. limited chicken consumption to one per meal-presumably for the whole table, not per individual-and only if the bird had not been overfed. The practical Roman cooks soon discovered that castrating roosters caused them to fatten on their own, and thus was born the creature we know as the capon.

But the chicken's status in Europe appears to have diminished with the collapse of Rome. "It all goes downhill," says Kevin MacDonald, a professor of archaeology at University College in London. "In the post-Roman period, the size of chickens returned to what it was during the Iron Age," more than 1,000 years earlier. He speculates that the big, organized farms of Roman times-which were well suited to feeding numerous chickens and protecting them from predators-largely vanished. As the centuries went by, hardier fowls such as geese and partridge began to adorn medieval tables.

Europeans arriving in North America found a continent teeming with native turkeys and ducks for the plucking and eating. Some archaeologists believe that chickens were first introduced to the New World by Polynesians who reached the Pacific coast of South America a century or so before the voyages of Columbus. Well into the 20th century, chickens, although valued, particularly as a source of eggs, played a relatively minor role in the American diet and economy. Long after cattle and hogs had entered the industrial age of centralized, mechanized slaughterhouses, chicken production was still mostly a casual, local enterprise. The breakthrough that made today's quarter-million-bird farms possible was the fortification of feed with antibiotics and vitamins, which allowed chickens to be raised indoors. Like most animals, chickens need sunlight to synthesize vitamin D on their own, and so up through the first decades of the 20th century, they typically spent their days wandering around the barnyard, pecking for food. Now they could be sheltered from weather and predators and fed a controlled diet in an environment designed to present the minimum of distractions from the essential business of eating. Factory farming represents the chicken's final step in its transformation into a protein-producing commodity. Hens are packed so tightly into wire cages (less than half a square foot per bird) that they can't spread their wings; as many as 20,000 to 30,000 broilers are crowded together in windowless buildings.

The result has been a vast national experiment in supply-side gastro-economics: Factory farms turning out increasing amounts of chicken have called forth an increasing demand. By the early 1990s, chicken had surpassed beef as Americans' most popular meat (measured by consumption, that is, not opinion polls), with annual consumption running at around nine billion birds, or 80 pounds per capita, not counting the breading. Modern chickens are cogs in a system designed to convert grain into protein with staggering efficiency. It takes less than two pounds of feed to produce one pound of chicken (live weight), less than half the feed/weight ratio in 1945. By comparison, around seven pounds of feed are required to produce a pound of beef, while more than three pounds are needed to yield a pound of pork. Gary Balducci, a third-generation poultry farmer in Edgecomb, Maine, can turn a day-old chick into a five-pound broiler in six weeks, half the time it took his grandfather. And selective breeding has made the broilers so docile that even if chickens are given access to outdoor space-a marketing device that qualifies the resulting meat to be sold as "free-range"-they prefer hanging out at the mechanized trough, awaiting the next delivery of feed. "Chickens used to be great browsers," says Balducci, "but ours can't do that. All they want to do now is eat."

It is hard to remember that these teeming, clucking, metabolizing and defecating hordes awaiting their turn in the fryer are the same animals worshiped in many parts of the ancient world for their fighting prowess and believed by the Romans to be in direct communication with Fate. A chicken bred for the demands of American supermarket shoppers presumably has lost whatever magical powers the breed once possessed. Western aid workers discovered this in Mali during a failed attempt to replace the scrawny native birds with imported Rhode Island Reds. According to tradition, the villagers divine the future by cutting the throat of a hen and then waiting to see in which direction the dying bird falls-left or right indicates a favorable response to the diviner's question; straight forward means "no." But the Rhode Island Red, weighted down by its disproportionately large breast, always fell straight forward, signifying nothing meaningful except the imminence of dinner.

Santería-the religion that grew up in Cuba with elements borrowed from Catholicism, native Carib culture and the Yoruba religion of West Africa-ritually sacrifices chickens, as well as guinea pigs, goats, sheep, turtles and other animals. Devotees of Santería were the petitioners in a 1993 First Amendment case, in which the Supreme Court unanimously overturned local ordinances banning animal sacrifice. The case pitted a Santería church, Lukumi Babalu Aye, and its priest, Ernesto Pichardo, against the city of Hialeah, Florida; many mainstream religious and civil-rights groups lined up with the church, while animal-rights proponents sided with the city. "Although the practice of animal sacrifice may seem abhorrent to some," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the decision, "religious beliefs need not be acceptable, logical, consistent or comprehensible to others in order to merit First Amendment protection."

Chickens make wonderful pets, as breeders will tell you, especially if they think they could interest you in buying some chicks. They are as colorful as tropical fish but more affectionate, as cute as guinea pigs but better tasting, and, according to Jennifer Haughey, who raises chickens near Rhinebeck, New York, "far better mousers than our cats."

What characteristics do chicken-owners value most? To Barbara Gardiner Whitacre, who raises five breeds of chickens in upstate New York, a leading criterion is egg color-the deep chocolate-brown eggs of her Welsummers, the jade green of the Ameraucana, the speckled olive of Ameraucana hens after a Welsummer rooster got loose and created an inadvertent cross. Also, hardiness, cuteness and a willingness to brood-to sit on a nest full of fertilized eggs until they hatch, contributing their own labor to the farm economy. The eggs don't even have to be their own: As necessity dictates, Whitacre will substitute eggs laid by another hen, or even a duck. Unfortunately, these qualities are sometimes in conflict. She raises a breed called Silkies, with good looks to spare, bearing luxuriant feathers of an exceptional fluffiness. However, they also have blue skin and dark blue, almost black, meat and bones, which means they're not the first thing you think of when company's coming for dinner. Two years ago, Whitacre reluctantly sampled two Silkie roosters. "Of course, it was utterly delicious and tender, but blue-gray meat?" she recalls. "And the bones really are freakish-looking. So now if I can bring myself to use one for food, I generally use it in a dish with color: a nice coq au vin or something with tomatoes and thyme." This is a prejudice not shared by some Asian cultures, which prize Silkies for food and medicinal purposes. Whitacre was surprised to see whole frozen Silkies, which each weigh only about a pound and a half, selling for more than $10 in her local Asian market.

Exotic and heritage breeds of chicken go for considerable sums of money-as much as $399 for a single day-old chick, as listed on the website of Greenfire Farms, where the names of the breeds are almost as beautiful as the birds themselves: the Cream Legbar, with its sky-blue eggs; the iridescent, flamboyantly tailed and wattled Sulmatler; the Jubilee Orpingtons in speckled brown and white, like a hillside on which the springtime sun has begun to melt the winter snow. The Silver Sussex, according to the website, looks "like a bird designed by Jackson Pollock during his black and silver period." An advantage of many heritage breeds-an advantage for the chickens, that is-is that they spread their egg-laying careers over several years, unlike commercial varieties, bred for production, that are washed up in half that time.

And, for some chickens, the day comes when they are no longer wanted. That's when the man of the house marches into the yard, puts the bird in the back seat and drives to Whitacre's farm, leaving the chicken with her, whimpering that he just can't bring himself to do what has to be done.

As he walks away, Whitacre sometimes says to herself, "I'm going to process eight birds today, mister. What's wrong with you?"

Let us now praise chicken in all its extra-crispy glory! Chicken, the mascot of globalization, the universal symbol of middlebrow culinary aspiration! Chicken that has infiltrated the Caesar salad and made inroads on turkey in the club sandwich, that lurks under a blanket of pesto alongside a tangle of spaghetti and glistens with teriyaki sauce. Chicken that-marinated in yogurt and spices, grilled on a skewer and then set afloat in a mild, curry-flavored gravy-has become "a true British national dish," on no less authority than former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook. In a 2001 address that has gone down in history as "the chicken tikka masala speech," he chose that cuisine to symbolize his nation's commitment to multiculturalism. The most frequently served dish in British restaurants, Cook said, was "a perfect illustration of the way Britain absorbs and adapts external influences. Chicken tikka is an Indian dish. The masala sauce was added to satisfy the desire of British people to have their meat served in gravy." The great event took place in the early 1970s in an Indian restaurant in Glasgow, according to a Scottish MP who urged the European Union to grant the dish a "protected designation of origin." This did not sit well with chefs in New Delhi, one of whom described chicken tikka masala as "an authentic Mughlai recipe prepared by our forefathers who were royal chefs in the Mughal period," which covered roughly the 16th through 18th centuries.

If there's an American counterpart to the tikka masala story, it might be General Tso's chicken, which the New York Times has described as "the most famous Hunanese dish in the world." That might come as news to chefs in Hunan, who apparently had never heard of it until the opening of China to the West in recent decades. The man generally credited with the idea of putting deep-fried chicken pieces in a hot chili sauce was the Hunan-born chef Peng Chang-kuei, who fled to Taiwan after the Communist revolution in 1949. He named the dish for a 19th-century military commander who led the suppression of the Taiping Rebellion, a largely forgotten conflict that claimed upwards of 20 million lives. Peng moved to New York in 1973 to open a restaurant that became a favorite of diplomats and began cooking his signature dish. Over the years it has evolved in response to American tastes to become sweeter, and in a kind of reverse cultural migration has now been adopted as a "traditional" dish by chefs and food writers in Hunan.

But increasingly, as foreign observers have noticed, "chicken" to the Chinese, at least those who live in the cities, means what's served at KFC. Since the first drumstick was dipped into a fryer in Beijing in 1987, the chain has opened more than 3,000 branches around the country, and is now more profitable in China than in the United States. Numerous reasons have been advanced for this success, from the cleanliness of the restrooms to the alleged resemblance of Colonel Sanders to Confucius, but it apparently does not reflect a newfound Chinese appetite for the cuisine of the American mid-South. "You can find bone-in fried chicken there," notes Mary Shelman, a Kentucky native and the head of the agribusiness program at Harvard Business School. "But it's always dark meat, which the Chinese prefer, and it's one menu item out of around 30, and it's not the most popular." The chain has thrived by offering the Chinese customers food they were already familiar with, including (depending on the region) noodles, rice and dumplings, along with chicken wraps, chicken patties and chicken wings, which are so popular, Shelman says, that the company periodically has to deny rumors it has a farm somewhere that raises six-winged chickens.

If it did, you could be sure, chicken hobbyists would be clamoring to buy them for their flocks, fancy restaurants would add them to their menus and food bloggers would be debating whether the first, second or third pair made the best Buffalo wings. The globe-spanning chicken is an epic story of evolutionary, agricultural and culinary success, outnumbering human beings on the planet by nearly three to one. Yes, we get to eat them, but we also feed them. And they provide-along with omelets, casseroles, fricassees, McNuggets and chicken-liver pâté-an answer to the question that every 6-year-old boy, visiting a natural history museum for the first time, has asked his parents: "What did a dinosaur taste like?"

It tasted like chicken.

Jerry Adler wrote about heirloom wheat farming in the December 2011 issue. Freelance writer Andrew Lawler is an occasional contributor to Smithsonian. Photographer Timothy Archibald is based in Northern California.

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The chickens that saved Western civilization were discovered, according to legend, by the side of a road in Greece in the first decade of the fifth century B.C.

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Athens, Greece is relevant to us in understanding the poem “Salat Behind Al’s Mediterranean and American Food” because of its relevance to one of the foods emphasized in the poem, fried chicken. Although, upon first reading the poem, one might mistake this for the popularized American South variation, fried chicken first originated and was popularized in Greece. According to Greek legend, chickens were discovered by Athenian general Themistocles on the side of the road on his way to a battle. They were then breaded and fried to become the fried chicken we know and love today. The identity of fried chicken is that it can cross multiple cultural boundaries and be interpreted to fit the tastes of everyone. The fried chicken in the poem is referred to as “cheap,” yet at the same time revered as something holy. This contradictory depiction reflects the accessibility and versatility of fried chicken, and how it can resultingly be translated to and loved by so many cultures. The speaker of the poem is able to enjoy this Greek variation of fried chicken in a place where fried chicken is already very popular (Birmingham, Alabama) and its unique distinction from the Southern fried chicken makes it special. 
In adding the source of  “How Chicken Conquered the World,” by the Smithsonian, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by helping them to understand the diffusion of fried chicken, and how its multimodality has allowed it to become beloved by many cultures and regions. 
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-the-chicken-conquered-the-world-87583657/

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Athens, Greece is relevant to us in understanding the poem “Salat Behind Al’s Mediterranean and American Food” because of its relevance to one of the foods emphasized in the poem, fried chicken. Although, upon first reading the poem, one might mistake this for the popularized American South variation, fried chicken first originated and was popularized in Greece. According to Greek legend, chickens were discovered by Athenian general Themistocles on the side of the road on his way to a battle. They were then breaded and fried to become the fried chicken we know and love today. The identity of fried chicken is that it can cross multiple cultural boundaries and be interpreted to fit the tastes of everyone. The fried chicken in the poem is referred to as “cheap,” yet at the same time revered as something holy. This contradictory depiction reflects the accessibility and versatility of fried chicken, and how it can resultingly be translated to and loved by so many cultures. The speaker of the poem is able to enjoy this Greek variation of fried chicken in a place where fried chicken is already very popular (Birmingham, Alabama) and its unique distinction from the Southern fried chicken makes it special.

In adding the source of  “How Chicken Conquered the World,” by the Smithsonian, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by helping them to understand the diffusion of fried chicken, and how its multimodality has allowed it to become beloved by many cultures and regions.

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The epic begins 10,000 years ago in an Asian jungle and ends today in kitchens all over the world

The chickens that saved Western civilization were discovered, according to legend, by the side of a road in Greece in the first decade of the fifth century B.C. The Athenian general Themistocles, on his way to confront the invading Persian forces, stopped to watch two cocks fighting and summoned his troops, saying: "Behold, these do not fight for their household gods, for the monuments of their ancestors, for glory, for liberty or the safety of their children, but only because one will not give way to the other." The tale does not describe what happened to the loser, nor explain why the soldiers found this display of instinctive aggression inspirational rather than pointless and depressing. But history records that the Greeks, thus heartened, went on to repel the invaders, preserving the civilization that today honors those same creatures by breading, frying and dipping them into one's choice of sauce. The descendants of those roosters might well think-if they were capable of such profound thought-that their ancient forebears have a lot to answer for.

Chicken is the ubiquitous food of our era, crossing multiple cultural boundaries with ease. With its mild taste and uniform texture, chicken presents an intriguingly blank canvas for the flavor palette of almost any cuisine. A generation of Britons is coming of age in the belief that chicken tikka masala is the national dish, and the same thing is happening in China with Kentucky Fried Chicken. Long after the time when most families had a few hens running around the yard that could be grabbed and turned into dinner, chicken remains a nostalgic, evocative dish for most Americans. When author Jack Canfield was looking for a metaphor for psychological comfort, he didn't call it "Clam Chowder for the Soul."

How did the chicken achieve such cultural and culinary dominance? It is all the more surprising in light of the belief by many archaeologists that chickens were first domesticated not for eating but for cockfighting. Until the advent of large-scale industrial production in the 20th century, the economic and nutritional contribution of chickens was modest. In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond listed chickens among the "small domestic mammals and domestic birds and insects" that have been useful to humanity but unlike the horse or the ox did little-outside of legends-to change the course of history. Nonetheless, the chicken has inspired contributions to culture, art, cuisine, science and religion over the millennia. Chickens were, and still are, a sacred animal in some cultures. The prodigious and ever-watchful hen was a worldwide symbol of nurturance and fertility. Eggs hung in Egyptian temples to ensure a bountiful river flood. The lusty rooster (a.k.a. cock) was a universal signifier of virility-but also, in the ancient Persian faith of Zoroastrianism, a benign spirit that crowed at dawn to herald a turning point in the cosmic struggle between darkness and light. For the Romans, the chicken's killer app was fortunetelling, especially during wartime. Chickens accompanied Roman armies, and their behavior was carefully observed before battle; a good appetite meant victory was likely. According to the writings of Cicero, when one contingent of birds refused to eat before a sea battle in 249 B.C., an angry consul threw them overboard. History records that he was defeated.

But one major religious tradition-ironically, the one that gave rise to matzo-ball soup and the Sunday chicken dinner-failed to imbue chickens with much religious significance. The Old Testament passages concerning ritual sacrifice reveal a distinct preference on the part of Yahweh for red meat over poultry. In Leviticus 5:7, a guilt offering of two turtledoves or pigeons is acceptable if the sinner in question is unable to afford a lamb, but in no instance does the Lord request a chicken. Matthew 23:37 contains a passage in which Jesus likens his care for the people of Jerusalem to a hen caring for her brood. This image, had it caught on, could have completely changed the course of Christian iconography, which has been dominated instead by depictions of the Good Shepherd. The rooster plays a small but crucial role in the Gospels in helping to fulfill the prophecy that Peter would deny Jesus "before the cock crows." (In the ninth century, Pope Nicholas I decreed that a figure of a rooster should be placed atop every church as a reminder of the incident-which is why many churches still have cockerel-shaped weather vanes.) There is no implication that the rooster did anything but mark the passage of the hours, but even this secondhand association with betrayal probably didn't advance the cause of the chicken in Western culture. In contemporary American usage, the associations of "chicken" are with cowardice, neurotic anxiety ("The sky is falling!") and ineffectual panic ("running around like a chicken without a head").

The fact is that the male of the species can be quite a fierce animal, especially when bred and trained for fighting. Nature armed the rooster with a bony leg spur; humans have supplemented that feature with an arsenal of metal spurs and small knives strapped to the bird's leg. Cockfighting is illegal in the United States-Louisiana was the last state to ban it, in 2008-and generally viewed by Americans as inhumane. But in the parts of the world where it is still practiced, legally or illegally, it has claims to being the world's oldest continual sport. Artistic depictions of rooster combatants are scattered throughout the ancient world, such as in a first century A.D. mosaic adorning a house in Pompeii. The ancient Greek city of Pergamum established a cockfighting amphitheater to teach valor to future generations of soldiers.

The domesticated chicken has a genealogy as complicated as the Tudors, stretching back 7,000 to 10,000 years and involving, according to recent research, at least two wild progenitors and possibly more than one event of initial domestication. The earliest fossil bones identified as possibly belonging to chickens appear in sites from northeastern China dating to around 5400 B.C., but the birds' wild ancestors never lived in those cold, dry plains. So if they really are chicken bones, they must have come from somewhere else, most likely Southeast Asia. The chicken's wild progenitor is the red junglefowl, Gallus gallus, according to a theory advanced by Charles Darwin and recently confirmed by DNA analysis. The bird's resemblance to modern chickens is manifest in the male's red wattles and comb, the spur he uses to fight and his cock-a-doodle-doo mating call. The dun-colored females brood eggs and cluck just like barnyard chickens. In its habitat, which stretches from northeastern India to the Philippines, G. gallus browses on the forest floor for insects, seeds and fruit, and flies up to nest in the trees at night. That's about as much flying as it can manage, a trait that had obvious appeal to humans seeking to capture and raise it. This would later help endear the chicken to Africans, whose native guinea fowls had an annoying habit of flying off into the forest when the spirit moved them.

But G. gallus is not the sole progenitor of the modern chicken. Scientists have identified three closely related species that might have bred with the red junglefowl. Precisely how much genetic material these other birds contributed to the DNA of domesticated chickens remains a matter of conjecture. Recent research suggests that modern chickens inherited at least one trait, their yellow skin, from the gray junglefowl of southern India. Did a domesticated breed of G. gallus spread initially from Southeast Asia, traveling either north to China or southwest to India? Or were there two separate heartlands of domestication: ancient India and Southeast Asia? Either scenario is possible, but probing more deeply into chicken origins is hindered by an inconclusive DNA trail. "Because domesticated and wild birds mixed over time, it's really difficult to pinpoint," says Michael Zody, a computational biologist who studies genetics at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.

The chicken's real star turn came in 2004, when an international team of geneticists produced a complete map of the chicken genome. The chicken was the first domesticated animal, the first bird-and consequently, the first descendant of the dinosaurs-thus honored. The genome map provided an excellent opportunity to study how millennia of domestication can alter a species. In a project led by Sweden's Uppsala University, Zody and his colleagues have been researching the differences between the red junglefowl and its barnyard descendants, including "layers" (breeds raised to produce prodigious amounts of eggs) and "broilers" (breeds that are plump and meaty). The researchers found important mutations in a gene designated TBC1D1, which regulates glucose metabolism. In the human genome, mutations in this gene have been associated with obesity, but it's a positive trait in a creature destined for the dinner table. Another mutation that resulted from selective breeding is in the TSHR (thyroid-stimulating hormone receptor) gene. In wild animals this gene coordinates reproduction with day length, confining breeding to specific seasons. The mutation disabling this gene enables chickens to breed-and lay eggs-all year long.

Once chickens were domesticated, cultural contacts, trade, migration and territorial conquest resulted in their introduction, and reintroduction, to different regions around the world over several thousand years. Although inconclusive, evidence suggests that ground zero for the bird's westward spread may have been the Indus Valley, where the city-states of the Harappan civilization carried on a lively trade with the Middle East more than 4,000 years ago. Archaeologists have recovered chicken bones from Lothal, once a great port on the west coast of India, raising the possibility that the birds could have been carried across to the Arabian Peninsula as cargo or provisions. By 2000 B.C., cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia refer to "the bird of Meluhha," the likely place name for the Indus Valley. That may or may not have been a chicken; Professor Piotr Steinkeller, a specialist in ancient Near Eastern texts at Harvard, says that it was certainly "some exotic bird that was unknown to Mesopotamia." He believes that references to the "royal bird of Meluhha"-a phrase that shows up in texts three centuries later-most likely refer to the chicken.

Chickens arrived in Egypt some 250 years later, as fighting birds and additions to exotic menageries. Artistic depictions of the bird adorned royal tombs. Yet it would be another 1,000 years before the bird became a popular commodity among ordinary Egyptians. It was in that era that Egyptians mastered the technique of artificial incubation, which freed hens to put their time to better use by laying more eggs. This was no easy matter. Most chicken eggs will hatch in three weeks, but only if the temperature is kept constant at around 99 to 105 degrees Fahrenheit and the relative humidity stays close to 55 percent, increasing in the last few days of incubation. The eggs must also be turned three to five times a day, lest physical deformities result.

The Egyptians constructed vast incubation complexes made up of hundreds of "ovens." Each oven was a large chamber, which was connected to a series of corridors and vents that allowed attendants to regulate the heat from fires fueled by straw and camel dung. The egg attendants kept their methods a secret from outsiders for centuries.

Around the Mediterranean, archaeological digs have uncovered chicken bones from about 800 B.C.. Chickens were a delicacy among the Romans, whose culinary innovations included the omelet and the practice of stuffing birds for cooking, although their recipes tended more toward mashed chicken brains than bread crumbs. Farmers began developing methods to fatten the birds-some used wheat bread soaked in wine, while others swore by a mixture of cumin seeds, barley and lizard fat. At one point, the authorities outlawed these practices. Out of concern about moral decay and the pursuit of excessive luxury in the Roman Republic, a law in 161 B.C. limited chicken consumption to one per meal-presumably for the whole table, not per individual-and only if the bird had not been overfed. The practical Roman cooks soon discovered that castrating roosters caused them to fatten on their own, and thus was born the creature we know as the capon.

But the chicken's status in Europe appears to have diminished with the collapse of Rome. "It all goes downhill," says Kevin MacDonald, a professor of archaeology at University College in London. "In the post-Roman period, the size of chickens returned to what it was during the Iron Age," more than 1,000 years earlier. He speculates that the big, organized farms of Roman times-which were well suited to feeding numerous chickens and protecting them from predators-largely vanished. As the centuries went by, hardier fowls such as geese and partridge began to adorn medieval tables.

Europeans arriving in North America found a continent teeming with native turkeys and ducks for the plucking and eating. Some archaeologists believe that chickens were first introduced to the New World by Polynesians who reached the Pacific coast of South America a century or so before the voyages of Columbus. Well into the 20th century, chickens, although valued, particularly as a source of eggs, played a relatively minor role in the American diet and economy. Long after cattle and hogs had entered the industrial age of centralized, mechanized slaughterhouses, chicken production was still mostly a casual, local enterprise. The breakthrough that made today's quarter-million-bird farms possible was the fortification of feed with antibiotics and vitamins, which allowed chickens to be raised indoors. Like most animals, chickens need sunlight to synthesize vitamin D on their own, and so up through the first decades of the 20th century, they typically spent their days wandering around the barnyard, pecking for food. Now they could be sheltered from weather and predators and fed a controlled diet in an environment designed to present the minimum of distractions from the essential business of eating. Factory farming represents the chicken's final step in its transformation into a protein-producing commodity. Hens are packed so tightly into wire cages (less than half a square foot per bird) that they can't spread their wings; as many as 20,000 to 30,000 broilers are crowded together in windowless buildings.

The result has been a vast national experiment in supply-side gastro-economics: Factory farms turning out increasing amounts of chicken have called forth an increasing demand. By the early 1990s, chicken had surpassed beef as Americans' most popular meat (measured by consumption, that is, not opinion polls), with annual consumption running at around nine billion birds, or 80 pounds per capita, not counting the breading. Modern chickens are cogs in a system designed to convert grain into protein with staggering efficiency. It takes less than two pounds of feed to produce one pound of chicken (live weight), less than half the feed/weight ratio in 1945. By comparison, around seven pounds of feed are required to produce a pound of beef, while more than three pounds are needed to yield a pound of pork. Gary Balducci, a third-generation poultry farmer in Edgecomb, Maine, can turn a day-old chick into a five-pound broiler in six weeks, half the time it took his grandfather. And selective breeding has made the broilers so docile that even if chickens are given access to outdoor space-a marketing device that qualifies the resulting meat to be sold as "free-range"-they prefer hanging out at the mechanized trough, awaiting the next delivery of feed. "Chickens used to be great browsers," says Balducci, "but ours can't do that. All they want to do now is eat."

