Plog Number 234
Soul Food
Hello Ploggers, how are you? I hope you are enjoying the late fall. We are getting ready to slide into the holidays. I am predicting that the end of the year will fly by. 2024 will be off and running soon. The ✨ decorations are already coming out and things are getting festive.
Speaking of food, I want to talk about special and meaningful foods. No not turkey and dressing, although that is delish. I want to talk about foods that have historical significance. There are quite a few. My friend and I have been talking about some of them. We went to get🍩 bagels earlier today and she reminded me of their history. The best bagels are boiled and that came about out of necessity. Jews were not allowed to make bagels for commercial purposes, in anti-sematic medieval Europe. In Poland Jews were forbid from baking bread. There was fear that they would poison communion products. They started boiling bagels to assure any poisons were removed or to cook them when there was no access to ovens. Certain laws forbade Jews from baking so they started making kick ass boiled bagels. How cool is that?! The place we went for bagels this morning said that their bagels are indeed boiled.
Another interesting and historical food is the hush puppy. Hush puppies are made of corn 🌽meal, fat and flour. The tasty nuggets are of Southern origin. I have heard many stories about how this food was used during the slavery era. One version that I will talk about is the one about runaway slaves. It has been legend that runaway slaves used these nuggets to throw blood 🐶hounds off of their scent. They would throw the round nuggets on the trail in hopes that the dogs would be so busy sniffing out and eating the treats that they would forget about tracking a runaway slave. Pretty smart planning. I recently went through a slave reenactment and I learned that the slaves were starving. So I can see that it would be difficult to throw food out for dogs. It makes me even more aware of their strength and intelligence.
Another food of interest is chitterlings or chitlins which are pig🐷 intestines. People around the world have eaten them. In slavery the owners ate “higher on the hog”. They are things like chops and ham and loin. The slaves are lower on the hog. They ate feet and chitlins and stomach. In the Jim Crow era when blacks went to different Southern areas they checked if chitins were being served. If they were it was considered a safe place. It was an unwritten code. So what started as using every inch of the pig turned into a symbol of safety.
There are also racial differences in current cuisine. Black people called it dressing. White people call it stuffing. Black people eat sweet potato pies and white people eat 🍰pumpkin pies. Black people eat macaroni and cheese. White people eat mashed potatoes and green bean casserole. Thanksgiving has segregated foods. Who knew?
So as Thanksgiving comes around again lets eat our favorite foods with the knowledge that they do not belong to any one race. They are the bounty of the earth to be enjoyed by all. I like to think of soul food is that which is so good, it make your soul happy. Enjoy🍗 and RECLAIM!