It is hard to remember that these teeming, clucking, metabolizing and defecating hordes awaiting their turn in the fryer are the same animals worshiped in many parts of the ancient world for their fighting prowess and believed by the Romans to be in direct communication with Fate. A chicken bred for the demands of American supermarket shoppers presumably has lost whatever magical powers the breed once possessed. Western aid workers discovered this in Mali during a failed attempt to replace the scrawny native birds with imported Rhode Island Reds. According to tradition, the villagers divine the future by cutting the throat of a hen and then waiting to see in which direction the dying bird falls-left or right indicates a favorable response to the diviner's question; straight forward means "no." But the Rhode Island Red, weighted down by its disproportionately large breast, always fell straight forward, signifying nothing meaningful except the imminence of dinner.

Santería-the religion that grew up in Cuba with elements borrowed from Catholicism, native Carib culture and the Yoruba religion of West Africa-ritually sacrifices chickens, as well as guinea pigs, goats, sheep, turtles and other animals. Devotees of Santería were the petitioners in a 1993 First Amendment case, in which the Supreme Court unanimously overturned local ordinances banning animal sacrifice. The case pitted a Santería church, Lukumi Babalu Aye, and its priest, Ernesto Pichardo, against the city of Hialeah, Florida; many mainstream religious and civil-rights groups lined up with the church, while animal-rights proponents sided with the city. "Although the practice of animal sacrifice may seem abhorrent to some," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the decision, "religious beliefs need not be acceptable, logical, consistent or comprehensible to others in order to merit First Amendment protection."

Chickens make wonderful pets, as breeders will tell you, especially if they think they could interest you in buying some chicks. They are as colorful as tropical fish but more affectionate, as cute as guinea pigs but better tasting, and, according to Jennifer Haughey, who raises chickens near Rhinebeck, New York, "far better mousers than our cats."

What characteristics do chicken-owners value most? To Barbara Gardiner Whitacre, who raises five breeds of chickens in upstate New York, a leading criterion is egg color-the deep chocolate-brown eggs of her Welsummers, the jade green of the Ameraucana, the speckled olive of Ameraucana hens after a Welsummer rooster got loose and created an inadvertent cross. Also, hardiness, cuteness and a willingness to brood-to sit on a nest full of fertilized eggs until they hatch, contributing their own labor to the farm economy. The eggs don't even have to be their own: As necessity dictates, Whitacre will substitute eggs laid by another hen, or even a duck. Unfortunately, these qualities are sometimes in conflict. She raises a breed called Silkies, with good looks to spare, bearing luxuriant feathers of an exceptional fluffiness. However, they also have blue skin and dark blue, almost black, meat and bones, which means they're not the first thing you think of when company's coming for dinner. Two years ago, Whitacre reluctantly sampled two Silkie roosters. "Of course, it was utterly delicious and tender, but blue-gray meat?" she recalls. "And the bones really are freakish-looking. So now if I can bring myself to use one for food, I generally use it in a dish with color: a nice coq au vin or something with tomatoes and thyme." This is a prejudice not shared by some Asian cultures, which prize Silkies for food and medicinal purposes. Whitacre was surprised to see whole frozen Silkies, which each weigh only about a pound and a half, selling for more than $10 in her local Asian market.

Exotic and heritage breeds of chicken go for considerable sums of money-as much as $399 for a single day-old chick, as listed on the website of Greenfire Farms, where the names of the breeds are almost as beautiful as the birds themselves: the Cream Legbar, with its sky-blue eggs; the iridescent, flamboyantly tailed and wattled Sulmatler; the Jubilee Orpingtons in speckled brown and white, like a hillside on which the springtime sun has begun to melt the winter snow. The Silver Sussex, according to the website, looks "like a bird designed by Jackson Pollock during his black and silver period." An advantage of many heritage breeds-an advantage for the chickens, that is-is that they spread their egg-laying careers over several years, unlike commercial varieties, bred for production, that are washed up in half that time.

And, for some chickens, the day comes when they are no longer wanted. That's when the man of the house marches into the yard, puts the bird in the back seat and drives to Whitacre's farm, leaving the chicken with her, whimpering that he just can't bring himself to do what has to be done.

As he walks away, Whitacre sometimes says to herself, "I'm going to process eight birds today, mister. What's wrong with you?"

Let us now praise chicken in all its extra-crispy glory! Chicken, the mascot of globalization, the universal symbol of middlebrow culinary aspiration! Chicken that has infiltrated the Caesar salad and made inroads on turkey in the club sandwich, that lurks under a blanket of pesto alongside a tangle of spaghetti and glistens with teriyaki sauce. Chicken that-marinated in yogurt and spices, grilled on a skewer and then set afloat in a mild, curry-flavored gravy-has become "a true British national dish," on no less authority than former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook. In a 2001 address that has gone down in history as "the chicken tikka masala speech," he chose that cuisine to symbolize his nation's commitment to multiculturalism. The most frequently served dish in British restaurants, Cook said, was "a perfect illustration of the way Britain absorbs and adapts external influences. Chicken tikka is an Indian dish. The masala sauce was added to satisfy the desire of British people to have their meat served in gravy." The great event took place in the early 1970s in an Indian restaurant in Glasgow, according to a Scottish MP who urged the European Union to grant the dish a "protected designation of origin." This did not sit well with chefs in New Delhi, one of whom described chicken tikka masala as "an authentic Mughlai recipe prepared by our forefathers who were royal chefs in the Mughal period," which covered roughly the 16th through 18th centuries.

If there's an American counterpart to the tikka masala story, it might be General Tso's chicken, which the New York Times has described as "the most famous Hunanese dish in the world." That might come as news to chefs in Hunan, who apparently had never heard of it until the opening of China to the West in recent decades. The man generally credited with the idea of putting deep-fried chicken pieces in a hot chili sauce was the Hunan-born chef Peng Chang-kuei, who fled to Taiwan after the Communist revolution in 1949. He named the dish for a 19th-century military commander who led the suppression of the Taiping Rebellion, a largely forgotten conflict that claimed upwards of 20 million lives. Peng moved to New York in 1973 to open a restaurant that became a favorite of diplomats and began cooking his signature dish. Over the years it has evolved in response to American tastes to become sweeter, and in a kind of reverse cultural migration has now been adopted as a "traditional" dish by chefs and food writers in Hunan.

But increasingly, as foreign observers have noticed, "chicken" to the Chinese, at least those who live in the cities, means what's served at KFC. Since the first drumstick was dipped into a fryer in Beijing in 1987, the chain has opened more than 3,000 branches around the country, and is now more profitable in China than in the United States. Numerous reasons have been advanced for this success, from the cleanliness of the restrooms to the alleged resemblance of Colonel Sanders to Confucius, but it apparently does not reflect a newfound Chinese appetite for the cuisine of the American mid-South. "You can find bone-in fried chicken there," notes Mary Shelman, a Kentucky native and the head of the agribusiness program at Harvard Business School. "But it's always dark meat, which the Chinese prefer, and it's one menu item out of around 30, and it's not the most popular." The chain has thrived by offering the Chinese customers food they were already familiar with, including (depending on the region) noodles, rice and dumplings, along with chicken wraps, chicken patties and chicken wings, which are so popular, Shelman says, that the company periodically has to deny rumors it has a farm somewhere that raises six-winged chickens.

If it did, you could be sure, chicken hobbyists would be clamoring to buy them for their flocks, fancy restaurants would add them to their menus and food bloggers would be debating whether the first, second or third pair made the best Buffalo wings. The globe-spanning chicken is an epic story of evolutionary, agricultural and culinary success, outnumbering human beings on the planet by nearly three to one. Yes, we get to eat them, but we also feed them. And they provide-along with omelets, casseroles, fricassees, McNuggets and chicken-liver pâté-an answer to the question that every 6-year-old boy, visiting a natural history museum for the first time, has asked his parents: "What did a dinosaur taste like?"

It tasted like chicken.

Jerry Adler wrote about heirloom wheat farming in the December 2011 issue. Freelance writer Andrew Lawler is an occasional contributor to Smithsonian. Photographer Timothy Archibald is based in Northern California.

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The chickens that saved Western civilization were discovered, according to legend, by the side of a road in Greece in the first decade of the fifth century B.C.

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Mecca, Saudi Arabia is relevant to us in understanding the poem “Salat Behind Al’s Mediterranean and American Food” because it is home to the Kaaba, the most sacred site in Islam. In relation to the poem, it focuses on a subject kneeling behind a Mediterranean restaurant, performing salat. Respectively, salat is one of the five pillars of Islam in which Muslims pray five times each day in the direction of the Kaaba. Millions of Muslims, like the subject of the poem, kneel and pray in this direction despite their environment or lifestyle. Spiritually, they can all be connected through this ritual, with their thoughts and prayers all being centered around Mecca. Though the subject is one of many Muslims that have been dispersed around the globe, they still dedicate the time and place to worship, even if it is in a back alley. Through this restaurant, they are able to create a life for themself in America, bringing the food and culture of where they are from. They convert an indifferent environment into a holy place of worship, surrounded by the city and its concomitants. The significance of this place, Mecca, is that no matter where they presently are, they remember and honor where their ancestors and beliefs stem from.

In adding the source of audio recording of prayers from the Quran to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by providing insight on the practices and traditions of Muslims and their adaptation to a new landscape. Though they may be delocalized, they can retain some of their tradition by making their own food or food made by people they know in order to convert it into pure Muslim foods. By working at a Mediterranean restaurant, the subject can provide food for himself and those in his community while keeping his traditions alive through his prayer.

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South America is relevant to our understanding of the poem "Cook" because this is where the tomato, the second food specifically mentioned by the narrator, originated. The tomato was introduced to North America through the Columbian Exchange, a pattern of trade involving the shipment of plants, animals, ideas, diseases, and people (including the enslaved) between Europe, Africa, and the Americas (Green). Similar to okra, the tomato had cultural significance to many indigenous peoples, and it was taken and used by foreigners as their own. The movement and use of crops like tomatoes and okra, in many ways, reflects the slave struggle; these crops, as with enslaved populations, were uprooted from their homes and used to “feed” the needs of those who stole them away. In similar fashion, enslaved people were treated as resources -- or crops -- rather than humans. Ellis illustrates this through Cook(e)’s story of rape and mistreatment: as has been true throughout the history of slavery, Mariah is viewed by her owners as basically a good to be bought, sold, used, and traded.

Today, tomatoes are under a negative spotlight because they are being farmed by slave labor in many parts of the world. As greed-for-profit runs rampant, companies look for ways to make production costs cheaper. Often the “solution” is to use workers who are essentially reduced to slaves.

Adding the source of “The Columbian Exchange: Crash Course World History” to this pin, increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by providing an auditory and visual history and explanation of what the Columbian Exchange really was. This video provides a bird’s eye view of the Columbian Exchange which allows us to see deeper into the wider trends and patterns of this world-spanning transfer. Through this source, we more directly observe the paralleled exchanges of people and food/crops and how these exchanges changed the world forever.

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The Columbian Exchange: Crash Course World History #23

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Ethiopia is relevant to our understanding of the poem "Cook" because it is the East African country from which okra originated. Okra, one of two foods mentioned by the narrator, has been a staple of Southern food and culture since its arrival in America. Interestingly, it was brought to this country by people who were uprooted from their homes and thrust into slavery an ocean away; okra was then passed on to future generations by enslaved peoples as part of their culinary and agricultural traditions (Sprout).

In “Cook,” the mention of okra is important, as it is one of the “babies” nurtured in the narrator’s “small patch of something” (Ellis). For Mariah Cook(e), okra provides comfort and pleasure; it is more than just a vegetable -- it is a symbol of culture and home. Furthermore, small gardens such as Mariah’s “small patch” were often critical for enslaved people in supplementing their diets. The food they were given was often not enough to live on, and, as such, these gardens helped them obtain the nutrients they needed to survive. Cook(e) farms her plants as if she is tending to her babies, and in a sense, she is: such actions are needed for her future survival and the survival of generations to come. Okra is a highly-nutritious superfood, which made it an immensely important crop to have in slave gardens.

Another connection we can find between “Cook” and the location of Ethiopia stems from  the idea of independence. Enslaved people such as Mariah Cook(e) were reduced to less-than-human, and their autonomy was stolen. Yet, in many ways, Mariah Cook(e) finds an “oasis” of independence through her garden. In cultivating her small patch of land, she retains power and control over something. Much like Cook(e), the people of Ethiopia found a way to remain independent when others tried to infringe on their autonomy. Ethiopia ended up being the only sub-Saharan African nation that was never colonized. Cook(e) and the people of Ethiopia each fought in their own way to keep their independence, even when the odds were against them.

Adding the source of “A Southern Staple Born of Violence: A Brief History of Okra” to this pin, increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by providing a more detailed background of this food and its rich history.

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Laura Paige Penkert, an MS/MPH candidate at Tufts Friedman School and Tufts Public Health Program, tracks the history of okra back to its roots in slavery.
In the sticky heat of a Southern summer, you will often see farmers and gardeners alike harvesting the bright green pods of the okra plant. In my home state of South Carolina, you can find okra pickled, stewed with tomatoes, grilled, roasted, and, most commonly, in a rich bowl of gumbo. I grew up planting and eating a not-so-spineless variety called Clemson Spineless, which references the college town just 30 minutes from my own home. While okra is grown widely in the South, it is not native to the United States. However, it is indigenous to many other parts of the World, including Western Africa and South East Asia. As I began to recognize the history of okra's journey to the South, I was forced to reckon with the complexity, brutality, and appropriation that often exist in Southern foodways. Moreover, exploring the origins of Southern cuisine deepened my connection to the food I grew up eating and instilled a greater appreciation for the cultures that created it.

Nobody truly knows where okra first appeared. Scientists believe the cultivation of the okra plant began as early as 12th century BC in Ethiopia. The plant most likely made it to the Southern United States with the beginnings of the slave trade in the 1500s. Okra, like rice, was one of the few crops slaves were able to bring with them from their communities in Western Africa. Food justice activist Leah Penniman describes her ancestors gathering millet, black rice, okra, and other seeds and braiding them into their children's hair to provide them with an inheritance in an unknown land.

Upon arrival to ports scattered across the American South, enslaved workers from many different Western African Nations began to make okra dishes - drawing on the cuisines and recipes of their homelands. Okra became a mainstay of their personal gardens, providing extra sustenance when food was forcibly limited by slaveholders. Michael Twitty, a culinary historian, once wrote, "In mainland North America, okra was one of the ultimate symbols of the establishment of the enslaved community as a culinary outpost of West Africa." The cultivation of the okra plant on Southern soil carried on ancient Western African culinary and agricultural traditions.

Yet culinary traditions do not often remain stagnant. Traditions change and adapt in response to pressures and the agroecology of a particular time and place. Across Western Africa, you can find okra featured in various soups and stews where the mucilaginous plant plays the role of a roux - providing thickness to an assemblage of vegetables and protein. Variations of Western African okra dishes became Louisiana's roux gumbo, South Carolina and Georgia's rouxless gumbo, and Maryland's crab gumbo. Other dishes like fried okra and stewed okra with tomatoes soon became a hallmark of African American and, subsequently, Southern cuisine.

The popularity and spread of okra dishes have a lot to do with its agricultural viability. Okra proliferates in tropical and subtropical climates. It thrives in the South where summer begins early, and the frost comes late. Okra also grows quickly. A well-pruned plant can grow to over 6 feet tall and produce up to 20 pods per plant per week. In addition to food, the oily seeds of the okra plant were used historically as beads or roasted as a coffee substitute. One former slave said, "sometimes corn and okra seeds was parched right brown and ground up to be used for coffee, but it warn't nigh as good as sho 'nough coffee." Coffee substitutes made of prolific plants like corn and okra became a part of an enslaved peoples' daily rituals. The plant's versatility and history made the plant a mainstay of Southern cuisine.

Okra is a vegetable that, as Twitty and others argued, sustained an enslaved race. That history typifies southern cuisine - it's one born of conflict and subjugation. Yet perhaps because of this dark history, okra forms the foundation of southern comfort food. Much of our food today came from conflicted spaces and subjugated people - recognizing these histories helps deepen the connection between people and their food.

Laura Paige Penkert is an MS/MPH candidate at Tufts Friedman School and Tufts Public Health Program, where she studies the impact of agriculture and food policy on health. In her spare time, she enjoys reading food writing of all kinds, running, and gardening in her neighborhood plot.

The Friedman Sprout is a monthly student run newspaper that aims to serve the student population at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, prospective students, and alumni. Our mission is to report on newsworthy information that affects the Friedman community including nutrition research, food policy, internship and volunteer opportunities, as well as school events. Our editorial slant is that of sustainability in food and nutrition.

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A Southern Staple Born of Violence: A Brief History of Okra

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Laura Paige Penkert, an MS/MPH candidate at Tufts Friedman School and Tufts Public Health Program, tracks the history of okra back to its roots in slavery. In the sticky heat of a Southern summer, you will often see farmers and gardeners alike harvesting the bright green pods of the okra plant.

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South Carolina, USA -- Joshua Brient (Final)

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South Carolina, USA -- Joshua Brient (Final)

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South Carolina is relevant to our understanding of the poem "Cook" because this state is related to both of the foods mentioned in “Cook,” as well as to cultural and historical aspects referenced in the poem.

The two foods mentioned in the poem “Cook” are okra and tomatoes, vegetables from distant places that were brought to this country through violence and that, today, are favorites of South Carolina cooking. Okra was brought to America from Africa as a byproduct of the slave trade, while the tomato was a crop originating in South America that was introduced to Europe and then North America through the Columbian exchange. These vegetables had cultural significance to indigenous peoples in their home countries, and they were taken through aggression and absorbed by foreigners into their own cuisine. Today, okra and tomatoes are staples of South Carolina’s food culture. Both vegetables can be found at dinner tables and restaurants and growing in local farms across the state, and their origin as foods related to conquest and subjugation is forgotten.

I was also struck by cultural and historical references to South Carolina found in the poem “Cook.” South Carolina was one of the founding states of the Confederacy and was the first state to secede from the Union. South Carolina’s large, cash-crop plantations were built on the backs of enslaved peoples. Racism and slavery were a part of life here, and it is safe to assume that stories of pain and suffering like that told by Mariah Cook(e) were common in South Carolina history. Mariah’s use of the word “buckra” to describe her master more concretely links the poem to South Carolina. “Buckra” is a Gullah word meaning “white man,” and the Gullah language was developed and used primarily by enslaved populations living in coastal Georgia and South Carolina (Wikipedia).

Adding the source of the “South Carolina Slave Map” to this pin increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by providing a visual reference for the extent of slavery in South Carolina. This map was published in 1861 as a part of an edition of Harper's Weekly, which was the most popular illustrated newspaper of the day. The map shows the relative population of people who were and were not slaves -- the darker the color, the larger the enslaved population. On examination, we can see that enslaved peoples represented over 85% of the population in some counties at the time. This shows how reliant South Carolina society was on the institution of slavery.

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California: is relevant to us understanding the poem “Ode to the Avocado” because it is the first location in the U.S. where food producers recognized the potential of the avocado. The avocado was first introduced to California in 1871. By the early 1900s, growers began to recognize the potential in the food market the avocado held. This goes to show that the growers saw the potential of the avocado despite the fact that it is only ripe for a short period of time which is similar to the authors overlook of the avocados imperfections. Today, avocados are grown year-round in California and are a popular staple in the food industry. This shows that despite the fact that avocados may have imperfections such as having a short period where they are ripe; they are still a very popular food item in today's market. Overall, think that the main point of the poem is to be able to connect this idea of overlooking the imperfection in the avocado, to our own selves. Ultimately, I think that this is the main struggle the author is having in the poem as she struggles to love herself despite her imperfections in the same way she is able to do so seamlessly with the avocado.

In adding the image and text source of “The History of California Avocados” to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by showing an example where the potential of the avocado was recognized and successfully capitalized upon.

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The California Avocado is a native American plant with a long, distinguished history. Today, the most popular variety is the Hass. The mother tree of all Hass Avocados was born in a backyard in La Habra Heights, California.

Avocado History

The avocado (Persea americana) originated in south-central Mexico, sometime between 7,000 and 5,000 B.C. But it was several millennia before this wild variety was cultivated. Archaeologists in Peru have found domesticated avocado seeds buried with Incan mummies dating back to 750 B.C. and there is evidence that avocados were cultivated in Mexico as early as 500 B.C.

From Aguacate to Avocado

Spanish conquistadores loved the fruit but couldn't pronounce it and changed the Aztec word to a more manageable aguacate, which eventually became avocado in English. The first English-language mention of avocado was by Sir Henry Sloane in 1696.

California's Cash Crop

Fast forward to 1871, when Judge R.B. Ord of Santa Barbara successfully introduced avocados to the U.S. with trees from Mexico. By the early 1900s, growers were seeing the avocado's commercial potential and ever since growers, enthusiasts and researchers have been hunting for improved varieties. A search through the industry's foremost annals, in particular the California Avocado Society Yearbook, reveals that many new selections of avocado were made in the industry's infancy and over subsequent years but few had commercial significance. By the 1950s around 25 different varieties of avocados were being commercially packed and shipped in California, with 'Fuerte' accounting for more than two-thirds of the production. Even though 'Hass' was discovered in the late 1920s and patented by Rudolph Hass in 1935, it was not until large-scale industry expansion occurred in the late 1970s that 'Hass' replaced 'Fuerte' as the leading California variety.

Today, California is the leading producer of domestic avocados and home to about 90 percent of the nation's crop. Most California Avocados are harvested on approximately 50,000 acres from Monterey through San Diego by over 3,000 growers. Ventura and San Diego top the list of avocado producing counties in California.

California Avocados are grown year-round. A single California Avocado tree can produce up to 200 pounds of fresh fruit each year, approximately 500 pieces, although most average around 60 pounds or 150 pieces of fruit.

THE HASS AVOCADO - A CALIFORNIA NATIVE

1926-2002

In 2002, the tree to which every Hass Avocado in the world can trace its lineage finally succumbed to root rot at the ripe old age of 76. Her offspring account for 95 percent of the avocados grown in California, and the fruit of her labor resulted in one of the state's most important industries. Yet, despite speculation to the contrary, nobody knows what variety of seed produced the original Hass Mother Tree.

The tree began life as lucky-find; a simple seed planted by A.R. Rideout of Whittier. Rideout, an innovator and pioneer in avocados, was always searching for new varieties and tended to plant whatever seeds he could find, often along streets or in neighbors' yards.

In the late 1920s, Mr. Rudolph Hass, a postman, purchased a seed from Rideout, and planted it in his new orchard. He planned to graft another variety on it, but when repeated grafts didn't take he planned to cut the tree down. Fortunately for avocado lovers everywhere, Hass's children talked him out of it. They preferred the taste of the tree's fruit to that of the Fuerte, the predominant variety and industry standard in those days.

Since the quality was high and the tree gave a good yield, Hass named the variety after himself and took out a patent in 1935. That same year, he signed an agreement with Harold Brokaw, a Whittier nurseryman, to grow and promote the Hass Avocados. They would split the gross income: 25 percent for Hass and 75 percent for Brokaw.

Brokaw began to propagate the rough, black Hass exclusively and promote it in favor of the standard varieties of the day. It made sense. The Hass was a far better bearer than the Fuerte and it matured at a different time of year. Because of the seasonal advantage, Brokaw was successful to the point of yearly sellouts of his nursery crops.

The patent expired in 1952, the same year Rudolph Hass died. But by then, the bumpy black avocado that bore his name was rapidly gaining in popularity on the smooth green Fuerte. Consumers preferred its richer, nuttier taste, while grocers favored it for its durability and longer shelf life. Today, the Hass accounts for about 80 percent of all avocados eaten worldwide and generates more than $1 billion a year in revenues in the United States alone.

The tree that launched an avocado revolution lived out her days in suburban La Habra Heights. Harold Brokaw's nephew Hank nursed her through more than a decade, trying to save her from root fungus. Hank lost the fight in 2002, and the tree's wood is currently in storage in a Ventura nursery awaiting the decision on a fitting commemoration of the original Hass Mother Tree.

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The History of California Avocados | California Avocados

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The California Avocado is a native American plant with a long, distinguished history. Today, the most popular variety is the Hass. The mother tree of all Hass Avocados was born in a backyard in La Habra Heights, California. The avocado (Persea americana) originated in south-central Mexico, sometime between 7,000 and 5,000 B.C.

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South Central Mexico: is relevant to us understanding the poem “Ode to the Avocado” because it is the origin of avocados sometime between 7000 and 5000 BC. The avocado was cherished by the people of ancient Mesoamerica due the fact it provided sustenance and the belief that it possessed mythological powers. It was a belief of the Aztecs that anyone who regularly consumed avocados would be provided with strength. This location is also relevant to the poem because it is an example of the opposite of ideas in the poem. While the poem focuses on the author's affection towards the avocado despite its imperfections, but her failure to give herself this care despite her imperfections; this time period was not focused on these ideas of imperfections. This is due to the fact that modern day beauty standards were not a factor, and focus was on community and resourcefulness. While insecurity will always be around, it was not something that was unintentionally pushed on people in the way it is today due to social media, etc. Ultimately, this is a good example because it shows an opposite view/ time then that that is portrayed in the poem. While it doesn't mirror the ideas of the poem in any way, it offers the opposing perspective and is the origin of the avocado.

In adding the source “Avocado History | Avocados From Mexico” to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by offering a new combatant perspective to the one seen in the poem.

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Researchers believe Puebla, located in South Central Mexico, to be the motherland of the avocado, where this strange and delicious fruit first flourished and locals began consuming them nearly 10,000 years ago. It's also believed that Mesoamerican tribes first domesticated the avocado tree (Persea Americana) 5,000 years ago, making the cultivation of avocados as old as the invention of the wheel.

Prior to its domestication, it's thought the survival of the avocado may have been dependent on the ability of since-extinct large mammals to stomach the fruit's mildly toxic pit after swallowing the large berry whole. In theory, the seed was ready to sprout by the time it was excreted.

The avocado was extremely important among the indigenous people of ancient Mesoamerica, as the fruit provided sustenance and possessed mythological powers. For instance, the Aztecs believed the fruit provided strength to whomever consumed it, and in ancient Maya, the fourteenth month of their calendar (K'ank'in) is represented by the glyph for the avocado.

The fruit eventually made its way across the Atlantic when Spanish explorers were introduced to the avocado in the 16th century. By 1521, the fruit had spread through Central America and into parts of South America before being exported back to Europe by the Spanish and sold to other countries.

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Want to know where the original avocados came from? Avocados from Mexico shares more about the history of avocados and how they became a popular superfood.

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Michigan: is relevant to us understanding the poem “Ode to the Avocado” because photoshop was developed by two brothers at the University of Michigan in 1987. This is significant because photoshop is very controversial due to the ways in which it is used today to create unrealistic ideas of “perfection”. The main message within the poem has to do with imperfections and how much we see them within ourselves despite the fact that others often don’t see them in us. Photoshop is a tool used by many people today in social media in order to change themselves to look what they believe they would look like without their “imperfections”. However, oftentimes the image created is so unrealistic it in turn causes other people to feel that they too need to change themselves to become slimmer, wear more makeup, smile more, etc. This idea is similarly used within the food industry in a few different ways. For example, food pesticides are often used to make food look better, but in turn make them much less natural. Also, within the food advertisement industry photoshop is heavily used to market food, and can completely alter the way in which the food item originally looked in order to create what is deemed the most appealing or ideal image. While this location does not have to do with avocados; I believe that it has to do with the main underlying message of the poem as it is where photoshop was created- one of the main ways in which unrealistic beauty standards are created. All in all, these unrealistic standards have caused an obsession with looks and “perfection” to be at an all time high in today's society.

In adding the video and text  source “Photoshop: The First Demo” to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by demonstrating one way in which unrealistic ideas of perfection are spread on platforms such as social media in the present day.

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Jake Sherwood
Selma, Alabama is relevant to us understanding the poem “Grace” because of its direct reference to the march from Selma to Montgomery and the poem's comparison of the communal spirit of cooking with family and friends to the solidarity of those in the civil rights movements. The march from Selma to Montgomery is a horrific, but nonetheless, an iconic moment in the civil rights movement. John Lewis, Martin Luther King Jr. and Hosea Williams all contributed with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to organize a peaceful march from Selma to the capital of Alabama, Montgomery. Not too long after starting their march, police met the protestors at the bridge and drove them back with brutal force, slinging their batons at anyone in their path. They came out that day to join together to fight the countless injustices they faced, and their lack of representation and inclusion in the political process. In relation to food culture, it is important to recognize how racial segregation prevented marganilzed groups from being able to participate fully in the public marketplace. This segregation in restaurants and marketplaces oftentimes forced Black Americans at the time to eat together as a community, in the style of barbecues. These discriminatory regulations also enabled many of the food deserts and lack of nutritional food in low income neighborhoods that still exist today. However, it is also important to recognize how integration enabled many of these black owned businesses to gain national attention after the civil rights movement. In adding the source of “Selma to Montgomery, Alabama”, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by identifying key landmarks in Selma and Montgomery related to the civil rights movements, as well as presenting the importance of barbecue restaurants in the area. The video displays the integration of this barbecue style into restaurants and private businesses showing many black-owned barbecue restaurants that are a landmark of Selma, Alabama to this day.

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Louisiana is relevant to our understanding of “Shucking” because it is the assumed poem setting and home to Cajun cuisine, the style of cooking that is featured in the poem. This is inferred from references to Lake Pontchartrain and Hammond, LA, an estuary and city located in the southeastern portion of the state. Louisiana’s Cajun rustic cuisine is based on the readily available foodstuffs of the region, meaning seafood from the gulf/bayou and locally-grown pepper are frequently used in recipes. This heavy reliance on easily accessible products is integral to Cajun cuisine, as the cuisine was originally founded out of necessity. It was founded when French-speaking Acadian people deported from Canada were stripped of the ingredients used to prepare their original recipes after settling in the Southern Louisiana climate. Cajun food—the product of the Acadian’s efforts—is lauded for its ‘low-n’-slow’ preparation (think stewing and barbecuing) and rich flavor. In “Shucking”, one Cajun dish is mentioned by name: the po’boy. Purportedly short for “poor boy” and descriptive of those who would eat the dish, the po’boy is a sandwich often filled with locally-caught seafood or roast beef. Compared to Creole cuisine, a cooking style more endemic to New Orleans than Louisiana as a whole, Cajun po’boys are seen as less demanding and more humble a dish like their name suggests. The explicit mention of po’boy in “Shucking” distinguishes the family dinner as a humble affair. The meal isn’t the frilly multi-course dinner that you would find in New Orleans’ fanciest restaurants—it’s the accumulation of each family member’s effort into making the oyster po’boys. They use locally-caught oysters and crack open each shell by hand, and then fry and assemble the harvested meat. It is a meal of resourcefulness and hard work; in other words, the definitive Cajun meal.

In adding the source of MUNCHIES Presents: A Short Film on Cajun Boudin to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by providing a visual and oral component that talks in depth about a typical Cajun dish and where in Louisiana is the best place to find it (and as the source implies, it isn’t New Orleans). It is an especially emotional video as the accompanying comment section reminds viewers that Cajun food exists beyond any restaurant depictions may have you believe: it’s a cuisine enjoyed by many in Louisiana whose families have done so for decades.

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MUNCHIES Presents: A Short Film on Cajun Boudin

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France: is relevant to us understanding the poem “Saltine” because it explains why McFee brought up French cuisine as a comparison for American enjoyment of saltine crackers. He describes saltines as “the closest we ever got/to serving hors d'oeuvres”, and by doing so, effectively elevates saltines to the level of sophistication and elegance typically associated with French cuisine. Without this comparison, the reader simply thinks of the saltine cracker as a simple snack with no culture or respectability to back it, but in drawing this comparison to a cuisine respected and sought after by the majority of Americans, the reader gains newfound respect and sees saltines from a new perspective. This comparison also serves to delineate the ability for vastly different cultures to create similar dishes, deconstructing human beings to creatures driven by the desire to make good food, and not being separated by geographical location. Gourmet French cuisine also aligns with the American desire for food to be simple and easy, much like saltine crackers are. However, due to both French cuisine and saltines being simple foods, they have greater potential as they can serve many purposes, including being a source of comfort to many. McFee’s use of describing saltine crackers as America’s version of France’s hors d’oeuvres elevates his point of saltine crackers being enjoyable and a source of comfort to people by bringing greater impact as readers are shocked by the comparison they never would have thought to make.

In adding the video of “French Food vs. American Food” from Lifey to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by giving saltine crackers ethical appeal as readers begin to see saltine crackers, not as the simple snack at the back of their pantry, but an American staple comparable to highly respectable French cuisine. The video perfectly encapsulates the similarities between French and American cuisine that make McFee’s comparison feasible, while also expressing the typical American appreciation for French cuisine’s gourmet nature.

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Mrs. Wilkes' Dining Room, Savannah, GA - Ashley Vaia

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Mrs. Wilkes' Dining Room, Savannah, GA - Ashley Vaia

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Mrs. Wilkes’ Dining Room in Savannah, Georgia is relevant to our understanding of “Shucking” because its communal-style service is reminiscent of the dinner our protagonist’s family shares towards the end of the poem. At Mrs. Wilkes’, separate dining parties are seated at the same table and are served traditional Southern food “family-style” to be shared amongst everyone. Though this restaurant is not geographically near the greater New Orleans area where the poem purportedly takes place, its strong emphasis on communal dining serves to remind its patrons the importance of a shared dinner. Much like how the family members in the poem all convene to eat dinner together, customers from across the country travel to Savannah to dine at Mrs. Wilkes’. In continued familial fashion, Mrs. Wilkes’ patrons are expected to set the table, serve one another from the large dishes of food provided, and clean up upon finishing their meal, similar to the “Shucking” family’s joint efforts to prepare their oyster po’boy dinner. Meant to emulate the typical family dinner, the statutes at Mrs. Wilkes’ foster an incredible sense of familiarity and bonding amongst patrons. Family units for millennia—think back to the days of hunter-gatherers—have prepared food together to support a collective survival. In recent times, the family dinner table serves as an emotional checkpoint, a chance to retreat from the demands of school and work and talk to one another over a meal prepared in earnest. At Mrs. Wilkes, this communal setting allows for preliminary small talk between parties to evolve into heartfelt discussions and boisterous laughing fits (an experience lost in otherwise traditional restaurant service). In a sense, these patrons—even if only for an hour and a half—become just as much family as the family in “Shucking” because of the universal human experience of breaking bread with one another.

In adding the source of the Atlantic’s Why We Eat Together article to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by recounting the longstanding tradition of communal dining and its unmistakable ties to the human need for belonging and family. It offers rationale for how family dinners have become a ritualistic event for many and why “Shucking” author Elton Glaser saw fit to center the poem around a shared meal amongst family.

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Communal dining is a quintessential human experience.

Wikimedia

Between us and our ancestors, who tore apart their half-raw, half-burnt meat with their teeth, or the women of Mesopotamia who ground flour to bake bread, food traditions have piled up and up. Food is no longer a matter of survival, nor purely power; it confers the status and identity with which we distinguish ourselves from others and at the same time gives us the sense of community we seek. Those who eat as we do have a connection with us; they are as we are.

"Dinner's ready!" is the traditional cry with which Western mothers used to call their playing children indoors and grab the attention of their newspaper-reading husbands. "Dinner's ready!" We're about to eat, so drop what you're doing. The call represented the most important moment of the day, a confirmation of family life, of the caring role of the mother and the authority of the father. So it went on for many generations, in many countries.

The table is a place of memory where we, whether because of the Proustian madeleine or not, become aware of who we are and with whom we are. Around the table, all previous meals come together in every meal, in an endless succession of memories and associations. The table is the place where the family gathers, the symbol of solidarity, or indeed the backdrop to family rows and childhood tragedies. At the table the eater is tamed. At the table we relive our youth through the recipes of the past, our hatred of endive or liver, teenage love through that first failed canard à l'orange, the sadness of the unarticulated apology, the tears of loneliness that mixed with the burnt cauliflower, the sensuality of fingers dipped in an airy sauce mousseline.

Recommended Reading

Eating around a table means both eating and talking, if only to say a few words of praise for what is presented to us. At the table we talk about what we've eaten before and what we're going to eat and everything in between. If we say nothing at the table, then there is always the refusal of food as the final word. With that same sensitive organ, the mouth, we taste and consume, speak and kiss.

How food is experienced has everything to do with the decor, with the rituals surrounding the meal, with the company, and with the experience. Everyone knows the trap of the Vinho Verde: that famous Portuguese wine tastes so much better when drunk in a sun-drenched restaurant garden than at home with central heating and a view of a rainy street. Simple wooden tables and farmyard cutlery appeal to our emotions, just like damask tablecloths and crystal wine glasses. Food is drama, the table the stage, and the cook is the tamer and hero. People eat more if the food is presented festively even if the taste is no different-important to remember if you are trying to encourage an elderly person to eat.

"Dinner's ready!" calls people to a specific place. The dining table may be round or long, of wood or plastic, covered with a luxuriant cloth and monogrammed table napkins or with reed placemats that have seen better days. Sometimes the table is bare and shows traces of previous meals. On the top of my French farmhouse table, 200 years old, are diagonal scratches from the breadknife of an unknown cook. "Dinner's ready!" is always a call to a specific place where the meal is being served, whether or not it includes a table: the picnic in the grass on a blanket, or on the open hatchback of a car beside the highway, or the rickety folding table on the balcony. Even in " Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe," that famous painting by Manet with a nude woman sitting on the grass, something that looks like a scrunched tablecloth lies next to the fruit. (Or could it be her dress, being used for the purpose?)

The words "Dinner's ready!" denote a state of mind determined by the topography of the table. People sitting opposite each other inevitably pass dishes or pans, and are almost forced to look each other in the eye and to converse. People sitting next to each other look at a third person, or out of the window, or at a wall. Does that looking, or indeed not looking, make the exchange of confidences easier? Is the taste of the food influenced by the company and the seating arrangements? These dimensions are beautifully illustrated in Edward Hopper's painting " Chop Suey," in which two women sit opposite each other at an almost empty table in a Chinese restaurant in New York. The table is the center of a universe in which we seek our place, revolving like planets around the sun, drawn by the gravity of the regularity of eating and the longing for company.

At the table it's all about receiving food, or at least the ritual of serving and eating. Every meal arises from a series of specified acts, even if only an improvised picnic or a chocolate cake consumed alone. Something is revealed, from a dish, box, or picnic basket, steaming plates are brought in, pan lids are lifted, and vinegar and oil poured, there is stirring and slicing. Even where a lonely diner picks sweets out of a bag with bare fingers, a rudimentary ritual exists, a moment of pleasure, no matter how ambiguous or guilty. This symbolism of the meal applies to politics as well. The table is functional; formal dinners confirm the state of negotiations and at the same time demonstrate the power and opulence of those attending. Every meal, however simple, has a beginning and an end, marked by the unfolding of napkins and the deployment of cutlery, or by a prayer, a speech, or a toast, or a satisfied leaning back in the grass as the last glasses are emptied.

The human is the only animal species that surrounds its food with rituals and takes account of hunger among others who are not direct relatives. The table makes us human. Cooking is the basis for relationships. We distinguish ourselves from the animals not by our use of tools-the stick other primates use to extract honey from a honeycomb could with a bit of a stretch be called a "fork" or "spoon." No, we distinguish ourselves by the fact that we eat at a table, or at least a specific place intended for a meal, such as a mat on the ground. We don't eat as soon as we get our hands on food, to stifle hunger; we usually eat together, if less than we used to and at more flexible times. We generally wait-although again less than we used to-until everyone has food on his or her plate, and we don't regard the meal as over until everyone has eaten enough. In urban families where older children remain at home and everyone goes their own way, people increasingly eat alone, or at any rate no longer with the whole family gathered at a specific time. The rhythm and communality of meals is declining in single-parent families too.

The call "Dinner's ready!" was until recently a sign that a particular time had been reached, a specific part of the day, in harmony with the rhythm of the seasons, determined by cultural preferences: Is the midday meal most important or the evening meal? The sandwich at a quarter past twelve or the Spanish el almuerzo (lunch) at 3 in the afternoon? The call to the table marks the moment in the day at which everything else must give way to communality: Toy bears are abandoned, school textbooks closed, computers put on standby, and work stopped, at least for a while. In Western Europe there used to be three meals every day, but elsewhere too the meals determine the hour, even where breakfast consists of nothing more than the cold leftovers from the previous evening and lunch is carried out to workers in the fields, even where little remains to serve as an evening meal.

How far back does the dining table go? For much of the hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution we did not sit at tables at all. The Roman emperors lay on beds beside low tables, the poor of the Middle Ages had little more than wooden troughs for their food, and in Africa and India people eat crouching down or in the lotus position on the ground. Estimates suggest that a quarter of the world's population doesn't eat at a table but around a mat, or standing in the mud of a market with a narrow plank for support. In poor countries, where mothers and children often eat separately from men, usually in or near the kitchen, the cry is not "Dinner's ready!" but "Come and eat!"-just as the usual greeting in many countries is "Have you eaten yet?" Why should we assume that dining at a table marks a high point in our evolution? Humans are not simply what they eat but how and where they eat. And with whom; in 18th-century Dutch a good friend was called a "table friend."

The dining table is disappearing. Fewer are being sold now in rich economies, apparently. This says a lot about the times we live in. The table is less and less the center of family life. We eat at the computer, standing in the kitchen, lounging on the sofa in front of the television, in the car, or walking along the street. Best of all we like to graze all day. If we do still eat at the table then it's no longer a dining table but one where eating shares space with other things, such as a computer, a television, or newspapers. Sales of plates are declining too, and even more so serving dishes and cutlery designed for serving from them. More and more of the food we buy is ready to eat, in throwaway tubs or trays, or designed as finger food to be eaten with one hand and no cutlery. What's the point of a table if we can devour a microwaved ready meal on our laps?

With the disappearance of the table as the center of existence, a new emotion is coming to the fore. The table exerted a certain discipline; now we feel conscience stricken because we eat too much, while neglecting to cook and forgetting how. Is the table not becoming the place of sin, of guilt about our desire to eat, now that we no longer dare to enjoy food uninhibitedly? Increasingly we eat alone, and what solitary diner bothers to lay the table?

Something comparable is happening to the kitchen. Avant-garde kitchens are becoming living spaces with a built-in library and bar, the ultimate thus far being Berloni's Not For Food kitchen in which a desk, sofa, and kitchen are fused into a single whole. Nostalgic farm kitchen or high-tech laboratory: the irony is that the more a kitchen is visible as a symbol of status and identity, the less it is used.
This article has been excerpted from Louise O. Fresco's book, Hamburgers in Paradise: The Stories Behind the Food We Eat.

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Communal dining is a quintessential human experience. Between us and our ancestors, who tore apart their half-raw, half-burnt meat with their teeth, or the women of Mesopotamia who ground flour to bake bread, food traditions have piled up and up.

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England: is relevant to us understanding the poem “Saltine” because its history is essential in understanding why McFee describes saltine crackers as “edges perforated/like a postage stamp”. These two lines are found in a stanza in which McFee uses harsh words such as “pierced” and “perforated” in describing saltines to portray his source of comfort as something strong and capable of protection. He then uses a simile to compare saltine crackers to a postage stamp, as if to tie in the connotation of war and justice between England and the United States due in part to the Stamp Act. The Stamp Act was one of several acts passed by British Parliament to be enacted in America when it was still a British colony, and ultimately led to the American Revolution. By comparing saltine crackers to a postage stamp--an item steeped heavily in bloody history and times of strength and justice--McFee furthers his establishment of saltine crackers in the reader’s mind as a food capable of bringing both comfort and protection. Prior to the harsh imagery used in this stanza, McFee described saltine crackers as soothing for the sick and a natural part of daily life; however, this new tie to England and a warring history serves to instill a sense of trust in the reader that saltines are also strong and able to protect against injustices.

In adding the image of “Stamp Act” from Britannica to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by giving saltine crackers an ethical appeal as American readers feel a tie between saltines and the country they live in and care for upon learning of the brutal history saltines are supposedly capable of protection against. The comparison of saltine crackers to postage stamps instills in the reader a sense of trust, especially as readers can see a visual representation of the tensions during the Revolutionary period.

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New Orleans is relevant to our understanding of “Shucking” because of how close the city is to the assumed setting, and because its Creole cooking serves as a foil to the more humble Cajun cooking showcased in the poem. Many upon first thought picture Creole food when talking about Cajun cuisine. In reality, there exists stark differences between the two styles. Where Cajun dishes utilize peppers grown all throughout Louisiana, Creole dishes prefer to use herbs: a vestige from the imported herbs French colonial settlers would receive. In shorter terms, Creole food is to the city as Cajun food is to the country; Creole cuisine has strong ties to New Orleans as a rich French colonial city compared to the Cajun cuisine ubiquitous across the Louisiana state. It’s important to reemphasize that the food featured in “Shucking” is not cooked in Creole fashion. Though oysters are commonly used in both styles of cooking, the family (that we assume to live outside New Orleans based on rural physical markers like Lake Pontchartrain and Hammond, LA) prepares Cajun po-boys, a dish and cuisine known for its humble origins. In “Shucking”, the physical toil taken to prepare the oysters is showcased as the oysters are dragged out of the family’s pickup truck and hand-shucked in obviously worn-down safety gloves. Had author Elton Glaser chosen a more esteemed Creole dish for the family to make, it’s undeniable that the poem’s point about traditional family dining would be lost. Instead, the family would have been preparing a dish largely uncharacteristic of their apparent circumstance and not cooking together as a labor of familial love.

In adding an infographic to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by offering a visual component that distinguishes the Creole and Cajun cuisines as two distinct entities, thus magnifying the importance of the Cajun meal prepared in the poem.

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Virginia: is relevant to us understanding the poem “Saltine” because it is home to the intended audience. In the poem, Michael McFee refers to two groups of people specifically, “rednecks” and “crackers”. He describes saltine crackers as the possession of both of these groups of people--saltines being “the redneck’s hardtack/the cracker’s cracker”. He brings these people up in the ending lines of the poem to add the most impact: in his description of saltines as a source of comfort, he finally puts a face to the name of those that truly derive comfort from this food. McFee intended southerners to read his poem and resonate with these groups of people that draw their root from Virginia. Redneck is a term that was created to refer to West Virginian rebel miners who tied red bandanas around their necks, and has shifted in meaning to refer to working-class white southerners from rural areas. Cracker originates from Virginia as well (and Georgia) and was initially used to refer to poor white people, shortened from “whipcracker”. By naming McFee’s personal experience with those who share his appreciation for the comforting nature of saltine crackers, he inadvertently reveals his expectations of who can truly understand the message he is attempting to convey: that saltine crackers are a source of comfort.

In adding the source of “United States: The South” from Food Cultures of the World Encyclopedia by Ken Albala to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by providing historical background and thus emotional appeal as the readers start empathizing with the subjects. With the quote being “The South is unlike cultures where the elite reject peasant food such as peas and beans. The legacy of poverty suffered by both races after the Civil War combined with the presence of black cooks (first as slaves, then as servants) in white middle-class homes until the late 1960s melded both cooking styles and methods of cooking with available local ingredients.”, readers understand the context behind the South’s dependence and history with simple snacks such as saltine crackers and gain new appreciation.

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Overview The American South, a cultural and political region of the United States, is loosely defined as the 11 states of the former Confederacy. They are historically linked by the devastating shared experience of defeat in the American Civil War in which they defe

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3.	Seneca Falls, New York- is relevant to understanding the poem “Because Men Do What They Want to Do” by TJ Jarrett because of the main theme that is displayed in this poem of women empowerment. Throughout the poem, the aunts of the author stress the importance of listening to their husbands and doing the necessary chores in the house. However, they stress that women should ensure that they don’t become to subservient and instead show the true power that they have in the household through certain actions. This message became abundantly clear to the author when the women’s laughter in the kitchen causes the men to leave the football game and attempt to hear what the women were discussing. Even though the women are seen as the ones doing the chores around the house while the men cook, it seems that the women are the ones who truly hold the power in the poem. Seneca Falls, New York is an important place in the women’s rights movement as it was the location of the first ever women’s rights convention in the United States. At this location, many women suffrage pioneers pledged to fight to get suffrage for all women. This vow illustrated the fighting spirit the women had, similar to the poem, to empower themselves and get what they thought they deserved. 
In adding the source of, “What happened at the Seneca Falls Convention” by History.com, to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by providing electronic, visual, oral, and non-verbal communication by illustrating the impact of the Seneca falls convention and explaining what happened at this convention through a video. Furthermore, this video helps explain what caused these women to attend this convention, and how this convention impacted the fight for women’s rights in the future.

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Momofuku Noodle Bar, 1st Avenue, New York, NY, USA

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Momofuku Noodle Bar, 1st Avenue, New York, NY, USA, Tanay Neotia

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Momofuku Noodle Bar, 1st Avenue, New York, NY, USA, Tanay Neotia

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Poem: Sleeping Like Silverware by Devon Brenner

The Momofuku empire in New York City is relevant to us understanding Sleeping Like Silverware because it helps us understand how other cultures would view the poem and thus, help us understand the poem through a different lens. The Momofuku empire is a chain of Asian restaurants serving primarily street food. The brand was created by Korean immigrant David Chang, and is known to offer some of the best tasting Asian food, but without any of the frills of fine dining. The restaurants serve on essentially paper plates and plastic silverware or simply chopsticks. As a result, one can imagine how Asians such as David Chang might be confused by Brenner’s writing, as to them silverware makes no difference in the experience of eating. They might not understand the contrast Brenner is drawing between sophistication and chaos with the image of silverware neatly arranged in their receptacles against the image of silverware “blasted clean” at the end of the economy cycle in a dishwasher. Thus, the Momofuku empire provides us with a different perspective on the poem. More specifically, if we had read this poem without knowing it was a part of Vinegar & Char from the Southern Foodways Alliance, the metaphor of silverware may have come across differently. One way to interpret the metaphor is that it depicts how the first ten weeks for Brenner in the South were filled with stormy nights, and this may be the way many Asians interpret the poem as many Asians do not associate with silverware the way many Americans do.

In adding the quote from David Chang to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers because it sheds light on the extent to which silverware was of no concern to Chang. He expressed that his main focus was serving good food, and good food only in his Momofuku empire. Thus, we are exposed to different ways of interpreting Sleeping Like Silverware.

Quote:

“Chang writes, ‘We were going to serve good food regardless of the environment, regardless of the paper napkins, the shitty silverware, the fast food-style condiment island in the middle of the dining room’”

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Appomattox Court House National Historical Park, National Park Drive, Appomattox, VA, USA

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Appomattox Court House National Historical Park, National Park Drive, Appomattox, VA, USA, Tanay Neotia

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Appomattox Court House National Historical Park, National Park Drive, Appomattox, VA, USA, Tanay Neotia

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Poem: Sleeping Like Silverware by Devon Brenner

The Appomattox Court House is relevant to us understanding the poem Sleeping Like Silverware because it was ground-zero for all the problems the South faces in food today. At the Appomattox Courthouse, General Robert E. Lee of the Confederates surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant of the Union. The terms of the surrender were actually quite generous, with the Union providing all the Confederate troops with as much food as they would need in exchange for turning in their rifles. They were also allowed to keep their horses and animals. However, the surrender failed to change the opinion of the Northerners on the Southerners, and in the end there was still prejudice during the early 20th century. The North did not provide much support to rebuild infrastructure in the South that was destroyed, and the effects of this decision can still be felt today. Along with this, the government in the South became prejudiced against the now-freed African Americans, limiting them in every way possible. This made the Southern economy tank, because many African Americans moved towards the North, where there were better working standards and higher paying jobs. The food industry especially took a hit because farmers could no longer depend on slavery to grow crops, in many cases they were forced to reduce the amount of land they had because they simply did not have enough manpower.

In adding the quote from Martschukat & Bryant to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers because it explains why exactly Southerners had less food to work with after the Civil War - the North had all the power and trust of the government, and thus the “Union” made decisions for the South that ultimately gave them the food crisis they have now.

Quote:

“Whether it is a question of power relations between the governing and the governed, insiders and outsiders, or majorities and minorities, inequalities of power nearly always become apparent in the distribution, promotion, and denigration of foods and in dietary rules and duties.”

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Kochi, Kerala, India (Sharath Palathingal)

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Kochi, Kerala, India (Sharath Palathingal)

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The coastal city Kochi, one of the largest in India’s Southernmost state Kerala, has a tale that is starkly contrasting to the workers at Liberty Street seafood. Kochi has a rich history of fishing and locals take pride in their historical fishing prowess and innovative methods of fishing. Like most other cities on this list, seafood is a staple part of the local cuisine and India’s obsession with spices add a layer of complexity to seafood dishes. The species primarily consumed vary by season and even tides at the time of fishing. Seafood is just as prominent in the city’s economy and people’s lives like Liberty Street. However, the life of fishermen in Kochi could not be more different from that of the workers at Liberty Street seafood. The fishermen in Kochi initially had their lives completely separated from people from stronger fiscal backgrounds, however, through time their lives’ have become intertwined with fishermen often getting comparable monetary compensation. It was during the largest flood the state had faced in 100 during 2018 when their status was further elevated. Fishermen unanimously co-operated with local authorities to transport locals in danger in submerged homes. They were given national recognition during the 2019 Republic day parade in the nation’s capital.

The audio clip added to this pin is a voiceover where I explain the reason this pin exists in the first place! I referenced a short audio clip from a local news station that was recording the bravery of these fishermen during the floods. This final pin is representative of better conditions the youth at Liberty Street cloud have been exposed to. The results of empowering those young men is surely immense and hopefully similar to the experiences of the fishermen in Kochi.

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Chinatown, Philadelphia, PA, USA (Juliette Hartmann final)

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Chinatown, Philadelphia, PA, USA (Juliette Hartmann final)

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The last location I chose is Chinatown in Philadelphia Pennsylvania because the second section of Wo Chan’s poem reflects their mixed feelings being an American. They describe America as a “celebration, so heavenward and wrong”. America seems to be the root of both their freedoms and their troubles. They explain that they “learned to speak English like a quick brick road”. The pressure for people that do not speak English to learn English in America is immeasurable. My dad was born in Germany under a Swiss citizenship. He grew up in Switzerland until he was 7, when the family moved to India for my Opa’s job. From the ages of 7 to 18, my dad lived in India with his family. He attended an American embassy school in which he learned English- which was not his first language. For college, my dad came to America. Eventually, my Oma and Opa began spending time over here as well. I’ve witnessed them struggle to learn English. People will look at them funny in a store or look away from them while they are talking to ask me what they are saying. It’s rude and hurtful. The poem ends with the explanation that Chan’s father knew the words to one anthem only. While it could be referencing the Star Spangled Banner, it is most likely the national anthem of China. Chan is from the Fujian province of China. While a young Chan may have learned English quickly in school, their father may have been too focused on getting by and providing for the family to take on learning another language. The individual words of the first page of the poem could be representing broken English- as the words are strewn across the page. I have had family members that have been overlooked and treated rudely due to their lack of perfected English. To Chan’s father, learning English was the equivalent of “splitting rocks”. Their father seems to think highly of them for being capable of learning a language that is almost necessary to succeed in America. I specifically chose Chinatown, PA because of the history of Americans stepping on local groups. The Vineland expressway was planned to be built straight through the existing Chinatown- a region in Philadelphia where Chinese immigrants had settled and formed a community.

The addition I’m making to this pin is the video “Save Chinatown Movement”, which explains the plans that the city had to build through the existing community. The state of Pennsylvania was going to build over the communities church and school. Sure, city expansion and construction of infrastructure is great, but at what cost can it be justified? The destruction of the church, school, and some homes in Chinatown would have devastated the community. So the people of Chinatown opted to protest the demolition of their community for a road. It got to the point that they sat in the way of the demolition teams to prevent them from taking down more. This historical event reminded me of the way Wo Chan described his perception of America- “celebration, so heavenward and wrong”.

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Central Asia is the location of the second pin that I chose for the understanding of this poem, because it is where the harvest occurs. Many of the fresh fruits and vegetables in traditional Chinese dishes come from this region. Chan references horseradishes and lemons, both of which are native crops of this region. Cultural food is often if not always based on what ingredients grow on the soil around the people making the food. I chose a large region of a continent rather than a specific province or city because of how food grows- in regions. Part of what separates different ethnic foods is the specific ingredients which go into making those foods. Americans are often put off of some “ethnic” foods because the ingredients used in them are considered “weird” or “gross”, but this is just because Americans have not been exposed to all ingredients from other cultures. An example of this from the poem is oxbone. It would be difficult to get the average American to try oxbone because it is an unfamiliar ingredient. In some Asian countries, however, such as Korea or China, oxbone is a regular ingredient. Exposure to ingredients from other cultures is sometimes necessary for acceptance of their presence in cooking.

I included the source “Central Asia” because it describes the different “Major Foodstuffs” that have originated in this region. It’s important to understand where the foods that are being mentioned in Chan’s poetry are actually coming from, to better understand their perspective. It also helps bring exposure to some of the ingredients which may be unfamiliar- due to regional and ethnic differences.

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Overview Central Asia, including the province of Xinjiang in China, is a massive territory, more than half the size of the United States. The newly independent states of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan are situated east of the Caspian Sea, west

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Fujian Province (Juliette Hartmann final)

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Fujian Province (Juliette Hartmann final)

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My poem was Such As by Wo Chan. Wo Chan was born in the Fujian Province in China. They immigrated to the United States as a child, but lost their citizenship by the age that they were able to vote. They are fighting against being deported, while also facing the challenges of being a queer, non binary minority. Chan is both a poet and a drag queen, and they express their life challenges through both of these forms of art.

They show pride in their Asian descent in their poetry. "it touches me to learn again and again, that this is my body, my dear and only body, one lovely chink in the whole damn night." Throughout the poem Chan continually mentions objects that are yellow: macaroni, dandelion, school bus, yolk, butter, ripe lemon, dry urine, porch light, dull gold, and fried blond. This is a nuance to his being asian. Despite racist undertones, Chan decides to refer to himself as both “yellow” and “chink” in his poetry. Though one can only speculate as to their true intentions behind making use of such verbiage, it could be a form of acknowledging the racism that they face so that they can move past it. Even so, the poem “Such As” shows Chan's respect and reverence for their father. They say that their father “held me like an egg”. This suggests that their father was tending and gentile- a steady presence in their life. I chose the Fujian Province in China as a location because if Wo Chan had not been born there, his poetry, including such works as “Such As”, would have much different influences and undertones.

The source “China: The Hidden History of Chinese Feasting” adds to the understanding of this poem by explaining some of the traditions behind banquet/community style eating. In the poem, Chan references their father as a “restaurant” with “splintered shoulders”. This can be interpreted to mean that their father is a provider both literally and figuratively. If the father is a cornerstone of the community and family, the father has a large burden to carry. In America, if they are trying to maintain their Chinese traditions without the support of the community that they would normally have, it would wear them down. Typically for these banquet style feasts there are many people helping to prepare the food- yet Chan describes his father as feeding an entire city without mention of any other figure- not even a mother. I’m also attaching this image of people eating together outdoors in this banquet style mentioned, to give a visual of what this community style of eating was like.

People Eating Lunch Together in Shanghai Outdoors (1920)

(see pin photo)

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Music and Bloomsbury book

https://www.bloomsburyfoodlibrary.com/encyclopedia-chapter?docid=b-9781350044883&tocid=b-9781350044883-1057&st=#b-9781350044883-1082

Spain is relevant to us understanding the poem "Mango, number 61" because most of the food and culture brought to Cuba and Florida was because of the Spanish conquistadors. The invasion of the Spanish brought new crops and livestock to this region. This eventually mixed with the already existing culture to create the culture there today. However, Cuba in particular has a hard time throughout history starting with the Spanish. Along with their land being taken, the native people were forced to work on sugar plantations as slaves. Then later in history, they were taken over by a dictatorship which again wiped out the existing way of life.

In adding the sources of In Remembrance of Repasts: An Anthropology of Food and Memory and the video to this pin, they increase the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by showing them how memory and changing culture can affect identity. The video is an album of traditional Spanish flamenco music. This type of music is seen throughout almost all countries that were once under Spanish rule. Like food, music is a part of a culture that is greatly influenced by other cultures. The poem describes a Cuban community in an American city, this is another example of blending cultures. Having to identify with multiple cultures is something the author struggled with and that is clearly seen in the poem.

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Traditional Spanish Flamenco Music (Greatest Hits Full Album)

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Cuba is relevant to us understanding the poem "Mango, Number 61" because this is the origin of the culture the author is describing. Blanco is of Cuban descent and in the poem, he describes a city with great influence from the Cuban people. This high population of Cubans is mainly due to the rise of the Castros in Cuba. Cuban culture shares many similarities to other Hispanic cultures, one example is their belief in the supernatural. While it is not directly related to supernatural events, the little book described in the poem that helps predict the lottery numbers is something that can be found in many Hispanic homes.

In adding the source of History of Cuban Cuisine - Cuban heritage and the image of a traditional Cuban meal to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by giving them insight into the effects of the Cuban dictatorship on the Cuban culture. Many things such as food and belief systems changed when communism was introduced, and this book covers that topic well.

picture source :

History of Cuban Cuisine – Cuban Heritage. (2017). Retrieved September 27, 2020, from https://www.cubanheritage.com/history-of-cuban-cuisine/

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Miami is relevant to us understanding the poem "Mango, Number 61" because this is where the author grew up. It is likely that this location is also the setting of the poem, and the poem describes his memories as a child. Miami is a hub for cultural diffusion. Like New York, Miami houses a high population of Hispanic and Caribbean immigrants. Because of this high population, there are cultural shifts that occur here that don’t occur when looking at other regions in the united states. This cultural diffusion also plays a role in identity. The author himself disclosed his struggle with identity being an immigrant in the United States.

In adding the source of

"A Brief History of the Cuban Community in Miami" to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by showing them the effects of cultural diffusion on cities like Miami. This source discusses the impact of high Caribbean American populations on the culture of American cities. This is why in the poem it feels like the author is describing a city in South or Central America rather than the United States.

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Florida was a popular destination for older folks fleeing from the cold of the northern states. But Miami was preparing for a major facelift after 1959.

Fidel Castro had won the Cuban revolution against the dictator and U.S. ally Fulgencio Batista, and the wealthy and middle classes of Cuban society eager to escape a communist regime sought shelter in the shores of Miami as well as Key West (just 90 nautical miles away from Cuba). The migrants didn't come to stay; they were waiting for a coup spearheaded by the United States. But the Bay of Pigs Invasion was unsuccessful due to the Soviet interruption, and the Cubans settled into their permanent home.

Soon, more migrants would arrive as Castro opened the gates of the island several times to dissenting citizens, and the U.S. enacted the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 allowing Cuban refugees to pursue residency. Many arrived by airplanes, boats, and those unlucky few by rickety rafts.

Upon reaching the city, the refugees had their documents processed in what is now the Freedom Tower, the former headquarters of The Miami News and now known as the "Ellis Island of the South" due to its role in the Cuban refugee crisis. Most of the Cuban community settled in the area along 8th street (Calle Ocho) in what is now called Little Havana, just west of Downtown Miami. Numerous restaurants, such as Versailles, began to pop up, as well as other eateries with ventanitas (or small windows where you order coffee), and the Maximo Gomez Park, which is also known as Domino Park, where older folks come to play dominoes.

With their growing population, the Cuban community began to transform Miami's landscape into a Spanish-speaking one. They entered in politics, succeeded in business, and surpassed what was largely an American and African American population-Miami's population now is 54% Cuban. The city's transformation into a bilingual community invited other Latin American countries to venture over for economic opportunities.

The city saw an economic boom and a rise in development. Also, businesses found a market in the Spanish-speaking city. The world began to take notice of Miami; though plagued by the cocaine wars of the '80s, it spurred interest from the film industry which used Vice City as their setting for films such as and other crime-inspired TV shows. But aside from film, the city has also attracted investors, architects, and sports stars, and even Latin American musicians who want to achieve international influence must come to Miami to secure their popularity.

The Cuban migration has shaped what Miami has turned into-a literal "Capital of Latin America." The cruise industry is also booming-Port of Miami is one of the busiest ports with 5.3 million visitors last year. All of the city's neighborhoods and suburbs are mixed with Hispanics and now even Brazilians, along with Russians and other cultures lured to live in the paradise city. The Cuban community has also influenced the city in terms of politics and art, bringing forth politicians such as Marco Rubio and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and even Jose M. Pérez, a Cuban American billionaire who sponsored the Pérez Art Museum Miami named after him.

All in all, the Magic City is one of the United States' most popular tourist destinations, and it may have never held such importance had it not been for the Cuban influence.

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A Brief History of the Cuban Community in Miami

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Florida was a popular destination for older folks fleeing from the cold of the northern states. But Miami was preparing for a major facelift after 1959. Fidel Castro had won the Cuban revolution against the dictator and U.S.

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Similar to Conway, South Carolina, the states of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island are historically heavily involved in fishing and other maritime activity.  The docks in Boston’s ports are infamous for several significant events throughout American history, the most important being the Boston Tea Party. This act of defiance grew into one of the most fundamental American values, the value of freedom. However, African Americans were initially denied freedom and victims to one of humanity’s most despicable institutions, slavery. The consequences of this long, unjust process is found the stall owner’s attitude towards his workers as traces of racial supremacy may have influenced his actions. The importance of New England, however, is in their role in extending their support towards abolishing slavery as a part of the union in the civil war. Apart from their historical contributions, their strong involvement in fishing and maritime culture also relate to the poem’s theme. Seafood is universal, coastal areas have long embraced its importance and made it a staple part of their life. The seafood industry today in the New England states is renowned worldwide. A simple example would be the Maine lobster, which is used by chef’s in premiere restaurants worldwide.

The economic prosperity of these states is also noteworthy in the modern market. Many of these states have evolved from traditional fishing towns to international hotspots for commerce. The picture used to illustrate New England, however, paints a stark contrast to the economic behemoth the area is today. It helps us remember the area’s humble beginnings, its deep connection fishing, and the quintessential role of seafood in its residents’ lives.

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Liberty Lane, Conway, South Carolina, USA

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Liberty Street, Conway, South Carolina, USA (Sharath Palathingal)

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Liberty Street, Conway, South Carolina, USA (Sharath Palathingal)

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This location in Professor Finney’s hometown in South Carolina is where the poem’s main focus, the seafood stall, is located. South Carolina, to this day, face the daunting task of establishing racial equality, a sentiment vividly described by the poetess. The workers at Liberty Street seafood are young African American males who work for a white employer seeking to exploit their labor. The poetess paints a startling picture of the resentment, pain and frustration of these workers endure. We become reasonably more uncomfortable as we learn more about their backgrounds and how the vicious cycle of poverty and desperate decision making put their lives in jeopardy. Only through uncomfortable yet necessary conversations can years of racial injustice be accounted for and resolved. Seafood is a quintessential part of several cuisines worldwide; the white owners’ seeming monopoly on the trade of something so quintessential is indicative of what was once the attitude towards workers of color. Hoarding the stall’s profits and underpaying his workers tie in with the owner’s sadistic sentiments. The city of Conway is also along South Carolina’s coast which explains why seafood would have been a staple in the locals’ diet. The wide variety of fish species described by the author closely tie in with the most popular catches in the city.

Additionally, the link embedded with this pin is a video that highlights the variety of catch the Conway seafood market sells to this day. It provides evidence regarding the poetess’ claims of how diverse the catch at Liberty Street Seafood is and also creates the general ambiance of a seafood stall described in the poem.

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Liberty Lane, Conway, South Carolina, USA

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Liberty Street, Conway, South Carolina, USA (Sharath Palathingal)

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Liberty Street, Conway, South Carolina, USA (Sharath Palathingal)

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Egypt is relevant to us understanding the poem “Times like These: Marinna, Florida”

because it is the origin of one of the foods mentioned in the poem. African nations are the

origins of a multitude of foods used in Southern dishes and styles of cooking due to the enslavement that accompanied the Columbian Exchange. African traditions have also made their way throughout the Americas, not only in the South, as a means for preparing food. These traditions, along with foods are rooted in the forced enslavement of Africans during colonization. Thus, a poem focused on Southern culinary traditions and trends would have ties to an African nation such as Egypt. In this case the poem refers to a plant that traces its origins to Egypt, Nigeria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria. The crop in question is the black-eyed pea, and like rice from Western Africa, this vegetable has become a staple side for many Southern meals. Therefore, it is not surprising that L. Lamar Wilson would place an allusion to a plant with African origins. The black-eyed pea comes up in the last line of the poem “They reach for locks of hair & black-eyed peas, stowed away for times like these.” This reference to the plant creates a connection to the location of Egypt by addressing a food with natively African origins. The source “The Transnational Dish of the Motherland: The African Roots of Rice and Beans" expands on this concept by addressing the origins of Rice and Beans. In a similar fashion, the map provides an expression of foods and how the Columbian exchange shifted these foods to new locations, however this expression creates a visual reference to these origins instead of a written on like the aforementioned source. The location of Egypt speaks to the cultural reference of the poem by addressing the cultural origin of foods and how they have lead to the creation of these foods in the South and across the United States.

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Atlantic Ocean -Vincent Bell (listen to video while reading to enhance experience)

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Atlantic Ocean -Vincent Bell (listen to video while reading to enhance experience)

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The Atlantic Ocean holds relevance to understanding the poem “In Times Like These: Marianna, Florida” because it appeals to the coastal aspect of Southern life expressed in the poem. Many Southern states come in contact with either an ocean, river, or lake. This is most evident with States that act as the boarder for the East coast such as Georgia, Florida, or the Carolinas. These states often contain ports and harbors that import and export goods from different countries. Due to the relative ease that these Southern States have access to the ocean, Soul Food incorporates many sea foods. This has caused Soul Food to be associated with both rural dishes as well as marine foods, especially many different fish. Florida is not an exception when it comes to this aspect of Soul Food, on the contrary it is one of the prime examples of how rural life can be fused with foods from the ocean. Being on the East coast the Atlantic Ocean acts as a major source for these dishes that are accompanied by sea food. The poem itself explores this idea by referring to “tales of a faraway sea.” This far away sea could be any ocea or body of water, but as the poem is set in Marianna, Florida the Atlantic Ocean being the sea that the poem references adds to the Southern culinary theme. The poem also refers to specific sea food dishes such as “a feast of sardines & cornbread” as well as “buckets of oysters to shuck.” Due to shifts in the ocean, the evolution of the Earth, and globalization different species of marine life have been relocated. Therefore, the movement of oysters and sardines to the Therefore, the migration of oysters and sardines to the Atlantic Ocean has resulted in these being featured in Southern Dishes. With these references to the Southern tradition of including sea foods in Southern dishes, it is evident that including the Atlantic Ocean would be useful to the multimodal map add a unique aspect by referring to a source of food instead of an origin or the state itself.

This pin is further enhanced with the inclusion of the source “United States: The South” due to the source addressing the specific aspects of Southern Food. It goes in depth of Southern culture and it’s history, explaining how each aspect came to be and the main dishes featured. This includes the seafoods discussed in the poem and reveals the significance of this food to coastal Southern States.

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Naturaleza Viva - Ocean Sounds For Sleeping

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Sleep For 11 Hours Straight, High Quality Stereo Ocean Sounds Of Rolling Waves For Deep Sleeping

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The poem that I was given is “Times Like These: Marianna, Florida” written by L. Lamar Wilson. Florida is relevant to us understanding the poem “Times like These: Marinna, Florida” because it is the setting of the poem and holds connection to the history and cultural references. It is clear the L. Lamar Wilson selected Florida as the setting for his poem for the purpose of discussing Southern culinary tradition. Thus, including Florida in our research will only add to the experience of his poem. Florida acts as the main point of reference throughout the poem, being addressed through the rural aspects left over from the Columbian Exchange, or the coastal aspect when certain sea foods are referenced. The main aspects that the poem focuses on in terms of Florida includes the rural context of the South, and the coastal surroundings. The poem addresses the rural context immediately with the first line “In one field, husks, muscadine vines & a sugarcane graveyard furrow acres aching.” This line itself alludes to the plantation agriculture of colonial Florida in which the Spanish cultivated sugarcane from Asia. By addressing the fields of the plantation agriculture of the South, L. Lamar Wilson addresses how the Columbian Exchange lead to the creation of modern-day soul foods. The concept of globalization is further expressed upon by the source “Food, Culture and Energy” in which Sidney Mintz explores the impact that the globalization of food will have on the future. This can be cross applied to the past and present as the Columbian Exchange acted as on of the first instances of globalization in terms of food and culinary cultures being fused.

The poem also addresses the coastal relevance of Florida by mentioning some seafoods and alluding to a body of water. This occurs toward the middle of the poem in which it is stated “the couple says & set their table with damask, fresh-pressed for a feast of sardines & cornbread … from dusk till dusk, they lull the boy with tales of a faraway sea, buckets of oysters to shuck.” This reference to the ocean and sea foods points to the impact that bodies of water have of culinary diets. Being nearby an extra source of foods leads to the development of new foods and fusions. This has very much been represented with Soul Food as we often see that dishes are either substituted or accompanied by many sea foods such as fish or oysters in the case of the poem.

Despite the simplicity of choosing Florida, it would be perfect for analyzing the poem over other regions due to the relevance it holds in the poem itself. Being the setting of the poem means that it holds direct connection to the concepts explored by L. Lamar Wilson. While other regions would either be more interesting, or more explorative, Florida can not be discredited when considering a location to study due to the setting of the poem and the cultural significance it would hold.

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Soul food is generational, it's communal.

One hot summer day in Wichita Falls, Texas, congregants of New Jerusalem Baptist Church piled into a line, ready to be served lunch during their annual church picnic. As the pastor's granddaughter, I "helped" arrange the food on the table while sneaking small samples for myself. Women in pastel-colored blouses heaped fried chicken, collard greens, mac and cheese, cornbread and other Southern delicacies onto each churchgoer's plate. After the prayer was said, we sat down together, ate and laughed late into the afternoon.

As we enjoyed the luncheon, people shared their recipes with each other. "That is my grandmother's recipe," one woman in a pale yellow blouse beamed at another woman. "All you need is a little pinch of this and a handful of that." On the opposite end of the table, men slammed down their dominos between bites of mac and cheese, while kids ran around with half-eaten chicken legs in their greasy hands. To this day, I remember Sister Phillips' fried chicken, Sister Meadow's mac and cheese, Sister Thompson's cornbread and Sister Gwen's hummingbird cake. As lunch concluded, the congregation prayed, thanking their Lord for nourishment and the hands that prepared it.

If anyone were to look at our spread that afternoon, they would simply think we were having a Southern feast; however, this food was different. The food that connected us that Saturday afternoon was familiar and etched deep into our hearts. It was "soul" food and couldn't simply be categorized as Southern.

Over the years, culinary historians, chefs and casual foodies alike have tried to understand the magic of soul food and how it differs from Southern food. In the simplest terms, Southern food comes from the culinary tradition of 16 states across the American South, influenced by African, Native American, Spanish, French and English cultures. Often referred to as "country cooking," or "comfort food," traditional Southern food includes dishes such as fried chicken, collard greens, field peas, cornbread, sweet potato pie, peach cobbler and more. "Southern food is all about utilizing what is available to you, what is in season. It is rural, country, comfort food and it is all about the sides," says Chef Kenny Gilbert of Gilbert's Social.

Soul food utilizes many of the same ingredients as Southern food. However, more than that, the historical and cultural origins of the cuisines differentiate the two types of culinary traditions. Soul food has come to be defined as African American heritage cooking, Southern food eaten and prepared by Black people. The term soul food originated during the Black Power movement in the late 1960s and '70s. The movement, both political and social in nature, encouraged racial pride and equality for people of African descent. It was one of the first times that African Americans could openly celebrate their heritage, including their food.

While the moniker soul food was introduced in the late 1960s, the history of the food began long before that. During the transatlantic slave trade, beginning in the 16th century, West African slaves arrived on the southeastern coast of the United States, along with crops such as black-eyed peas, okra, sweet potatoes, rice, and melons. With these crops, African slaves were influential in shaping Southern American cuisine by incorporating greens, rice, and other vegetables into the food they prepared. For example, Hoppin' John, a rice and pea dish, resembles the West African dish Waakye that is native to Ghana. Other dishes such as collard greens and gumbo resemble West African stews. It was the slave cooks' knowledge and use of certainmcrops that became the foundation of soul food today.

Although slave cooks used prime cuts of meat and the best vegetables to prepare slave owners' meals, they could not use the same ingredients for themselves. They were given scraps and other undesirable parts of meat like stomach lining, tongue, pig ears, and hogs' heads. They had no access to oil or butter, so they used animal fats for frying, baking, and cooking. Vegetables could only be used if they grew them on their small plots of land. Not all slaves had land, so they either shared or went without vegetables.

"Soul food is about using what is leftover and taking from the land in order to survive and feed your family," says Chef Gilbert.

Despite being given scraps, slaves created hearty meals like oxtails, slow-cooked cow's tails served over rice, or chitterlings, the small intestine of a pig boiled in water or broth and served with a spicy sauce. "Our ancestors used spices and flavors to mask the smell of certain meats. They would add peas, okra and greens to make something substantial in order to work in the field. The food was about nourishing their families and surviving," Chef Gilbert adds.

Black slaves had to be resilient and make something edible with what they had. Survival was based on their creativity and sheer determination, from which soul food was invented. Because writing and reading were illegal in many states, soul food recipes and cooking techniques were passed along verbally. That same resilient spirit permeates soul food today and is threaded throughout/into each dish.

"It was my grandmother who taught me how to cook the meals I cook for customers today," says Celestia Mobley, executive chef and owner of Jazzy's Restaurant and Lounge, a soul food restaurant in Riverside, and Celestia's Coastal Cuisine in northern Jacksonville.

Soul food is no longer prepared out of necessity but has become part of the African American culinary tradition. Family recipes have been passed down from one generation to the next. The complex preparations and intricate flavor profiles differentiate one family's recipe from the other. "For me, soul food is always tied to a memory from my childhood. It is my grandma's cooking, it's family, it's the smell of different flavors when you walk in the house," says Kalin Anderson, a chef at Gilbert's Social. "Soul food comes from the soul, so it hits the soul differently."

Today, soul food is much more than food eaten and prepared by Black people. While it can be a creatively crafted meal using an assortment of Southern meats, spices, vegetables, and desserts, the food represents a history of survival and pride. Indeed, one could argue that the food is less about the race or even the contents on the plate.

"Soul food is generational, it's communal," Chef FiFi Jackson of Ambitious Food Truck says. Similar to my experience at the church picnic those many years ago, the food brings us together. Families share recipes that had been in their family for generations. Even more, you could feel the love, joy, and soul in each bite.

With every dish, the African American experience is shared with the world. "Soul food has become very popular in the last 20-25 years," Chef Mobley says. When asked if soul food would ever go away, Chef Mobley shook her head no. "What once was considered slave food, and had so many stigmas attached to it, is now celebrated. I think it may get healthier or more organic and sustainable, chefs will become more creative and continue to elevate the dishes. Especially in larger cities. But I think it will continue to grow and grow. It won't leave, it's the food our ancestors taught us how to cook. It's been passed down to us, it's been here for generations and it includes our love and soul."

*This story comes to us from Edible Northeast Florida. Photography by Stefanie Keeler.

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Soul food is generational, it's communal. One hot summer day in Wichita Falls, Texas, congregants of New Jerusalem Baptist Church piled into a line, ready to be served lunch during their annual church picnic. As the pastor's granddaughter, I "helped" arrange the food on the table while sneaking small samples for myself.

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The Consulate, 10th Street Northwest, Atlanta, GA, USA

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Extra Pin (fun fact) The Consulate, 10th Street Northwest, Atlanta, GA, USA Maya Howayek

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Extra Pin (fun fact) The Consulate, 10th Street Northwest, Atlanta, GA, USA Maya Howayek

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“10th Street Midtown Atlanta, GA 30309” The consulate is a restaurant in which every three months, a lucky guest turns the globe and selects random country. The restaurant will then serve a “visa” menu which is this country’s food until a new country is chosen. With this rotating “visa” menu, they also serve a fixed menu “resident” menu in which is “duck confit”. It is a korea specialty served butternut squash, dried cranberries, garlic, scallions, korean bbq sauce and crostinis and is a client favorite.

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ZAGATS Top 10 Sexiest New Restaurants and Bars in Atlanta. Best New Restaurants 2017 - AJC Diners Choice 2018, 2019 - OpenTable

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Greece               Maya Howayek (final)

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Greece               Maya Howayek (final)

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“Greece” is relevant to us understanding the poem “Duck Confit” by Gaylord Brewer because olive oil originates from Greece. The pressing of olives to make olive oil dates back to about 3000 years ago in Ancient Greece and spread throughout the Mediterranean region as the Greeks and Phoenicians explored the territory. Initially olive oil had multiple uses, such as ointment for skin, oil for lamps, and medicinal treatments etc. Today, olive oil is largely used for culinary purposes, just like in the mentioned in the poem, “it is time for concubine to administer olive oil bath, up to the top and one quarter inch more for decadent measure, four cups of green virgin, first-press, sampled from prints from drowsy fingertips to drowsy lips.”.

In adding the source of spacial factors to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by showing amounts “it is time for concubine to administer olive oil bath, up to the top and one quarter inch more for decadent measure, four cups of green virgin, first-press, sampled from prints from drowsy fingertips to drowsy lips.”. We can see different measurements used to produce this dish and the spacial element is very clearly conveyed through this instruction.
https://images.app.goo.gl/ZciAwyCKSni5nYAx8
Video: shows the process of olive oil making

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkCFzFvcmpM

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"China” is relevant to us understanding the poem “Duck Confit” by Gaylord Brewer because nearly all the breeds of ducks that are common today are descendants of the wild mallard which were first domesticated in China approximately 2500 years ago. Until the 19th century, ducks were kept mostly for eating, and nowadays approximately 3 billion ducks are slaughtered each year for meat worldwide. Duck is also particularly predominant in the Chinese cuisine, it is the main ingredient of many delicious dishes. The most popular dish is Peking duck, which originated from Beijing. A whole duck is sliced into pieces that are eaten with green onion, fresh cucumber, and sweet soybean paste wrapped in a pancake made from flour and water.
 
In adding the source of pattern to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by showing the regular and typical preparation of the dish. It is served in a way that it has always been presented and hasn't changed. We get a sense of consistency and pattern when reading how it is prepared. The duck is sliced into pieces, eaten with green onion, cucumber and sweet soybean paste wrapped in pancake.

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China                  Maya Howayek (final)

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China                  Maya Howayek (final)

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"China” is relevant to us understanding the poem “Duck Confit” by Gaylord Brewer because nearly all the breeds of ducks that are common today are descendants of the wild mallard which were first domesticated in China approximately 2500 years ago. Until the 19th century, ducks were kept mostly for eating, and nowadays approximately 3 billion ducks are slaughtered each year for meat worldwide. Duck is also particularly predominant in the Chinese cuisine, it is the main ingredient of many delicious dishes. The most popular dish is Peking duck, which originated from Beijing. A whole duck is sliced into pieces that are eaten with green onion, fresh cucumber, and sweet soybean paste wrapped in a pancake made from flour and water.

In adding the source of pattern to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by showing the regular and typical preparation of the dish. It is served in a way that it has always been presented and hasn't changed. We get a sense of consistency and pattern when reading how it is prepared. The duck is sliced into pieces, eaten with green onion, cucumber and sweet soybean paste wrapped in pancake.

https://images.app.goo.gl/gkBmaEAUBuP79Nkj8

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Northern Germany is relevant to us understanding the poem “The Sacred and the Bread” because Germany is Europe’s breadmaking center. Germany had existed as a collection of many different small kingdoms for a thousand years, leading to many small variations in their culture and, important for the poem, leading to differences in their bread. When Germany united only about 150 years ago, they inherited many different breads, so in order to understand the full extent of the 300-or-so different bread variations from Germany, the reader has to understand the country as a whole! Additionally, grains other than wheat are commonly used in Germany because of its climate-- rye and spelt bread thrived in Northern Germany while wheat was dominant in the South. Northern Germany, in my estimation, is closer to the culture described in the poem than Southern Germany because it is much more protestant and is closer to other cultures (Dutch) common among the first European settlers in North America. Many of the first European settlers of West Virginia were German, bringing along their regional breads and the knowledge of how to make them with them. Eventually, they would pass that knowledge down through generations, leading to the white-haired woman making bread in the poem. If a reader wanted to understand the diversity of bread in cultures around the world, they could refer to Germany as a veritable diverse culture of bread itself!

For further reading on this topic, a link to an opinion article detailing why German bread is the best bread in the world is attached. It delves into the history mentioned here in the poem and also shows off some scrumptious-looking bread! Looking through this article makes it easy to see why German bread is considered the best and the most prolific by some!

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(CNN) - You've seen the French sauntering around with slender baguettes under their arms or sporting jaunty berets as they pedal bicycles laden with crusty bread.

Those cinematic scenes are nice, but when you really get down to business -- as my countrymen are inclined to do -- it's obvious that the world's best bread comes from Germany. Here, bread literally sustains our culture.

Germans have more bakeries and eat more varieties of bread than most other countries in the world (although we might not go toe-to-toe with France on the bakery count).

According to the bread register of the German Institute for Bread (of course there is such a thing), there are now more than 3,200 officially recognized types of bread in the country. And German bread culture was officially added by UNESCO to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2015.

A key German term rests upon those hearty loaves: one of the words for work is Broterwerb, literally "gaining one's bread."

Bread is a staple for most meals in Germany: at breakfast, break-time (sometimes called Pausenbrot, or "break bread") and dinner or Abendbrot, literally the "bread of the evening."

"It sells like sliced bread" is a German proverb describing fast-selling items.

Bread even stars on TV: a talking loaf named Bernd has become a popular character among German children. The comedy series "Bernd das Brot." hosted by the titular character, has been airing on the children's channel KI.KA since 2000.

Oh, and the German postal system even has a stamp with a "German bread culture" slogan that went on sale in 2018.

So why are Germans so mad about loafs, pretzels and rolls?

One of the reasons for this immense variety in bread products is the fragmented history of Germany up until the 19th century.

Until then, what is known as Germany now was a cluster of hundreds of small duchies or kingdoms, all with their own distinct culture and dialect, and with their own bread.

Thrown into this mix in the Middle Ages were another cluster of successful and growing merchant cities, also trying to attract trade and new emigrants -- some with outstanding baked goods.

Germany doesn't have the same amount of sunshine as southern France or Italy, and many areas are not conducive to wheat production, so grains such as rye and spelt tended to thrive better here and produced breads still consumed today. The wheat-based breads remained in the southern cities like Munich and Stuttgart.

The main driver for the bounty of bread: farmers, merchants and dukes alike needed something nourishing against the often cold and rainy days. So Germans to this day tend to eat sourdough bread made with rye, spelt and wheat flours and packed with grains and seeds.

German bread is heavy and has substance; it (literally) outweighs fluffy focaccia or ciabatta.

That hefty tradition never caught on in the rest of Europe. In 1792, Johann-Wolfgang von Goethe recorded that while on a military campaign in France, he offered some of his dark rye bread to two captured Frenchmen, and they promptly fled back to their own lines.

Today, while food trucks in other countries serve up tacos and burgers for lunch, Germany sticks to standard bakeries, which all stock "belegte Brötchen," rolls with a various fillings -- the real German fast food.

The variety of baked goods can be a little perplexing when encountered for the first time: there's farmers bread, mixed bread, stone oven bread, sunflower bread, pumpkin bread, five seed bread and so on.

But don't let all these loaves overwhelm you. Just visit a local bakery, or Bäckerei and have a look for yourself. All of it is good. And if you have a sweet tooth, most bakeries also have a confectioner (or Konditor) attached -- so there's cake and pastry aplenty.

Germans were baking nutritious whole-grain bread long before the organic health food renaissance. While some supermarket chains have started baking their own goods in-store, most Germans swear by their local corner bakery and most German supermarkets actually come with their own little local bakery attached.

Becoming a baker continues to be a highly regarded trade, and German bakers complete high-level, creative training that most other countries do not have.

There are German standards for bread quality and sizes, and each year the German Institute for Bread announces its "bread of the year."

In 2018, it's Dinkel-Vollkornbrot, spelt whole grain bread.

Eaten at most meals, bread still forms a cornerstone of the German diet and culture -- even though some of the established larger bakeries have had problems recruiting new bakers in recent years, as fewer and fewer young people have an interest in learning the strenuous trade.

That doesn't mean that there are no artisan bakers trying to create new types of bread for a global audience in hip cities like Hamburg, Berlin or Munich. Bakeries such as Zeit für Brot, Soluna Brot und Öl or Springer are basing their products on natural and local ingredients to create new, delicious products -- while still strongly rooted in the tradition of German craftsmanship.

Pumpernickel: A rich dark bread made with 100% rye, originating in the northern areas of Germany and one of our most famous breads. Pumpernickel is baked over a long period of time at low temperatures, and often served as hors d'oeuvres with cucumbers or fish. It's so popular that even most supermarkets across Germany sell Pumpernickel in small, pre-sliced batches.

Roggenbrot(rye bread): This covers literally any other rye bread than Pumpernickel and varies a lot in density and color depending on regional recipes and preferences.

Katenbrot: Another dark brown and coarsely textured whole grain variety. Katenbrot means "barn bread" and like Vollkornbrot is a staple on German dinner tables, best enjoyed with cheese and cold cuts.

So, there it is. Germany's food culture is not just sauerkraut and sausages.

It is nourished by daily bread to this day. And there are German bakeries around the world: in Goa, India; Dublin, Ireland; New York and beyond.

So the next time you want to sample German efficiency, don't go for a test drive in a shiny new German Volkswagen.

Have a hearty slice of sourdough bread instead with some nice German cheese and butter slapped on top. You'll find that German bread really is the best in the world.

Marcel Krueger is a German writer and translator based in Dublin and Berlin. He mostly writes about history, travel and beer -- or all three combined.

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why german bread is the best in the world - cnn

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Why German bread is the best in the world (opinion)

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(CNN) - You've seen the French sauntering around with slender baguettes under their arms or sporting jaunty berets as they pedal bicycles laden with crusty bread. Those cinematic scenes are nice, but when you really get down to business -- as my countrymen are inclined to do -- it's obvious that the world's best bread comes from Germany.

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France                Maya Howayek (final)

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France                Maya Howayek (final)

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"France is relevant to us understanding the poem "Duck Confit" by Gaylord Brewer since duck confit, “confit de canard” is a traditional French dish which originates from the Gascony region of France. Initially a salt-curing process, the meat usually duck (but can also be goose or pork) is rubbed with salt,

for flavor and preservative, as well as thyme and garlic, as described in the poem “lift each thigh from overnight caress of garlic, fresh bay leaf, home-harvested thyme” then cooked in its own fat, the dish turned into a favorite in many regions. The French classic is now known worldwide and is served all over.

In adding the source of tactile element to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by giving them an understanding of finding their way around the duck using touch. One must "lift" each thigh and "caress" garlic onto the duck. The only way to implement the recipe is to use the multimodal factor of physical feeling and touch.

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Mt Morris, PA, USA, Hongze Khor (Final Pin 3)

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Mt Morris, PA, USA, Hongze Khor (Final Pin 3)

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The Rising Creek Bakery in Mt. Morris, Pennsylvania is relevant to us understanding the poem "The Sacred and the Bread" because it is one of the only bakeries in the world where salt-rising bread is produced. Salt-rising bread is bread that rises without using yeast, but rather bacteria attracted by a mixture of cornmeal, sugar, and milk heated to boiling and left to sit to accumulate microbes. It produces a cheesy-tasting, but very nostalgic taste for the people of West Virginia. In “The Sacred and the Bread”, the bread is not specified, but it is very likely to be salt-rising bread from the setting and description. Thomas, the author of the poem, is from West Virginia, where salt-rising bread originated and now is a family tradition. Therefore, it is likely that the poem is based in her childhood memories of the state. Additionally, in the poem, the white-haired woman is described as putting in a lot of work (love!) into the dough, consistent with how salt-rising bread is made. According to Susan Brown, one of the owners of the bakery, “Salt Rising Bread requires that you are home all day. You literally cannot leave your house because you have to be so careful to watch each stage and be there when it’s ready”. Brown and her co-owner Genevieve Bardwell founded the bakery to pass on the tradition to both people very familiar with the bread and newcomers alike. If a reader can understand the Rising Creek Bakery and why its owners established it, they would gain background on how important this bread is to tradition in West Virginia, especially.

Attached is a testimonial from the original owners of the Rising Creek Bakery which explains some of their reasoning behind their founding the bakery. Listening to their voices, it is apparent that they are very passionate about continuing to spread the cultural heritage of salt rising bread much like other breads, such as sourdough, had spread.

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Aidan Russell-McCorkle - Atlanta, GA, USA - Final Pin

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Aidan Russell-McCorkle - Atlanta, GA, USA - Final Pin

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Atlanta is relevant to us understanding the poem "Savannah Crabs" because from Adrienne Su’s biography, I found she is from Atlanta, Georgia. According to Strangers in the City: the Atlanta Chinese, their Community, and Stories of their Lives, there has been a Chinese population in Georgia for a century and a half. As evidenced by one of Adrienne Su’s other poems, “Things Chinese”, Su’s parents seem to conform to the culture in the United States even with that century and a half old Chinese population. In places like New York, different immigrant cultures group together and preserve their culture, so it’s possible the Chinese population is spread out in Georgia enough to where that strong sense of community isn’t there. Jianli Zhou points out in Strangers in the City that “relationships between the black and whites have been the center of attention [in Georgia]”, so while racism against the Chinese community may not be at the national focus, it’s still a reality for this community. In “Things Chinese”, Adrienne Su also talks about how her grandparents are “all but defined by their expertise // On the food of the country I was trying to excise”. This has placed the Chinese community in a unique position where their food has been co-opted and accepted, but the people themselves are still subject to racism and discrimination, and the article I’ve included as a part of this pin shows an example of that.

In adding the source of Strangers in the City: the Atlanta Chinese, their Community, and Stories of their Lives to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by adding another written resource showing the lives of the Chinese community in Georgia and relating that to the foreshadowing of family dysfunction by talking crabs.

1 - Zhao, Jianli. Strangers in the City: the Atlanta Chinese, their Community, and Stories of their Lives. Psychology Press, 2002.

2 - Su, Adrienne. “Things Chinese.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, 2006, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53683/things-chinese.

3  - Otterman, Sharon. “A White Restaurateur Advertised 'Clean' Chinese Food. Chinese-Americans Had Something to Say About It.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 12 Apr. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/nyregion/lucky-lees-nyc-chinese-food.html?auth=login-google.

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The uproar over a Chinese-American restaurant that was opened in Manhattan by two white restaurateurs has become the latest front in the debate over cultural appropriation.

"We were never trying to do something against the Chinese community," said Arielle Haspel, a co-owner of Lucky Lee's. "We thought we were complementing an incredibly important cuisine, in a way that would cater to people that had certain dietary requirements." Credit... Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York Times

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Arielle Haspel, a Manhattan health coach with a sleek social media presence, wanted to open the kind of Chinese restaurant, she said, where she and her food-sensitive clients could eat. One where the lo mein wouldn't make people feel "bloated and icky" the next day, or one where the food wasn't "too oily" or salty, as she wrote in an Instagram post a few weeks ago.

She chose a name for her new restaurant, Lucky Lee's, that sounded stereotypically Chinese, even though she and her husband, Lee, are not Asian. She decorated the restaurant with bamboo and jade touches, and designed her logo with a chopstick-inspired font.

And then, quite predictably, she was flamed on the internet for it.

The uproar over Lucky Lee's, which opened on Monday, has become the latest front in the debate over cultural appropriation and cultural arrogance, following controversies involving, among many others, Dolce & Gabbana and Miley Cyrus.

In an interview on Thursday, Ms. Haspel said that she had good intentions, and that she was shocked when she was portrayed by critics on social media as the latest in a string of white restaurateurs who have promoted their Asian cuisine by labeling it as superior to food made by actual Asians.

"We are so sorry," Ms. Haspel said. "We were never trying to do something against the Chinese community. We thought we were complementing an incredibly important cuisine, in a way that would cater to people that had certain dietary requirements."

Within a day of Lucky Lee's opening in the Union Square area, Asian-Americans castigated her on social media. Yelp temporarily disabled its listing because of an "unusual activity alert." And a stream of food writers posted about how Ms. Haspel's decision to brand her Chinese food as "clean" was dredging up stereotypes that were hurtful to Chinese-Americans, not to mention tone-deaf.

"Ohhhh I CANNOT with Lucky Lee's, this new 'clean Chinese restaurant' that some white wellness blogger just opened in New York," MacKenzie Fegan, a food writer, said on Twitter. "Her blog talks about how 'Chinese food is usually doused in brown sauces' and makes your eyes puffy. Lady, what? #luckylees "

This week, Ms. Haspel, 36, deleted Instagram posts that could be seen as culturally insensitive, such as the one about feeling icky after eating lo mein. She decided against using a decal that said "Wok in, Take Out" that she planned to put on the window.

"We have been listening and learning, and we have been making changes and we will continue," she said. "Shame on us for not being smarter about cultural sensitivities."

Ms. Haspel's blog, and her food videos, promote something she calls "clean eating," which to her, means things like: eating organic, avoiding additives and using olive oil instead of canola.

"Clean eating" is not related to a particular type of cuisine. Instead, she explained in one online video, it is "all about finding a healthier alternative to your favorite indulgent food."

"I love health-ifying bad food so you can treat yourself, guilt-free," she said in another cooking video.

She tried to explain her "clean food" concept in an Instagram post earlier this week, but it didn't stop the onslaught of criticism. Her detractors said not understanding she was being offensive was not a good excuse. They said that when she decided to open a Chinese restaurant, she had a responsibility to learn more about the culture of the food she was appropriating.

"Where she is coming from is a very dark place, and it's a very sensitive place in the hearts of Chinese people," said Chris Cheung, the owner of East Wind Snack Shop, an acclaimed dumpling restaurant in Brooklyn. Particularly insulting, he said, was the connotation in her marketing that other Chinese food was unhealthy or unclean, which is a stereotype that Chinese restaurateurs have been fighting for decades.

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Chris Cheung, owner of East Wind Snack Shop, is a New York native and grew up in Chinatown. Credit... Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York Times

"She mentions that every time she goes to eat Chinese food, she's bloated," he said. "Well, I don't know where she is going to eat Chinese food, but that doesn't happen to me or anyone else who I know when they eat it."

Doron Wong, chef and partner of Northern Tiger, a Chinese restaurant in the financial district, said: "I think she didn't do her research and was kind of stereotyping everybody, which I found a little bit unfair, but at the same time, very entertaining. I see it as she was trying to come in at a different angle."

He added that a new generation of Chinese-American chefs were already using ingredients that were gluten-free, organic and non-GMO, which she probably should have known. "We are very aware of what we are putting into other people's bodies," he said.

Ms. Haspel is the latest white chef to be accused in recent months of appropriating Asian cultural tropes in insensitive ways.

In November, Andrew Zimmern, a Travel Channel food host, opened a restaurant near Minneapolis called Lucky Cricket, which he said in an interview would save Midwesterners from having to eat Chinese food he described with an expletive; he later apologized. In London, restaurateur Gordon Ramsay will soon be opening an "authentic Asian eating house" called Lucky Cat.

"Lucky is becoming code for something awful," Cathy Erway, a food writer of Taiwanese heritage, said in a tweet.

In the interview, Ms. Haspel defended her concept and menu, while acknowledging some errors in presenting them. She said her decision to brand her lo mein "Hi-Lo Mein," was just meant to be "cute," not to denote its superior quality. The décor, she said, was inspired by the 1930s textile designs of her grandmother, and was authentic to her own Jewish-American family traditions.

For Ms. Haspel, "clean eating" means things like: eating organic, avoiding additives and using olive oil instead of canola. Credit... Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York Times

On Wednesday, Lucky Lee's, on University Place between 10th and 11th Streets, was busy. The patrons were a mix of people curious about the controversy, supporters of Ms. Haspel and others who had just walked in and had no idea about the backlash.

The menu is filled with health-oriented takes on Chinese-American classics, such as baked General Tso's chicken that comes with kale salad, coconut steamed rice and sautéed string beans. The style is fast casual, with counter ordering, and prices for most items range between $11 and $18.

"Our entire menu is gluten-free, dairy-free, wheat-free, corn-free, peanut-, cashew- and pistachio-free," the menu states. "We use non-GMO oil, and never refined sugar, MSG or food coloring."

"We seek to be able to offer food that some people are not able to eat otherwise," Ms. Haspel said.

Jing Sun, who is Chinese-American, came with two friends from a technology firm in SoHo to check out the food. They enjoyed it, particularly the kale salad and charred broccoli. "I support the concept," Ms. Sun said. "I think it's pretty regrettable the way she communicated about it, though."

She added: "I don't think that the stakes should be high enough for the restaurant to fail. But I hope she learns something about the history and cultural context she's working in as a result of the backlash."

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A White Restaurateur Advertised 'Clean' Chinese Food. Chinese-Americans Had Something to Say About It.

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The uproar over a Chinese-American restaurant that was opened in Manhattan by two white restaurateurs has become the latest front in the debate over cultural appropriation. [What you need to know to start the day: Get New York Today in your inbox .]

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Aidan Russell-McCorkle - Bangladesh - Final Pin

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Aidan Russell-McCorkle - Bangladesh - Final Pin

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Bangladesh is relevant to us understanding the poem "Savannah Crabs" because the export of crabs is a major part of the Bangladeshi economy, and it can be directly contrasted to the local transportation of crabs that takes place in “Savannah Crabs”. In Bangladesh, all the “good” crabs that are harvested are then exported, presumably to countries like the United States. This makes it evident that even though the peak of physical colonization may be behind us, the colonization of economies by places like the United States is a very important reality for underdeveloped countries. On top of that, there is an emphasis on crabs being an inherently unpopular food choice in Bangladesh in an attempt to justify the sheer quantity of export when the reality is their local unpopularity could stem from the country being left with all the B tier crabs since all of the A tier crabs are exported away. In contrast, we see the crabs in “Savannah Crabs” have a spectrum of varying qualities since they were not subject to the standards of crab export and although not the focus of the poem, locally sourced seafood is undoubtably better for the environment and better for the people compared to the mass crab harvesting seen in Bangladesh.

In adding the source of “Supply Chain and Distribution Channels of Mud Crab (Scylla Serrata) in Bangladesh.” to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by adding yet another written source via an electronic delivery method. Though a purely written source is not the most interesting, this journal article provides factual insight on how the global seafood trade effects underdeveloped economies.

1- Jahan, Hasneen, and M. Serajul Islam. “Supply Chain and Distribution Channels of Mud Crab (Scylla Serrata) in Bangladesh.” International Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Studies, 11 Jan. 2016.

2 - Uttom, Stephan. Bangladeshi Crab Farmers Feel the Pinch, 4 Mar. 2020, www.ucanews.com/news/bangladeshi-crab-farmers-feel-the-pinch/87373#.

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Aidan Russell-McCorkle - Maine, USA - Final Pin

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Aidan Russell-McCorkle - Maine, USA - Final Pin

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Maine is relevant to us understanding the poem "Savannah Crabs" because the focal point of the poem, the crabs, are an excellent case study in understanding the movement of invasive species and the climate crisis. Though not the same species of crab in "Savannah Crabs”, European green crabs are the focus of this particular article, “Green Crabs are Maine’s Most Delicious Scourge”. The range of this species is originally, as the name would suggest, the coastlines of Europe. Interestingly though, this article cites the date of their arrival on the northeastern coast of the U.S to be the early 19th century which quite frankly doesn’t make sense. Colonization of North America began in the 15th and 16th centuries, so if their arrival here was an accident, as Mile’s suggests, i.e the crabs hid on and in the hull of the ships, the question that arises is why didn’t they arrive sooner? The two possibilities are that this was not an accident, or it was, and some shift occurred in the European green crab population that is not explained here; however, there are many corroborating sources that cite the arrival date of the Green European Crabs as the early 19th century (Fisheries and Oceans, Government of Canada). Additionally, these crabs have not become a nuisance until recently, and this is due to the rising ocean temperature as a result of the climate crisis. The generally warmer winters haven’t killed off as many crabs, which is compounding the issue of the invasive crab species brought about by the colonization of North America.

In adding the source of Green Crabs are Maine’s Most Delicious Scourge to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by combining visual and written components. Though it is not included here, the article cited for this proposal contains a great deal of photographs, and that is vastly more interesting than just a lengthy article.

1 - Miles, Kathryn. Green Crabs Are Maine's Most Delicious Scourge. 26 Mar. 2020, downeast.com/food-drink/maine-green-crabs/.

2 - Fisheries and Oceans, Government of Canada. European Green Crabs, 2019. www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/species-especes/profiles-profils/europeangreencrab-crabevert-eng.html.

3 - NEWS CENTER Maine. “Fighting back against the voracious green crab”. YouTube. 7 June 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqayI4mmnnQ

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Fighting back against the voracious green crab

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"Mississippi River: is relevant to us understanding the poem "Jubilee" because no one can doubt the effect the Mississippi river has had on the cultural lexicon of the US and specifically the south. It is the lifeblood of the south. Supplying it with produce from the midwest and consumer products from the Gulf of Mexico. In American Culture it is used as a dividing marker between the East and the West, much like Mobile is used in the poem. Mobile is seen as an important place within the context of the poem, so much that it is used as a geographic marker to the audience. Understanding the reasons behind what made the Mississippi River such a common dividing line allows the reader to relate that to Mobile in the poem. In Addition to the relationship between the Mississippi River and Mobile in the lexicon, the brackish end to the Mississippi contains all of the fauna mentioned in the poem. Blue crabs are found all along the coasts of the Eastern US, including the Mississippi River Delta. Shrimp and flounder can both be found in the brackish waters here as well. The Mississippi River serves a dual meaning in the poem, first and foremost a national example of the way that Mobile is used within the poem and second as a place the poem could have been located based on the food referenced. Understanding the context of the place where these foods are located is critical to understanding the poem itself.
In adding the source of https://www.americanrivers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/map-mississippi-river.png
an image of the size of the Mississippi River to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by giving the readers a sense of scale to the river’s impact on the culture of the US and allow the readers to draw conclusions about how the Mississippi River came to be the dividing line between East and West. Knowing the expansiveness of the Mississippi River and drawing conclusions about it’s cultural impact allows the reader to better understand the way Mobile is used in the poem”

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"Mississippi River: is relevant to us understanding the poem "Jubilee" because no one can doubt the effect the Mississippi river has had on the cultural lexicon of the US and specifically the south. It is the lifeblood of the south. Supplying it with produce from the midwest and consumer products from the Gulf of Mexico. In American Culture it is used as a dividing marker between the East and the West, much like Mobile is used in the poem. Mobile is seen as an important place within the context of the poem, so much that it is used as a geographic marker to the audience. Understanding the reasons behind what made the Mississippi River such a common dividing line allows the reader to relate that to Mobile in the poem. In Addition to the relationship between the Mississippi River and Mobile in the lexicon, the brackish end to the Mississippi contains all of the fauna mentioned in the poem. Blue crabs are found all along the coasts of the Eastern US, including the Mississippi River Delta. Shrimp and flounder can both be found in the brackish waters here as well. The Mississippi River serves a dual meaning in the poem, first and foremost a national example of the way that Mobile is used within the poem and second as a place the poem could have been located based on the food referenced. Understanding the context of the place where these foods are located is critical to understanding the poem itself.
In adding the source of https://www.americanrivers.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/map-mississippi-river.png
an image of the size of the Mississippi River to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by giving the readers a sense of scale to the river’s impact on the culture of the US and allow the readers to draw conclusions about how the Mississippi River came to be the dividing line between East and West. Knowing the expansiveness of the Mississippi River and drawing conclusions about it’s cultural impact allows the reader to better understand the way Mobile is used in the poem”

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Fulton, GA, USA - FINAL PADLET FOR ARTIFACT 1 (Nimita Deshpande)

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Fulton, GA, USA - FINAL PADLET FOR ARTIFACT 1 (Nimita Deshpande)

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Fulton, Georgia, USA is relevant to us understanding the poem “Food Stamps” because it is where one of the centers for WIC (Women, Infants and Children Nutrition Program), the program for which the poet is attempting to apply for, is headquartered in the state of Georgia. The WIC has certain requirements in order for adult women to be eligible: only pregnant/breastfeeding/non-breastfeeding postpartum women who are residents of the state to which they are applying for assistance, have a gross income at or below 185% of the U.S. Poverty Income Guidelines, and have a nutritional risk assessment by a qualified health professional are eligible. These cold, inflexible requirements are aggravating to the poet to say the least. This is demonstrated when she questions the woman who asks her about her income: “poetry don’t ask for a thinking woman’s income | so why the hell do you?” (Ammons 19). These lines demonstrate the poet’s irritation and exhaustion at having to be questioned and scrutinized yet again merely in order to gain access to basic, universal necessities such as nutritionally adequate food. As a less privileged member of society, she knows she has already faced more than enough societal hardships and is tired of having to overcome yet another barrier in the way of the bare minimum for a comfortable life. She is also tired of having to explain her individual circumstances to those who do not know her and simply do not understand. Therefore, the conclusion of the poem represents her rebellion against the divide between the objective requirements of WIC and her subjective experiences. It also demonstrates how the WIC holds a position of power and authority over the poet, which she resents as she longs for her own freedom and individual identity.

In adding the source of https://dph.georgia.gov/WIC to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by including the following: detailed written information about frequently asked questions, qualifications for WIC, and WIC provisions; vivid visual imagery of a mother and her child who benefit from WIC and COVID-19 guidelines; and interactive electronic elements such as hyperlinks.

In adding the picture of the young black woman and her child to this pin (http://fultoncountygov.blogspot.com/2016/09/grand-opening-of-fulton-countys-newest.html), it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by demonstrating through vibrant visual imagery that the WIC cares about providing services to people from diverse backgrounds. However, the poem demonstrates the irony present in this image: the WIC claims to help low-income citizens but also simultaneously places restrictions and other barriers that stand in the way of these citizens gaining eligibility to benefit from WIC and lead comfortable lives.

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3.	Detroit, Michigan is relevant to us understanding the poem “Jubilee” because of its relationship to the beloved Cadillac featured in the piece. Belonging to Grandpa Les, the Cadillac is a source of intense nostalgia and bliss for the speaker, ignited by the beauty of sound. While the speaker’s connection to the old man and his vintage car is unknown, their admiration for the shiny ride is undeniable. Detroit furthers this wonder and awe, as it is the place where Cadillac originated. Introducing the idea of interchangeable parts to the industry, Cadillac revolutionized automobile design and ingenuity. Lasting for nearly 70 years, the Detroit plant brought revenue and job growth to the city, gleaming as a symbol of American might. “Prais[ing] the man who had the sense to build a front seat like a bed,” the speaker remembers the Cadillac with happiness (Calvocoressi, lines 11-12). Based on Cadillac’s humble, honorable beginnings in Detroit, this joyful adoration is completely believable. In the poem, the sounds of the vehicle bring the speaker’s memory to life. Harmonious noises of “katydids” and tuba-like “springs” frolic through the ears of my imagination as I read in silence (Calvocoressi, lines 12-14). It is a remarkable, sensory connection between the speaker’s detailed words and the classic Detroit-built automobile. In adding the source of “Uganda” to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by exploring the influence of sound in a foreign lens. Named after the “sound they make” in Swahili, katydids are a staple in Ugandan cuisine. While their place in American culture is far from culinary, their distinct noise is a universal piece of their identity. In this sense, sound is a predominant feature of “Jubilee” that can be a relatable basis for the emotions evoked by poetry. 

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S ome things change in today's day and age like flashes of summer lightning. Others move at the pace of a growing live oak - slow and steady, changing very little through the decades. Gulf Coast food is one of those constants. Many of the dishes, ingredients and traditions that our forebears enjoyed are just as commonly found on today's tables.

This culinary vernacular began, and continues, in part due to the local climate and the nature of what grows in these parts. Local fields still turn out many of the same fruits, vegetables and nuts that subsistence farmers were growing a century ago because, well, that's what grows best here.

At the same time, our food culture retains strong influences from our ancestors' roots and the roads they traveled to get here. Native Americans cultivated corn, African slaves brought peas, okra and peanuts, and early trade routes through the Caribbean inflected jolts of spice and stirred the pot of Creole goodness.

Our modern local cooking is certainly built upon these strong historical foundations, but there are a number of restaurants and recipes from more recent times that have made their way into our diets and homes for the long haul, as well. They are as much a part of eating in Mobile, Alabama, as gumbo and fried oysters. Here, MB breaks down the list of dishes you have to know and love to call yourself a true Mobilian.

The dinner bell is ringing and these foods are here to stay.

BOILED CRABS

The Chesapeake Bay might have made steamed crabs nationally known, but in these parts, we boil them. Alive. Squeamish hearts need not apply to assist in this endeavor, although you will certainly want to be there when it's time to eat. Most folks dump the boiled crabs right on a newspaper-covered table to crack and eat right away. Others, with more self control, cook the crabs, pick all the meat, and save it for recipes like crab pie or crab salad or creamed crab. Any way that's preferred, the basic recipe for boiling stays the same.

Boaty Campbell, a lifelong resident of the shores of Mobile Bay, crabbed commercially for 30 years to supplement his income. He built his boat, caught his bait and designed his own traps. "Not all traps are created equal - some fish better than others," he tells us. But these days he has downsized from 200 traps to just five, positioned perfectly along the length of his wharf in Point Clear. While crabs are most plentiful during the summer months, someone who knows what he's doing - like Boaty - can find a catch year-round by knowing where to look. Fresh fish carcasses make the best bait and attract all sorts of aquatic species, many of which often get stuck in the trap along with the crabs. That's part of the fun in pulling the rope and raising the trap - you never know what you're going to get!

How To Boil Live Crabs

Method by Boaty Campbell

1. Always start with live crabs. Wash the crabs in a basket and use tongs to transfer them to a big pot.2. Add enough cold water to cover the crabs. It's best to use cold water because the shock of adding live crabs to boiling water causes them to lose their claws, making them less presentable at the table.3. Add 1/2 cup rock salt per dozen crabs.4. Bring the crabs to a boil and cook for 12 minutes.5. Remove crabs from the boiling water immediately and spread them on a table covered with newspaper.

6. While still hot, generously sprinkle the crabs with Old Bay Seasoning. The seasoning finds its way onto the crabmeat as you enjoy cracking, cutting and eating them.

SWEET CORN

Nothing says summer in the Deep South like sweet white corn bought by the bushel on the side of the road. Why so much hoopla over corn? White corn is almost never sold in grocery stores due to its pitiful shelf life, so when you find it for sale, you buy it. You know it was grown locally because a product like that cannot be shipped across country easily. Silver Queen has been a favorite variety for decades. Also popular are newer, sturdier hybrids such as Silver King and Devotion that can stand up to the area's strong winds and persistent pests. Though not genetically modified, these big ears of milky sweetness have been selectively bred over decades to be delicious and strong and, well, just about perfect.

Baldwin County farmers start planting in February so the corn can be ready by your Memorial Day trip to the beaches. They plant fields every two weeks afterward so the corn can last through the Fourth of July. A fall planting is possible, making the white corn available now! But risk-averse farmers rarely take a gamble on this expensive crop that could get pummeled in late summer rainstorms. Krupinski Farm in Foley planted a fall crop of Devotion this year, and if you're lucky and the weather holds, there might be a few ears left for sale by the time this issue comes out!

Skillet Sweet Corn Recipe
10 ears Silver King corn4 tablespoons unsalted butter1 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1. Husk the corn and remove the silks. Hold each ear firmly over a large bowl and slice down the sides of the corn with a sharp knife, removing the kernels as close to the cob as possible. The bowl will help prevent the kernels from flying around the room.
2. Milk each ear of corn, see below, into the bowl and then discard the empty cob.
3. Heat a large cast-iron skillet over medium heat and add butter to melt. Add the corn and saute uncovered for 10 minutes, occasionally scraping the bottom of the pan with a metal spatula to prevent corn from burning. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and serve warm.

Once you remove the long strips of crisp uncooked kernels, don't even think about tossing the cobs! For extra sweet and creamy skillet corn, milk each cob straight into the pan. Hold the cob with one hand, and use the other hand to drag the back of a knife firmly down the cob toward the pan. All the starchy sweet juice will dribble (and often splatter) out and add an extra layer of deliciousness to your dish.

SEAFOOD GUMBO

There is little reason to waste valuable words on gumbo - everyone agrees it is a kitchen and restaurant menu staple in these parts. For anyone who might be new to town, though, here are the basics for a good creole stew: a very dark roux is stirred in a cast-iron pot and then finished with okra, tomatoes, onions, bell pepper and spices,
followed by embarrassing amounts of local blue crab and shrimp. A dollop of white rice should be more condiment than filler, and a sprinkling of filé (ground sassafras leaves) is optional. Food historians claim gumbo should have either okra or filé, but never both, as the two ingredients serve the same thickening purpose. We say garnish as you like.

DEW DROP HOT DOG

In a world where culinary fads change as quickly as the weather forecast along the Gulf Coast, the Dew Drop - and its food - have remained unchanged over the decades.

The little eatery that was originally founded in 1924 at Ann near Government Street moved to its current location in 1937 and got its groovy midcentury facelift in 1967. That was the last time anything major changed in those parts. The waitstaff stays constant, the menu never varies and the ingredients on those killer hot dogs are the same as they've always been, right down to the bright red weenie. Sure, you could order the fried seafood, a burger or a country vegetable plate, but why mess with perfection? A pork and beef wiener topped with homemade chili, sauerkraut, mustard, ketchup and a pickle slice is Mobile's favorite way to eat a dog. Regulars have their favorite booth and their favorite waitress, and they don't even think of asking to see a menu. Just bring your own Tums.

CHINA DOLL RICE

More than 80 years ago, local grocery store shelves looked very different from what we see today. There was very little packaged and processed foods, and giant bins of rice were sold one scoop at a time and bagged up to order. In 1936, a local rice distributor realized that individually packaged rice would be a hit if they could just get the grocers on board. An employee contest picked the name China Doll for a $50 prize and the rest is history. Mobilian Barbara Colle owned the company until her death in 1990. Harris V. Morrissette bought the company in 2005 and now runs it along with flour and cornmeal brand Dixie Lilly, another Southern staple from the early 1930s, although not of Mobile origin. China Doll's "grown in the USA" rice is the one to serve on local tables.

POLLMAN'S

As Pollman's Bake Shop celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, there can be little disagreement about the mark it has made on Mobile. A company doesn'tlast that long without becoming an integral part of people's lives. The interesting thing, however, is that Mobilians simply cannot agree on what is the No. 1Pollman's eat! Is it the colorful iced sugar cookies? The delicate petit fours? The simple yet hearty roast beef and turkey po'boys? Everyone has their favorite, but Rose Pollman, married to the third-generation baker, says that the top Pollman's treat has to be the chocolate doberge cake. The recipes for these decadent layers of cake, filling and ganache came over with the family from New Orleans in 1918, along with king cakes and po'boys, they claim, and have been on the menu ever since. That's not to say that they sell more doberge cakes than anything else. The iced sugar cookies sell in the 15,000 per year range, according to estimates, and other baked specialties aren't far behind. But a doberge for your birthday is a local tradition that can't be beat.

WEST INDIES SALAD

In 1947, Bill Bayley opened a one-room restaurant on Dauphin Island Parkway serving fresh local seafood. In no time, the little place expanded to seat more than 200 people. They claimed to have cleaned more than 150 pounds of flounder a week for eager customers and to have invented fried crab claws, to boot! But the West Indies Salad is what made Bayley's famous. Bill Bayley Jr. remembers that with such a big dining room, it took a while for patrons to get their food. That's where the West Indies salad came into play. A bowl of marinated crabmeat and a basket of saltines was all it took to keep customers happy while they waited on the main attractions. Although it isn't clear where Bayley came up with the recipe, family members trace the origins to two places - a similar lobster salad he made in the Caribbean during his time as a merchant seaman, and his love for cucumber and onions marinated in oil and ice water. Put those together, with a south Alabama twist, and you have the original West Indies Salad.

Bayley's West Indies Salad

Printed in the "Recipe Jubilee" cookbook from the Junior League of Mobile
1 medium sweet onion, finely chopped1 pound claw crabmeat1/2 teaspoon salt1/2 teaspoon pepper1/2 cup vegetable oil1/2 cup cold water6 tablespoons cider vinegar

saltine crackers for serving
1. Add half the chopped onion to the bottom of a large bowl. Pick through crabmeat for shells and add to the bowl, and then top with remaining chopped onion.2. In a separate small bowl, combine remaining ingredients and stir. Pour over the top of the crab and onion mixture and cover with plastic wrap.3. Refrigerate several hours or overnight.

4. Toss gently and taste for seasoning, adding more if needed. Serve with a side of saltine crackers as an appetizer.

MAMIE'S FAMOUS CHEESE WAFERS

The perfect bite to serve with a cocktail, cheese straws or cheese cookies are a real Southern staple. The basic recipe is incredibly simple (flour, cheese, butter, baking soda, spices) and yet variations abound with slight adjustments in the kind of cheese, the temperature of the butter or the kick of spice. Even how they're pressed or molded affects the crunch or crumble.

Mobilian Mary Byrd developed what some say is the perfect cheese cookie recipe and passed it down to her children and grandchildren. But it wasn't until 2003 that her daughter, Barkley Shreve, decided to share the recipe with the world. Her sister had been prodding for months that it was a wonderful snack to keep unbaked and on-hand in case unexpected company should drop by. But making one recipe at a time is different than developing a commercial batch that can be marketed wholesale to grocery stores. Barkley worked for months to create a large-batch version of her mother's cheese cookie recipe that would go on to become Mamie's Famous Cheese Wafers. Now sold in stores nationwide, thanks in large part to the early support of The Fresh Market, kitchens everywhere can have a little taste of Mobile hospitality at the ready. Mamie's can be found at groceries and specialty markets all over the Bay area and even online at Williams Sonoma. It's slice and bake, done the Deep South way.

STUFFED FLOUNDER

There is no fish more Mobile Bay than the humble flounder. Lying quietly along the sandy bottom, he hopes no one notices him while he watches with two eyes on one side of his head. A genetic wonder! These members of the flatfish species conjure thoughts of jubilees and floundering in the shallows on hot summer nights. Surely there is no better way to eat them than stuffed with crabmeat and all the delicious trimmings.

Greek immigrant George Roussos had a long and accomplished career here in the Port City. He opened his first restaurant location on the Causeway, only to have it wiped out by Hurricane Frederic in 1979. Shortly afterward, he reopened at the well-known Fort Condé location and operated there for many years. The star of the menu was his stuffed flounder, along with other local seafood and Greek-inspired specialties. The restaurant became such a fixture of downtown Mobile that Mayor Mike Dow proclaimed July 7, 1998, "George J. Roussos' Day" in honor of his 81st birthday.

His daughter, local caterer Georgia Roussos, shared her father's recipe for the original stuffed flounder, with plenty of crabmeat and not too much stuffing to weigh down the flaky, tender fish.

Roussos' Stuffed Flounder
3 ounces butter, plus more for basting1 cup diced yellow onion1/2 cup diced red bell pepper1/2 cup diced green bell pepper1/2 cup diced celery1 tablespoon minced garlic1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme1 dash cayenne pepper1/2 pound claw meat (picked clean of shells)1/2pound lump crabmeat (picked clean of shells)3/4 cup chopped green onion1 1/2 cups crushed saltines1 1/2 lemons, juiced1 egg1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheesesalt and pepper to taste4 1-pound flounders (scaled, head and bones removed)8 large shrimp, peeled

1 lemon
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Melt butter in a medium saute pan, and add first 7 ingredients. Saute until translucent. Season with salt and pepper then set aside to cool.3. Stuff each flounder with mixture and place on a foil-lined rimmed baking sheet. (This might require 2 sheet pans.) Garnish each fish with 2 shrimp and bake for 10 minutes. Open oven and baste fish with additional melted butter, and then cook for another 10 minutes.
2. Gently mix the 7 following ingredients into the sauteed vegetables.

4. Serve with a fresh squeeze of lemon.

PECANS AND PEANUTS

Mobilians have a long history of being completely nuts - Eugene Walter reminded us of that. But we come by it naturally, having produced pecans and peanuts (technically a legume) for centuries.

Alabama is the eighth-largest pecan producer in the country, according to Auburn University, producing 6.8 million pounds of nuts a year. Mobile and Baldwin counties are the hub of all of this growth.

And while Dothan produces more than 65 percent of all peanuts in the United States, Baldwin County is not too shabby, coming in as one of the top four producing counties in the state. Alabama has an overall annual harvest of more than 400 million pounds, according to the University of Alabama.

With all the research these days on healthy fats, fiber, protein and omegas found in nuts, we say you can overindulge and go completely - you know - nuts.

GEORGE MAJOR'S CHICKEN

Hines "George" Major worked for the Smith family and Smith Bakery from the late 1950s into the early 1970s, and became well known by barbecuing chicken over red oak at certain mystic society events. His barbecue sauce became legendary, especially after it was published in 1964 in the Junior League of Mobile cookbook, "Recipe Jubilee!"

One night as George was cooking, one of the mystic members, watching over his shoulder, kept making suggestions and asking questions: "doesn't it need more so-and-so?" George - never a patient or easy man, by reputation - looked up and said "Boss, do you know the name of this sauce?" The member answered, "Sure! George Major's barbecue sauce." George looked at him and replied, "Well, my name is George Major!" He didn't get any more suggestions that night.

The recipe, in all its perfection, can be found on the menu at Felix's and other "member's only" restaurants in the area.

George Major's Barbecue Sauce for Chicken

Recipe from "Recipe Jubilee," submitted by Mrs. Gillette Burton
2 sticks butter2 lemons2 onions1 large bottle Worcestershire sauce

2 bottles A-1 Sauce
1. Melt butter in saucepan. Cut lemons in half and squeeze juice into melted butter. Cut onions into six slices, then add lemon rinds and onions to mixture. Simmer 20 minutes.
2. Add Worcestershire and A-1, simmering an additional five minutes. Use generously on chicken roasted on barbecue pit.

PUNTA CLARA PRALINES

Punta Clara Candy Kitchen has been a Point Clear fixture since Dorothy Brodbeck Pacey began selling her famous fig preserves and pralines, along with homemade cakes and other confections, in 1952 from a tiny kitchen in her backyard. It later made the move to her aunt Colleen Brodbeck's 1897 Victorian home located 2 miles south of the Grand Hotel, where old family photos line the walls and you feel like you are stepping back in time. The pralines have always been sought after - Dorothy and her chemical engineer husband perfected the recipe and little has changed since then. By the time Dorothy passed away in 2008, her granddaughter Kim had taken over, and the candy kitchen now employs four generations of Paceys. The divinity is another old Southern Punta Clara favorite, with a mystifyingly delicious consistency, given our oppressive humidity. But then that's why we leave candy making to the professionals.

OYSTER LOAF

Many argue about the birth of the humble, but oh-so-satisfying, oyster loaf, with New Orleans and San Francisco both making their case for the claim. The exact origins are unknown, and frankly, unimportant, as it is clear that Mobilians have been eating these delectable loaves at least 150 years. Some say the oyster loaf was first called a peacemaker, being the perfect bundle for an inebriated gent to carry home to his fed-up wife. The sandwiches later evolved into what we now call a po'boy, and any local menu that still offers a so-called oyster loaf is probably selling a po'boy in sheep's clothing. But the name has history, and we fully support that. The recipe below from 1878 tells you exactly how to get it done.

The following recipes from come from "Gulf City Cookbook: Compiled by the Ladies of the St. Francis Street Methodist Episcopal Church, South, Mobile, Alabama, 1878."

Fried Oysters

Select large oysters, drain and spread on a cloth to absorb all moisture. Beat well two or three eggs, and season them with pepper and salt. Roll some crackers, and dip the oysters in the egg and then in the crumbs, then again in the egg and cracker crumbs. Drop into boiling lard, sufficient to cover them, and cook till of a light brown.

Oyster Loaves

Cut off carefully the end of a loaf of baker's bread, reserving the end; scoop out the crumb inside the loaf, leaving the crust entire. Fill the loaf with hot oysters, fried as above, leaving room for slices of pickle. Carefully replace the end cut off. If the oysters are hot, and the loaf well covered, they can be carried quite a distance, or eaten some time after being prepared, without getting cold. This is nice for a hasty lunch or a late supper. One dozen oysters will fill an ordinary sized loaf.

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S ome things change in today's day and age like flashes of summer lightning. Others move at the pace of a growing live oak - slow and steady, changing very little through the decades. Gulf Coast food is one of those constants.

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Mississippi, USA - FINAL PADLET FOR ARTIFACT 1 (Nimita Deshpande)

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Mississippi, USA - FINAL PADLET FOR ARTIFACT 1 (Nimita Deshpande)

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Mississippi, USA is relevant to us understanding the poem “Food Stamps” because, similar to the area that the poet of “Food Stamps” lives in, it is a low-income state in which a significant portion of the population is burdened with the issue of food insecurity. Specifically, it not only has the highest poverty rate of any US state but is also the “hungriest state” in the US, with 20% of its population being food insecure. One reason for Mississippi’s current situation is the state’s history of widespread racial discrimination and exclusion. To elaborate, Mississippi’s large black minority (37.67% of the total population) can partially be attributed to black slaves being forcibly brought to the Mississippi River Valley to labor in the profitable cotton plantations. Additionally, during the Civil War period, Mississippi seceded from the Union to join the pro-slavery Confederacy. In the late 19th century, Mississippi also disenfranchised black people and barred them from participating in political life until as recently as the 1960s. The ancestors of many black people currently living in Mississippi’s poorer areas were victims of the sharecropping system, which was an abusive and exploitative system that resulted in sharecroppers being forced to work for landowners even after slavery was abolished. Mississippi’s historical discrimination against black people and other minorities is responsible for the current existence of racial disparities in not only income but also access to sufficient nutritious food within the state. These disparities also show up within the poem as the poet, a black woman, lives in an unspecified low-income area and is forced to be reliant on food stamps merely to meet the bare nutritional requirements in her life. Places such as Mississippi are not only relevant to the poem but are also an indication that the connection between race and food insecurity is a real issue which continues to plague American society today.

In adding the source of https://www.investopedia.com/median-income-by-state-5070640 to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by including the following: detailed written information about statistics relating to median income by state and the various factors affecting median income; imagery through a map visualizing the median incomes of all US states; and interactive electronic elements such as links to social media pages, other pages on the website, and external related articles.

In adding the second source of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_g-X8GNBYCM to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by including the following: oral narration on the reasons for the current food desert situation in Lambert, Mississippi (a predominantly African-American town) and interviews with some residents of Lambert; visual imagery of Lambert’s residents, food stores, neighborhoods, churches, etc.; and an external link to the full written transcript of the video. The video provides insight into the widespread problem of the scarcity of nutritious food in Lambert, Mississippi and how it disproportionately affects low-income black residents.

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Mississippi  'Food Deserts' Fuel Obesity Epidemic

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2)  "Chesapeake Bay: is relevant to us understanding the poem "Jubilee" because the Chesapeake Bay contains all of the food mentioned in the poem and the food has a strong seafood culture that surrounds it. In the Bay, seafood, especially crabs but also shrimp and flounder are a very important part of the culture. Crab feasts are a Maryland staple. Crab Feasts are large gatherings of family and friends centered around crab eating. People come together to relax, all centered around food and specifically the same type of food, seafood (crabs, shrimp and flounder). Crabs especially in the Delmarva Peninsula are served with exorbitant amounts of Old Bay seasoning (a seasoning that is interconnected with crabs). Crabs alone are not a full meal so they are usually complemented with other foods such as local seafood like shrimp, flounder and corn. These feasts have become a bonding experience for people of the Chesapeake Bay, where family and friends connect over crabs. In the poem seafood serves as a connection between the jubilation going on for the characters and the natural world which they are surrounded by. Understanding the culture surrounding crab feasts and the Chesapeake Bay’s relationship with seafood allows the reader to better understand seafood's place, specifically for those who live near water, in the poem and how it interacts with the characters.
In adding the source of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nXV07fKD0o a video about the cooking and eating crabs and the culture surrounding it to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by informing the readers about the culture surrounding the Maryland crabs and the crab feast. By allowing the reader insight into the culture and food surrounding crabs in the Chesapeake Bay, including the crab feast they can better relate to the feast/gathering going on in the poem."

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Chesapeake Bay, United States - Will Armentrout

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Chesapeake Bay, United States - Will Armentrout

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Chesapeake Bay: is relevant to us understanding the poem "Jubilee" because the Chesapeake Bay contains all of the food mentioned in the poem and the food has a strong seafood culture that surrounds it. In the Bay, seafood, especially crabs but also shrimp and flounder are a very important part of the culture. Crab feasts are a Maryland staple. Crab Feasts are large gatherings of family and friends centered around crab eating. People come together to relax, all centered around food and specifically the same type of food, seafood (crabs, shrimp and flounder). Crabs especially in the Delmarva Peninsula are served with exorbitant amounts of Old Bay seasoning (a seasoning that is interconnected with crabs). Crabs alone are not a full meal so they are usually complemented with other foods such as local seafood like shrimp, flounder and corn. These feasts have become a bonding experience for people of the Chesapeake Bay, where family and friends connect over crabs. In the poem seafood serves as a connection between the jubilation going on for the characters and the natural world which they are surrounded by. Understanding the culture surrounding crab feasts and the Chesapeake Bay’s relationship with seafood allows the reader to better understand seafood's place, specifically for those who live near water, in the poem and how it interacts with the characters.

In adding the source of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nXV07fKD0o a video about the cooking and eating crabs and the culture surrounding it to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by informing the readers about the culture surrounding the Maryland crabs and the crab feast. By allowing the reader insight into the culture and food surrounding crabs in the Chesapeake Bay, including the crab feast they can better relate to the feast/gathering going on in the poem."

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Making the Most of a Maryland Crab House Crawl  - U.S. Dining Spotlight, Episode 3

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Georgia(Gabriel Montes Final 27/9)(Warning potentially graphic hunting video only watch 00:00:00 - 00:00:30 for safe content) 

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Georgia(Gabriel Montes Final 27/9)(Warning potentially graphic hunting video only watch 00:00:00 - 00:00:30 for safe content) 

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Georgia is relevant to us understanding the poem “The Glory Be-B-Q” by Jay Hopler because understanding the cultural and linguistic background of this state adds a new set of context to the poem and allows for the dialogue to develop the setting of the poem much further than would otherwise be possible. In “The Glory Be-b-q” the narrator is addressed by someone else who is presumably a part of the barbecue with a short staccato list of ingredients which almost reads with a southern drawl which is typically associated with the state of Georgia: “Hopler! Brisket & black-eyed peas, Co’-Cola!”. Even though the accent was not conveyed through the poem, the use of a Southern dialect in the barbecue attendee’s statement allows us to analyze the person’s speech and notice the notable omissions of the essential elements of formal speech such as verbs, articles and syllables from the words. In a formal setting these omissions would make this sentence an unintelligible list of nouns and confuse a reader if they were unaware that these major omissions were the trace signs of someone speaking in the American Southern dialect which adds to the setting of the poem significantly by describing the cultural and linguistic background of the barbecue. In adding the source of a guide to the southern accent and a hunting video with a man from Georgia talking about hunting to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by giving the accent itself a greater context and a better appreciation for the speech which could easily be shrugged off as uneducated or otherwise improper. The video adds to the multimodal rhetoric by giving an example of a Georgia accent and the omissions of speech which are common in the accent and dialect.

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Nashville, Tennessee is relevant to us understanding the poem "Backbone" because the author of "Backbone", Caroline Randall Williams, is a native to Nashville, Tennessee. Typically, Nashville is known for the stereotypical southern food: biscuits and gravy, fried chicken, sweet tea, corn bread, etc. However, the author explicitly describes the cousin as knowing how to make "cheesecake", "shrimp", and "potatoes", which tend to be more northern foods. Of course, as a Midwesterner, I don't know exactly what is considered common food of the north, but I know that those foods in particular make me think of New York or Vermont. This relates back to Nashville, Tennessee because the author is attempting to make a connection or indication of where the family may live based on the foods they may eat. As a Chicagoan, I don't necessarily know how to make deep dish pizza or giant hot dogs, but people always ask me if I eat it normally. All the same, perhaps the author believes that people up north must know how to make their regional foods as well. Since the author comes from a different region of the United States, her attempt at broadening the setting of her work beyond where she lives is depicted through the food used as an example. In adding the source of the author's origins to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by exemplifying the preconceived notions we may have about other regions despite never having visited or lived 

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Cuba is relevant to us understanding the poem “The Glory Be-b-q” by Jay Hopler because a knowledge of the indegenous culture and traditions of the island itself gives the reader a greater understanding and appreciation for the cultural context of the poem and the barbecue desrebed therein. Hopler describes himself as being in a barbecue and all the sensory experiences that go alongside his attendance of this barbecue, but the barbecue itself is better understood in the cultural context of the cultural and culinary syncretism which moved the barbecuing style of meat, specifically pork, from the caribbean Taino cultures to the American South. Traditional Taino dishes like those from Cuba contained “barbecued” pork in a sense like the dish lechon which is a slowly roasted whole pig which is roasted by a wood fire in a literal pit in the ground similar to the barbecue pits which are common names for barbecue restaurants. Southern barbecue being only a slight variation of that Cuban dish lechon, has large cuts of meat or sometimes whole pigs also slow roasting over a wood fire which is roasted in a smoker which is above the ground and seasoned with southern barbecue flavorings instead of Caribbean spices. Hopler’s barbecue is assumedly taking place in the American South because of the use of English in the dialogue and the consumption of notably american products like Coca-Cola. That being established, syncretism from Cuba is implied since barbecuing was originally a Taino practice which must have moved to the American mainland and hence the South. In adding the source of a description of the origin of barbecue to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by further supporting the previous claims about the origins of barbecue and further assert the cultural heritage as being tied to that of Cuba and the main Caribbean islands of Cuba, Puerto Rico and Hispana. This adds to the cultural understanding of the poem and creates a sense of historical and cultural context to the barbecue in Hopler’s poem.

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Nashville, Tennessee is relevant to us understanding the poem "Backbone" because the author of "Backbone", Caroline Randall Williams, is a native to Nashville, Tennessee. Typically, Nashville is known for the stereotypical southern food: biscuits and gravy, fried chicken, sweet tea, corn bread, etc. However, the author explicitly describes the cousin as knowing how to make "cheesecake", "shrimp", and "potatoes", which tend to be more northern foods. Of course, as a Midwesterner, I don't know exactly what is considered common food of the north, but I know that those foods in particular make me think of New York or Vermont. This relates back to Nashville, Tennessee because the author is attempting to make a connection or indication of where the family may live based on the foods they may eat. As a Chicagoan, I don't necessarily know how to make deep dish pizza or giant hot dogs, but people always ask me if I eat it normally. All the same, perhaps the author believes that people up north must know how to make their regional foods as well. Since the author comes from a different region of the United States, her attempt at broadening the setting of her work beyond where she lives is depicted through the food used as an example.In adding the source of the author's origins to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by exemplifying the preconceived notions we may have about other regions despite never having visited or lived

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Caroline Randall Williams, a native of Nashville, Tennessee, is a cookbook author, young adult novelist, and poet.

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Vermont is relevant to us understanding the poem "Backbone" because of the historic background of African Americans. First of all, the poem describes a hearty, African American grandmother with cancer from the eyes of her enamored granddaughter. Considering how some of the recipes listed on the menu that the narrator’s cousin remembers include “shrimp” and “potatoes”, the poem likely takes place near the coast (where shellfish is available for catching and potatoes are available for shipping from Europe). In addition, if this poem were to take place in an older time period (say, the 50’s) then the “place” would have to be a more northern state, where racism was less prominent. The 50’s was the pre-Civil Rights era. With the chemo bag that the grandmother had, she would not have been able to access that without being treated at least fairly equally to whites. Finally, the grandmother had clearly been to hell and back for whatever she had been through. Arguably, the most distinguishable quote from the poem is “Cancer? Hell”, making one of the most deadly, incurable diseases seem like a small inconvenience. To her, cancer was the least of her problems, so I would not be surprised if she had encountered some harsh racism in her years growing older. In adding the source of an organization that provides chemotherapy bags to the people of Vermont to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by indicating the current available and potentially the success of the procedure that the grandmother was going through

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Texas is relevant to us understanding the poem “The Glory Be-b-q” by Jay Hopler because Texas is widely regarded as the American Mecca for barbecue. This means Texas is the cultural epicenter of Southern barbecue. Throughout its history Texas has had the unique blend of cultures from the Caribbean, West Africa, Native Americans, and european cultures which all mixed in the area combined with the state’s historically high meat production, specifically beef, making Texas the perfect place for barbecuing practices to have been created .While the barbecue that is described by Hopler is cooking pork instead of the beef, beef having given the state notoriety, pork barbecue dishes are also common throughout Texas cuisine in popular dishes such as pulled pork and baby back ribs. Because pulled pork is featured in Hopler’s poem prominently when the main course is offered to his character in the poem, it is also important that someone understands the cultural context of communally cooking meat at a barbecue as a form of leisure and social engagement with one’s community when trying to understand Hopler’s experience in “The Glory Bar-b-q”. That social understanding of the barbecue gives the reader not just the insight of Hoplers appetite for the delectable cuisine of Hopler’s past, but the social aspect of the barbecue adds a new element of nostalgia for the reader to appreciate the community that is inferred by the pleasant atmosphere of the barbecue. In adding the source of the thrillist contemporary cultural piece to the pin, the piece confirms and expands upon the outdoor, and implicitly social nature of barbecues, and the cooking style and emphasized ingredients of the meal as well.

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As anyone can attest who's ever taken Geography 101 or put together a wooden puzzle of the United States as a kid: Texas dwarfs all but one other state. (And we're pretty sure nobody's making pilgrimages to Alaska for their BBQ.) In fact, the Lone Star State is so big that even within its borders you'll find several distinct styles from east to west. But it's Central Texas style that, for good reason, has become the benchmark for evaluating the very best of slow-smoked meats. We know it can be hard to understand what makes the state's barbecue unique if you haven't spent time in Central Texas, here's everything you need to know to devour barbecue like a true Texan.

South Texas focuses on barbacoa, East Texas serves chopped beef, and West Texas cooks over direct heat in a style more akin to grilling. The food varies depending on where you are in the state, but when people use the term "Texas barbecue" it almost always translates the Central Texas-style of cooking brisket low and slow over indirect heat. Because you'll rarely see the other varieties unless you're road-tripping to remote corners of the state, most of this article concerns the style associated with Central Texas.

The first thing that makes Texas the iconoclast of the 'cueing world is a worship of beef over pork. The preference dates back to the cattle industry, but culturally you can chalk it up to bigger-in-Texas palates and the arguably higher-quality beef available in the state. Debate all you wish about proteins, but it's tough to convince a Texan that the other white meat packs more flavor than a well-cooked piece of beef, especially in places that serve Prime or Wagyu cuts that elevate the BBQ experience even higher.

A brisket has two distinct portions, the leaner "flat" and the fattier "point." Some menus list both types, but even those that don't will happily cut from whichever side of the brisket a customer prefers. So much like in New Mexico you'll be questioned whether you want red or green sauce on your enchiladas, most BBQ joints will ask you whether you want it moist (aka marbled with fat) or lean. Fatty is by far more popular because it's loaded with flavor. The lower fat content of the lean side makes it harder to cook perfectly, but it's by no means a second-class barbecue citizen-it's still served with a tiny sliver of fat.

Pork ribs, sausage, turkey, beef ribs, and pulled pork typically round out a menu, but no plate of Texas barbecue is complete without brisket. The collagen-packed chest muscle is king and how it's cooked is considered the true measure of a pitmaster's skill. If Texas had a list of barbecue commandments, Thou Shalt Order Brisket would be No. 1. Followed closely by Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Place at the Front of the Line.

Good things come to those who stand outside a Texas barbecue joint for two hours. The best barbecue restaurants in Texas are so popular that lines can exceed four hours on busy weekends and people often show up early in the morning to "tailgate" while awaiting the restaurant to open. This practice of waiting has been so ingrained in the experience that the lines of famous spots like Franklin Barbecue develop their own micro-economies. People rent out chairs and even sell their place in line (a practice that Franklin has now banned). Luckily in many of those lines you won't be thirsty, because...

Since many of the best Central Texas barbecue operations are trailers that can't secure official alcohol licenses, the workaround is to hand out free beers to people waiting in line as a little present for their patience. And often it's OK if you bring your own if a place indeed can't sell it. (But still, a good idea to be stealthy if you don't know for sure. Just look to others ahead of you in line for hints at what's allowed).

Condiment stations are almost always loaded with quartered white onions, pickles, and cheap white bread. There might occasionally be a charge for more premium bread or fancy pickles, but the standards should definitely come for free.

Smokers with a gas-assist function have gained popularity in higher-volume restaurants, but most masters still do it the old-fashioned way: a hardwood fire that's watched carefully overnight. The most common wood used in Central Texas is post oak, but you'll also see mesquite, pecan, and hickory.

One of the hardest parts of barbecuing is the meticulous management of fire. If you cook too hot and fast, the collagen won't have time to render and the inherent toughness of the cut of meat will prevail. Pitmasters subscribe to a low-and-slow philosophy that can take up to 20 hours or longer for each brisket.

Based on regulations on indoor smokers, spatial considerations, and the low startup cost of trailers, cooking is often done outside. This further complicates the fragile ecosystem inside the smoker and tests a pitmaster's abilities. But the smell of the meats slowly doing their thing offers a form of far-reaching advertising that can't be ought.

One of the primary distinctions of Central Texas BBQ is simplicity. Many pitmasters will sneak in a hint of garlic powder or cayenne, but the traditional rub for brisket is a fistful of salt and black pepper to amplify the flavor without complicating or overpowering the inherent greatness of the flavors.

Although most restaurants offer several varieties of tomato-based table sauce, brisket is almost always served nekkid. Purists and snobby food writers will say that sauce overwhelms the meat and liken it to squirting ketchup on a steak. We recommend trying it both ways and deciding for yourself because technically, there's no wrong way to eat BBQ.

German and Czech immigrants have had a big influence on the state, earning sausage an important place on any Texas barbecue menu. Elgin is the state's sausage capital and the the birthplace of "hot guts," an all-beef sausage that the originators at Southside Market proudly sell wholesale to many restaurants. Pitmasters who make their own will often offer more than one variety, from staples like jalapeño cheese to more creative styles that incorporate flavors from other global cuisines.

In a throwback to the meat market roots of the Germans and Czechs who settled in Texas, most barbecue restaurants in the state sell meat by the pound. It's ordered and sliced at a counter, then presented on a plastic tray covered in butcher paper. Expect to use that tray as a communal plate and build your own sandwich with a couple of slices of that cheap white bread.

When the primary product takes upwards of 15 hours to cook and space inside a smoker is finite, supplies can be extremely limited. As a result, many of the state's premier barbecue spots are only able to cook enough meat to last through a lunch rush, so not many people visit BBQ joints for dinner. It's also a heavy meal, so lunch reduces the guilt a bit. Of course, any leftovers you might end up with make for great next-day meat-and-egg breakfast tacos.

Although not everyone likes to get down and dirty, traditionalists will tell you to ignore forks and knives and grab that slab of moist brisket with your hands. You'll occasionally even find old-school joints that don't offer any cutlery whatsoever, like Kreuz Market in Lockhart. So pack a contraband fork if you absolutely must.

Hour-long lines make for high levels of anticipation, and a customary reward for the wait is a tiny slice of brisket as soon as a customer reaches the counter. This also helps you quickly decide whether you're on Team Moist or Team Lean.

Beef ribs have become the darling of the barbecue world in recent years thanks to their intense flavor, as well as an appearance that looks straight out of The Flintstones. Most beef ribs clock in at around two pounds, so anticipate leftovers-or a trip to the antacid aisle at CVS.
Want more Thrillist? Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok, and Snapchat. Dan Gentile is a former staff writer at Thrillist. He lives in Austin, Texas, the smoked meat capital of the universe. Follow him to a half pound of moist brisket at @Dannosphere.
Steven Lindsey is a Thrillist contributor.

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Everything You Need to Know About Texas BBQ

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Texas BBQ is hugely popular; here's everything you need to know about the regional style.

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Texas is relevant to us understanding the poem “The Glory Be-b-q” by Jay Hopler because Texas is widely regarded as the American Mecca for barbecue. This means Texas is the cultural epicenter of Southern barbecue. Throughout its history Texas has had the unique blend of cultures from the Caribbean, West Africa, Native Americans, and european cultures which all mixed in the area combined with the state’s historically high meat production, specifically beef, making Texas the perfect place for barbecuing practices to have been created .While the barbecue that is described by Hopler is cooking pork instead of the beef, beef having given the state notoriety, pork barbecue dishes are also common throughout Texas cuisine in popular dishes such as pulled pork and baby back ribs. Because pulled pork is featured in Hopler’s poem prominently when the main course is offered to his character in the poem, it is also important that someone understands the cultural context of communally cooking meat at a barbecue as a form of leisure and social engagement with one’s community when trying to understand Hopler’s experience in “The Glory Bar-b-q”. That social understanding of the barbecue gives the reader not just the insight of Hoplers appetite for the delectable cuisine of Hopler’s past, but the social aspect of the barbecue adds a new element of nostalgia for the reader to appreciate the community that is inferred by the pleasant atmosphere of the barbecue. In adding the source of the thrillist contemporary cultural piece to the pin, the piece confirms and expands upon the outdoor, and implicitly social nature of barbecues, and the cooking style and emphasized ingredients of the meal as well.

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South Carolina is relevant to us understanding the poem "Backbone" because the author of Backbone, Caroline Randall Williams, talked about her experience with slavery and how it has impacted her life. While the poem never explicitly states that the narrator is African American, it becomes apparent through the difficultly the grandmother has to go through to brush the narrator's hair. South Caroline, is exhibited by the South Carolina Exposition and Protest, used to be adamant maintaining slavery prior to the Civil War. Caroline Randall Williams is an African American woman who wrote about being mostly white only as a product of rapes. Many African Americans who were enslaved prior to the Civil War (and even after the Civil War as well) were raped by their slave owners. Caroline Randall Williams wrote about her experience when commenting on whether or not to remove Confederate leader's statues. For South Carolina, there is a Wikipedia for all the monuments and statues for Confederate leaders. The poem (supposing it's nonfictional) depicts one of the less severe struggles of being an African American woman. Even as it is a minor issue, it's excruciatingly painful. It's something that we can't understand because we've never had to deal with it. Even so, this fear is instilled in African Americans over generations.In adding the source of Caroline Randall Williams's article to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by expressing in her own words the history of skin

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Africa is relevant to us understanding the poem “When My Mother Is Away” because the rice and rice dishes found commonly in the Cajun and Creole cooking styles that make New Orleans cuisine unique can be traced back to their origins in African culture. The transatlantic slave trade introduced rice as an ingredient to European countries and their colonies in the Americas. The rise of the slave trade brought with it not only rice and the labor needed to harvest it, but also the culture surrounding it. This includes traditional African dishes and the knowledge and expertise required to prepare them. Rice was introduced into the dishes of other cultures sometimes as a substitute for other ingredients such as wheat. The cooking skills brought by Africans helped to propel rice to the front of Louisiana cuisine. Because slaves made up such a large part of the population in colonial Louisiana, African culture had a significant influence on all aspects of New Orleans’ culture, including its distinct cuisine. Many dishes made in Louisiana today are African in origin such as rice calas, a type of rice fritter. Rice is a major cash crop in Louisiana and has been since the middle of the nineteenth century; as such, boiled rice has been served alongside many New Orleans dishes for well over a hundred years. In adding the source "The Transnational Dish of the Motherland: The African Roots of Rice and Beans" to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers  by linking a foreign continent to an everyday dish.

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Jamestown, VA, USA - FINAL PADLET FOR ARTIFACT 1 (Nimita Deshpande)

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Jamestown, VA, USA - FINAL PADLET FOR ARTIFACT 1 (Nimita Deshpande)

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Jamestown, Virginia, USA (my original padlet pin) is relevant to us understanding the poem “Food Stamps” because it is the region where tobacco, referred to in the poem as “bacca” and “snuff”, first began to be mass produced and exported in the United States. The history of the tobacco crop is strongly rooted in colonial America in the 1600s, when colonizers in Jamestown, Virginia began to mass produce and export tobacco. The crop was so integral to Virginia’s economy that it fueled the colonizers’ westward expansion into the North American continent in order to search for more land and consequently resulted in conflict with and suppression of Native American tribes, who had in fact been using traditional tobacco long before it became popular worldwide. The mass production of tobacco also incentivized colonizers to institutionalize slavery in the 1700s and was one of the primary reasons for the expansion of the African slave labor. The colonizers ended up reaping the benefits of the profitable tobacco crop at the expense of black and indigenous people - one of many situations which has given rise to current racial and income inequality as well as discrimination against BIPOC. Inequality and discrimination persist as major themes in the poem and manifest themselves in the form of issues that the poet faces on a regular basis. The poet, who is a black woman living in a low-income area (colloquially referred to as “Need Mo’ Street” in the poem), feels as if she is being “crushed underfoot” because she finds herself constantly and unfairly judged by the more privileged members of society, who believe they have the right to criticize her life and question her about her income and financial status. In conclusion, Jamestown, Virginia can be considered highly relevant to our understanding of the poem given the role it had in promoting tobacco, a commodity which is a symbol of the various forms of oppression the poet is forced to undergo as a result of her race, gender, and socioeconomic status.

In adding the source of https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/tobacco_in_colonial_virginia to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by including the following: brightly-colored subheadings and detailed written information about the evolution of tobacco as a commodity in America in the form of paragraphs and a timeline; interactive visual imagery in the form of pictures of individuals and objects significant to tobacco’s history as well as a map; and interactive electronic elements such as links to other pages on the website.

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Introduction of Tobacco to Virginia

In 1611 Rolfe, known as "an ardent smoker," decided to experiment with cultivating tobacco in Jamestown. The plant had first been brought to England in 1565, perhaps from Florida by Sir John Hawkins, and by the 1610s there was a ready market in Britain for tobacco-especially Spanish tobacco from the West Indies. Rolfe obtained from a shipmaster some seeds from Trinidad and Caracas, Venezuela, and by July 1612 was growing Spanish tobacco, or Nicotiana tabacum-presumably at Jamestown, although the exact site of Rolfe's crop is unknown. The Virginia Indians also grew and smoked tobacco, so Rolfe could have bought seeds from them, but the native Nicotiana rustica, described by William Strachey as being "poore and weake, and of a byting tast," did not appeal to English smokers. Moreover, relations between the Indians and the English were unstable at best.

Captain Robert Adams of the Elizabeth delivered samples of Rolfe's tobacco to England on July 20, 1613. Although Rolfe's early tobacco was considered by the English to be "excellent in quality," it still was not comparable to the Spanish product. Nevertheless, Rolfe believed that "no doubt but after a little more tryall and expense in the curing thereof, it will compare with the best in the West Indies." He was proved correct in 1617, when 20,000 pounds of Virginia tobacco were shipped to England, and in 1618, when that amount doubled.

Rolfe's successful tobacco experiments inspired others to begin planting available land in Jamestown and in the settlements along the James River. General planting began first at West and Shirley Hundreds and moved east to Point Comfort along a 140-mile stretch of the river. In 1622, despite the Indian uprising that killed about 350 colonists and destroyed several plantations, the settlers' crop yielded 60,000 pounds. Later in the 1620s, the English took over cleared Indian land and spread tobacco cultivation even farther by using the headright system, in which planters paid to transport people across the Atlantic in exchange for fifty acres of land. The Accomac peninsula was put under cultivation by 1629, when a total of 2,000 acres of tobacco was being grown there.

Around the same time, the wasteful practice of growing three or four crops of tobacco on the same field began to deplete the soil in and around Jamestown. The General Assembly passed a law in 1632 to reduce the number of tobacco plants that each settler could grow to 1,500, and thus the settlers began to seek virgin ground where they could grow even more tobacco on each field. By 1635, tobacco planting had moved away from Jamestown as settlers migrated to lands on the south side of the York River, and by 1648 the planters had received permission from Governor Sir William Berkeley to move north of the York River into the area that had become known as Northumberland.

Settlers continued to move westward, away from exhausted Tidewater lands-reaching the Rappahannock and Potomac rivers by 1650, moving into Lancaster County, and then, by 1653, into what is now King William County. In 1689 the York River region produced the greatest amount of tobacco, followed by the Rappahannock River area, the Upper James region, and the Accomac peninsula. According to the historian Melvin Herndon, tobacco planting moved north of the fall line into the Piedmont region by 1720, and a decade later, it had been established in Spotsylvania and Goochland counties as well.

Between 1750 and 1755 tobacco cultivation seems to have been centered in the Upper James River region, the York River region, and the Rappahannock River region, with each area exporting about 83,000 hogsheads (barrels filled with dried, pressed tobacco leaf) during this period, while the Lower James River shipped only about 10,000 hogsheads. In 1759, Elias and William Edmonds settled near what is now Warrenton in Fauquier County and began growing a popular brand of the crop that came to be known as Edmonium tobacco. Within ten years the county of Albemarle, including what are now Amherst and Nelson counties, as well as Cumberland, Culpeper, and Augusta counties, was producing great quantities of the Edmonium brand.

Creation of the Tobacco Industry in Virginia

Relatively cheap labor, a growing population of middling planters, the increasing worldwide demand for tobacco, and a system of regulation designed to maintain the quality of the product all contributed to the creation of a tobacco industry in Virginia, especially in the Piedmont area.

When Virginians first began exporting tobacco, they relied on building personal relationships with English merchants to whom they sold their wares. This allowed planters to receive payment immediately instead of waiting for the tobacco to be sold in Europe. But as tobacco prices fell in the 1680s and 1690s and the market became less stable, it was more economical for planters to ship at their own risk to England, where a commission agent would, for a fee of 2.5 percent, store the tobacco, pay all duties and fees, sell it, and use the profits as his client directed. By 1730 approximately 40 percent of Chesapeake tobacco was being shipped by the consignment system.

Merchants sent agents, or factors, to Virginia to liaise with the planters from whom they purchased tobacco. Factors operated from the small port towns on the Chesapeake Bay and the major rivers and opened stores, where they sold manufactured goods from Great Britain on credit. They also sent agents to buy tobacco directly from middling to small planters who could not afford the costs of consignment. The store system was dominated by enterprising young Scotsmen who had access to cheaper, faster shipping routes and whose operating costs were lower than those of their English counterparts. As a result, Scotland took over a large portion of the tobacco trade from London. In 1720, Scotland, Bristol, and Liverpool transported about 40 percent of the Chesapeake's tobacco.

By the King. A
Proclamation concerning
Tobacco.

Because goods were bought with promissory notes that represented a certain amount of tobacco, quality control was vital to the industry's success. This issue had concerned Virginia's politicians since 1619, when the first inspection law was passed. The law ordered all low-quality tobacco brought to the Jamestown inspection site to be burned. The General Assembly amended the law in 1623 to allow for selected men in each settlement to condemn such tobacco. A 1630 law disallowed accepting inferior tobacco in payment of debts; anyone who did so lost his right to plant tobacco and could only recover it by petitioning the General Assembly. In 1633 five sites for the inspection of tobacco were named: Cheskiack, Denbigh, James City, Shirley Hundred Island, and Southampton River in Elizabeth City. By the end of that year two more sites had been chosen at Warrosquyoake and between Weyanoke and the falls of the James, but no warehouses were built there. An act of 1639 added 213 inspectors to be appointed, 3 in each district.

In 1641, all of the various acts for tobacco inspection were repealed. Only the section of the 1630 act that had required the settlement commanders to choose two or three tobacco inspectors remained on the books. Tobacco cultivation spread west and north into frontier areas, where the planters paid less attention to the quality of the leaf. They used mostly outpost merchants to sell their tobacco to Scottish merchants, who then resold the tobacco in northern Europe, where such tobacco was palatable.

In 1680, to accelerate growth, the General Assembly passed the first act to create port towns and warehouses, where imported goods and those intended for export would be stored. Warehouses already existed at some of the proposed sites, which spread across twenty counties: Accomac at Calvert's Neck, Charles City at Flowerdew Hundred, Elizabeth City at Hampton, Essex at Hobb's Hole, Gloucester at Tindall's Point, Henrico at Varina, James City at James City, Isle of Wight at Pates Field on the Pagan River, Lancaster on the Corotoman River, Middlesex on Urbanna Creek, Nansemond at Dues Point, New Kent at the Brick House, Norfolk on the Elizabeth River at the mouth of the Eastern River, Northampton on Kings Creek, Northumberland at Chickacony, Rappahannock at Hobb's Hole, Stafford at Pease Point at the mouth of Deep Creek, Surry at Smith's Fort, Warwick at the mouth of Deep Creek, Westmoreland at Nomini, and York at Ship Honors Store.

In 1713, the assembly passed an act that required owners of warehouses within a mile of public landings to maintain those warehouses. In areas where there were no such warehouses, the county courts were authorized to have them built. For owners of sites designated for new warehouses who refused to erect the buildings, the county could appraise the land and then build the warehouse with public moneys, with the proviso that when the warehouse ceased to be used, the land would revert to the original owner. Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood and the assembly hoped that by standardizing tobacco inspection and rooting out all inferior grades, the price of tobacco would rise. (Spotswood also hoped that appointing politicians as inspectors would increase his power in Virginia.) In fact, prices rose for a time after passage of the act, although the 1713 legislation may not have been responsible. A further act of 1720 stipulated that all warehouses not convenient to the public landings should be discontinued. Thereafter, warehouses were built where necessary and others were abandoned. Inspection warehouses, however, were not authorized above the fall line until after the Revolution.

The General Assembly passed the next significant inspection act in 1730 at the instigation of Governor Sir William Gooch. Incorporating the 1713 act, Gooch's 1730 act recognized that Virginia tobacco of inferior quality was still reaching England. Because of resistance from planters large and small, it was debated for nearly a decade before it passed. The law mandated a system of two inspectors at each warehouse to make sure that only the higher-quality leaves were packed into hogsheads (the size of which was regulated by the 1730 law). If a dispute arose between those inspectors, a third could be summoned to settle the matter. This ended the practice of shipping bulk tobacco. Heavy penalties kept the inspectors from allowing the shipment of defective tobacco, entering the tobacco business themselves, or accepting rewards. Under the new law, burgesses and sheriffs were not eligible to serve as inspectors-limiting the governor's ability to use inspectorships as patronage positions. Tobacco used to pay public or private debts had to be inspected under the same rule. The inspectors opened the hogsheads and checked two samples for any defective tobacco, which was to be burned in the warehouse kiln. If the owner refused to have his tobacco inspected, the entire hogshead was to be burned. Tobacco notes were issued to the owners of hogsheads that successfully passed the inspection-these notes were used as legal currency until the French and Indian War (1754-1763), when Virginia began printing money.

The law was unpopular, especially with small-volume planters, who had to pay to move all of their hogsheads to warehouses. In an election called in 1735, the year after the House of Burgesses renewed the act, 45 percent of the incumbent burgesses-many of whom supported the law-were defeated. Nevertheless, the 1730 inspection law lasted until October 1775, when it expired; it was reinstated a year later.

As a result of the tobacco trade and the warehouse inspection system, towns grew up at Norfolk, Urbanna, and Yorktown by the early years of the eighteenth century. By midcentury, Alexandria, Fredericksburg, Petersburg, and Richmond had also grown into important port towns. Only Norfolk, however, contained more than a few hundred citizens, and in 1736 it received a self-governing borough charter with its own common council, mayor, and aldermen. By the mid-1770s Norfolk, with a population of about 6,000, had become Virginia's busiest port and largest city.

Types of Tobacco

Two major types of tobacco constituted the bulk of the crop grown in Virginia from about 1650 to the 1730s: sweet-scented and Orinoco. The milder, sweet-scented tobacco was unique to Virginia and traces back to about 1650, when Edward Digges planted seeds of the Orinoco variety of tobacco on Digges Neck, a tract of land he had acquired on the York River. There the soil was sandy and poor, but the leaf was what the Old World had been waiting for: light-colored, aromatic, and mild. ED or E. Dees tobacco, as it was known (for Digges's initials on the hogsheads), demonstrated that the differences in soil quality were as important to the product as the differences in tobacco varieties. Soon every Virginian was trying to produce this sweet-scented tobacco.

Sweet-scented tobacco was considered by the English to be the best in the world, but the stronger Orinoco found a market in continental Europe. Ultimately, Orinoco became more popular even with English smokers-in 1735, a London merchant wrote to John Carter that tobacconists there had found "among the common Tobacco ... some as good as the most celebrated crops." Thus the tobacconists were using better grades of Orinoco instead of sweet-scented and their customers were still buying the product. By the end of the eighteenth century, Orinoco tobacco dominated the market.

Cultivation and Labor

No matter the variety or where it was planted, tobacco was a notoriously labor-intensive crop. Start-up costs were high as well. To avoid the time-consuming process of cutting trees and clearing land, planters used the Indian method of cultivation: they girded trees to kill them, burned the underbrush, and then planted tobacco and other crops among the stumps and under dead trees.

The steps by which tobacco is cultivated from seed to market have changed little, because most of the work does not lend itself to mechanization. Seeds were planted in beds, usually a few weeks after Christmas, and tended through the early spring, at which time the seedlings were transplanted to "hills" in the field (each hill was home to a single tobacco plant). Weeding the hills, topping off the plants to cause the lower leaves to spread, "suckering" (removing shoots sprouting at the junction of the leaves and the stalks), and picking off tobacco worms and other pests were and remain hot, sticky tasks requiring manual labor. When the time was right, the leaves were harvested (usually each leaf is cut off by hand), attached to stakes, hung in the tobacco barn, and cured by one of several processes, each of which require close attention. Finally, the planter and his workers "prized" the cured tobacco, sorting it by hand, pressing it into bundles, and packing it into barrels or shipping crates to be exported to England.

Available labor, rather than the quantity of available land, generally determined how much tobacco could be planted. During the colonial period, an adult male worker could tend from 6,000 to 10,000 hills per year, while a child between the ages of twelve and sixteen could tend about 3,000 (the number of hills per acre depended on the richness of the soil, but usually ranged from 4,000 to 5,000). As planters moved north and west they acquired far more land than they could plant with tobacco, and faced the situation of a limited number of laborers to tend the crop.

As the cultivation of the so-called sot-weed spread, the demand for workers increased as well. In Virginia, this labor demand was satisfied at first by indentured servants, who worked for a fixed number of years to pay their passage and then became free. Indentured servants were plentiful during the middle decades of the seventeenth century, when crop failures in England and Wales prompted many to leave for the New World. But as economic and political conditions in the mother country improved, this source of workers began to dry up and was replaced with slave labor. By 1700, African slaves, bound for life, outnumbered white indentured servants. That same year, the amount of tobacco being shipped from Virginia to England reached 22 million pounds.

Although the market price of tobacco fluctuated, it remained sufficiently high relative to the cost of the labor required for cultivation to justify the acquisition of indentured servants or the purchase of slaves. It has been estimated, based on incomplete records, that between 80,000 and 100,000 Africans arrived in Virginia between 1698 and 1774, with the greatest numbers arriving in the 1730s and 1740s. While the successful planters bought slaves, poorer planters had to rely on themselves and their families for labor.

Production and Prices

As more Virginians turned to tobacco planting as their main source of income, overproduction drove down the crop's value. Governor Sir William Berkeley, during his second term in office (1660-1677), attempted to diversify Virginia's economy. (Earlier efforts to introduce and popularize the cultivation of other potential exports, such as silk, had failed.) Without the Crown's full support, however, and the support of the House of Burgesses, Berkeley's efforts failed and tobacco prices continued to fall. At the same time, the First and Second Anglo-Dutch Wars also interfered with the tobacco trade (the Crown had placed restrictions on trading with the Dutch), and prices sank even lower. In 1682, a group of frustrated planters in Gloucester, Middlesex, and New Kent counties cut down tobacco seedlings at several hundred plantations in an attempt to raise prices. The plant-cutting riots were put down, and afterward prices rose briefly, but in 1688 a bumper crop of about 18 million pounds of tobacco was produced in Virginia-the highest yield ever-causing prices to fall to a penny a pound.

The end of King William's War (1688-1697), which had temporarily disrupted British shipping, resulted in an increase in tobacco prices to twenty shillings per hundredweight. Prices remained stable until the outbreak of Queen Anne's War (1702-1713), which, in addition to another huge tobacco crop, caused prices to drop so much that several thousand hogsheads shipped on consignment in 1704 returned no profits at all. In 1705, prices fell to one-quarter of a penny per pound. These factors, however, failed to convince planters to cut production, and in 1709 an all-time high of 29 million pounds of tobacco was produced. The plant continued to fetch a low price until the inspection act was passed in 1730. A year later the price of tobacco increased to twelve shillings and six pence per hundredweight, even though production rose to 34 million pounds.

Prices remained stable and even increased steadily during the 1740s and 1750s, but by early in the 1760s fluctuations in the British economy had caused the large planters to have trouble meeting their obligations. (The small planters continued to do fairly well.) As the decade went on, the situation changed so that most Virginians, including members of the gentry, were in dire financial straits. Because colonists traded primarily on credit, most Americans were in debt to British merchants. When English banks collapsed in 1772, those merchants pressured Virginia planters to settle their accounts. The historian T. H. Breen contends that this credit crisis of 1772 probably did as much to bring about the American Revolution as the regulation acts of Parliament.

After war broke out in 1775, the General Assembly voted to cease sending tobacco to Britain. Many planters switched to growing food crops, especially wheat, to support troops. In the first year of the war, tobacco production dropped from 55 million pounds to 14.5 million. According to the historian Melvin Herndon, the total crop output for the entire period of the war, 1776-1782, was no larger than the total yield of one year of pre-Revolutionary production.

Cite This Entry

APA Citation:
Salmon, E. J., & Salmon, J. Tobacco in Colonial Virginia. (2013, January 29). In Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved from http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/Tobacco_in_Colonial_Virginia.

MLA Citation:
Salmon, Emily Jones and John Salmon. "Tobacco in Colonial Virginia." Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Humanities, 29 Jan. 2013. Web. READ_DATE.

First published: January 29, 2013 | Last modified: January 29, 2013

Contributed by Emily Jones Salmon and John Salmon. Emily Jones Salmon is retired senior editor in the Education and Outreach Division of the Library of Virginia, co-editor of The Hornbook of Virginia History (3rd-5th editions: 1983, 1994, and 2010), and co-author with John S. Salmon of Franklin County, Virginia, 1786-1986: A Bicentennial History (1993). John Salmon is historian for Virginia Civil War Trails, and author of The Official Virginia Civil War Battlefield Guide. He also helped author the National Park Service's Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail Feasibility Study and Environmental Assessment (2006).

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In 1611 Rolfe, known as "an ardent smoker," decided to experiment with cultivating tobacco in Jamestown. The plant had first been brought to England in 1565, perhaps from Florida by Sir John Hawkins, and by the 1610s there was a ready market in Britain for tobacco-especially Spanish tobacco from the West Indies.

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The Southeastern United States is relevant to us understanding the purpose of the poem “Times Like These” because it both displays a value set specific to this region and indicates the form of agricultural work done on the farms being described. In terms of the value set, it displays one of honor and respect. Southern morals dictate that one should not transfer their hardships unto others. As a result, struggling farmers are unlikely to want to rely on their neighbors for subsistence, trying to solve or simply get through their problems on their own. This can result in farmers experiencing even greater hardship as they don’t ask for help from their community when struggling. Regarding more tangible implications, the poem’s southern setting indicates the types of agriculture performed on the farm. Southern agriculture historically revolved around so-called “cash crops”. These crops are very useful economically, but are typically very poor in terms of subsistence. Additionally, crops like wheat and barley, staples of the midwest, grow very poorly in the southern climate. Consequently, small southern farms resort to growing crops like sugarcane, peanuts, or tobacco, which are practically useless in terms of subsistence, but can be sold to purchase food for consumption. 
In adding the source of “United States: The South” to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by explaining which crops are prevalent in southern agriculture. Additionally, it touches on the origins and uses of the foods, highlighting how they came to be a part of the southern culture.

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The Southeastern United States - Andrew Smith

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The Southeastern United States - Andrew Smith

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The Southeastern United States is relevant to us understanding the purpose of the poem “Times Like These” because it both displays a value set specific to this region and indicates the form of agricultural work done on the farms being described. In terms of the value set, it displays one of honor and respect. Southern morals dictate that one should not transfer their hardships unto others. As a result, struggling farmers are unlikely to want to rely on their neighbors for subsistence, trying to solve or simply get through their problems on their own. This can result in farmers experiencing even greater hardship as they don’t ask for help from their community when struggling. Regarding more tangible implications, the poem’s southern setting indicates the types of agriculture performed on the farm. Southern agriculture historically revolved around so-called “cash crops”. These crops are very useful economically, but are typically very poor in terms of subsistence. Additionally, crops like wheat and barley, staples of the midwest, grow very poorly in the southern climate. Consequently, small southern farms resort to growing crops like sugarcane, peanuts, or tobacco, which are practically useless in terms of subsistence, but can be sold to purchase food for consumption.

In adding the source of “United States: The South” to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by explaining which crops are prevalent in southern agriculture. Additionally, it touches on the origins and uses of the foods, highlighting how they came to be a part of the southern culture.

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Overview The American South, a cultural and political region of the United States, is loosely defined as the 11 states of the former Confederacy. They are historically linked by the devastating shared experience of defeat in the American Civil War in which they defe

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St. Luke’s Church is relevant to us understanding the purpose of the poem “Times Like These” because it displays a widespread commonality amongst rural communities: faith. Religion serves as both a method of explanation and a source of comfort within communities like that of Marianna. Many occurrences within the agricultural sector are not easily explained by those without an advanced education. For example, crop failures can be caused by numerous factors not involving the farmers’ performance. Droughts, floods, locusts, and tornadoes are just a few causes that cannot be controlled, but also cannot be truly explained without deep study into their occurrences. Farmers seek ways to understand what causes their problems in order to avoid them in the future. As a result, they turn to what they know, explaining the hardships they face through the lens of religion. Weather conditions are explained as acts of god, as that is the easiest method of interpreting the situation. This, in turn, provides a form of comfort to farming communities. The ability to say that you are not the cause of your own hardships can be relieving, making individuals even more likely to continue the use of religion. Thus, a cycle of explanation begins, with communities using religion more and more frequently to explain the agricultural problems they face on a daily basis.
In adding the image of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Marianna to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by showing how it is not the church itself that serves to comfort during hardship, but rather the faith it houses. There is nothing special about the building. It is just a church. It has no intricate spires or watchful gargoyles, just a steeple and a main building. However, as stated prior, the building is not the main attraction. People flock to St. Luke’s every Sunday to receive comfort and hope, priceless possessions in times of hardship. This image shows that in even the blandest of churches, faith resides, helping people through their darkest days.

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St Luke's Episcopal Church, Lafayette Street, Marianna, FL, USA

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St Luke's Episcopal Church, Marianna, FL, USA - Andrew Smith

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St Luke's Episcopal Church, Marianna, FL, USA - Andrew Smith

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St. Luke’s Church is relevant to us understanding the purpose of the poem “Times Like These” because it displays a widespread commonality amongst rural communities: faith. Religion serves as both a method of explanation and a source of comfort within communities like that of Marianna. Many occurrences within the agricultural sector are not easily explained by those without an advanced education. For example, crop failures can be caused by numerous factors not involving the farmers’ performance. Droughts, floods, locusts, and tornadoes are just a few causes that cannot be controlled, but also cannot be truly explained without deep study into their occurrences. Farmers seek ways to understand what causes their problems in order to avoid them in the future. As a result, they turn to what they know, explaining the hardships they face through the lens of religion. Weather conditions are explained as acts of god, as that is the easiest method of interpreting the situation. This, in turn, provides a form of comfort to farming communities. The ability to say that you are not the cause of your own hardships can be relieving, making individuals even more likely to continue the use of religion. Thus, a cycle of explanation begins, with communities using religion more and more frequently to explain the agricultural problems they face on a daily basis.

In adding the image of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Marianna to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by showing how it is not the church itself that serves to comfort during hardship, but rather the faith it houses. There is nothing special about the building. It is just a church. It has no intricate spires or watchful gargoyles, just a steeple and a main building. However, as stated prior, the building is not the main attraction. People flock to St. Luke’s every Sunday to receive comfort and hope, priceless possessions in times of hardship. This image shows that in even the blandest of churches, faith resides, helping people through their darkest days.

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Marianna, Florida is relevant to us understanding the purpose of the poem “Times Like These” because it establishes the setting as a rural, undeveloped community. The poem itself focuses on the difficulties inherent to rural, subsistence farming. Specifically, it highlights the struggle of food insecurity faced by farmers. This is a universal problem in the agricultural industry, though it is especially prevalent in rural farms. Marianna is definitely a “rural enough” setting to illustrate this prevalence. Rural areas tend to experience higher rates of food insecurity due to their lower number of services for food-insecure individuals, as well as their greater reliance on subsistence agriculture, compared to their urban counterparts. However, the nearest metropolitan area to Marianna is Tallahassee, which is located over an hour away by car. Thus, it is difficult for many Marianna residents, especially those in the farming industry, to find a reliable source of nourishment that does not originate within the community itself.  Obviously, Marianna is not the only rural farming community in the world, but it certainly fits the criteria of being considered as one. The struggles felt in such communities worldwide are felt in Marianna, making it a perfect setting to illustrate the hardships involved with rural agriculture.

In adding the source of the video “Urban, Suburban and Rural Hunger” to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by comparing the different ways that food insecurity manifests itself in modern society. Since many individuals do not live in rural areas, it can be difficult to understand the specific difficulties these communities face. However, by comparing these issues to ones common in other areas of society, rural issues become much more relatable and, in turn, understandable.

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This video is part of ServingFoodSolutions.com. It was created by Cabrini College Communication Department seniors in April 2015 as part of a capstone course.