RE: [BVSNY] A cookbook that could re-define 'soul food'

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THE BOOK THAT REDEFINES SOULFOOD IS THE BOOK CALLED THE JOY OF LIVING LIVE BY ZAKHAH ISBN NUMBER 0-9701134-7-1

DR.NATURAL

718-783-3465DOCTORNATURAL

 

 

blackveggies ; bvsny From: plumbun_1Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 09:57:26 -0800[bVSNY] A cookbook that could re-define 'soul food'

 

 

 

>>INFO: a cookbook that could re-define 'soul food'=======================================http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/21/dining/21cook.html?th & emc=thNew York TimesA 19th-Century Ghost Awakens to Redefine 'Soul'By Molly O'NeillFor nearly seven years Jan Longone, an antiquariancookbook collector, has been haunted by a ghost. Thespirit came into her life as thousands of other vintagevolumes from book dealers had before: in a plain brownwrapper. But as soon as she held Malinda Russell's"Domestic Cook Book: Containing a Careful Selection ofUseful Receipts for the Kitchen," she could see itsauthor and her world - the small, seldom-discussedsociety of free blacks in the 19th century - coming tolife before her eyes."I felt like an archaeologist who had just stumbled ona dinosaur," said Mrs. Longone, who is the curator ofAmerican culinary history at the William L. ClementsLibrary at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "Iwas in awe."Mrs. Longone, long considered the top expert on oldAmerican cookbooks, knew immediately that she washolding the earliest cookbook by an African-Americanwoman that had ever come to light. Turning the 39fragile pages of the 1866 pamphlet, she realized, too,that it could challenge ingrained views about thecuisine of African-Americans.The black liberation movement of the 1960's hadcelebrated "soul food": dishes with a debt to Africa,like black-eyed peas, greens, gumbo and fried chicken.Neither the activists nor the scholars who laterdevoted themselves to black studies intended thosedishes to be seen as the food on the stove of everyblack cook in America. But that is exactly whathappened, historians say."Southern poverty cooking was mistakenly established asthe single and universal African-American cuisine,"said Leni Sorensen, a researcher at Monticello outsideCharlottesville, Va., specializing in African-Americanhistory.And then the volume by Malinda Russell surfaced.The evidence of a single cookbook is not enough torewrite culinary history. Still, Mrs. Russell's booksuggested that a more nuanced view might be in order.Instead of rustic Southern "soul food," it served upcomplex, cosmopolitan food inspired by Europeancuisine.Mrs. Russell, who had operated a pastry shop inTennessee, provided mostly dessert recipes, but theywere for puff pastry and delicate rose cake, not sweetpotato pie. Her savory recipes included dishes like anelegant catfish fricassee and sweet onion custard - nota mention of lard-fried chicken legs, beaten biscuitsor slow-cooked greens. Here was a black cook who wasalready two generations removed from the plantationkitchen by the time Lincoln died.And what seemed even more remarkable to Mrs. Longonewas Mrs. Russell's voice and the brief first-personaccount that she provided of her life. "I found myselfstraining to hear her voice, and trying to talk toher," Mrs. Longone said. "She had such an Americanstory, and it seemed like her message was timeless."Mrs. Longone soon became obsessed with finding MalindaRussell. And that is when the heartache began.Old cookbooks, particularly small, privately publishedones, can provide an intimate portrait of cultures andplaces and eras. But their authors tend to be unknownwomen who leave no record other than their own words.Such women can be all but impossible to track down,particularly if they were African-Americans who livedat a time when the births and marriages and deaths ofblack people were recorded haphazardly, if at all.Mrs. Longone was undaunted. Mrs. Russell, she reasoned,had provided many clues. She wrote of having been bornand raised in eastern Tennessee and of being a memberof one of the first families set free by a Mr. Noddieof Virginia. She said she had joined a party thatintended to resettle in Liberia, but after one of itsmembers robbed her she had been forced, instead, toremain in Lynchburg, Va. There, she worked as a cookand lady's companion and married a man named AndersonVaughan.Four years later, Mrs. Russell wrote, her husband died.She raised their son, who she said was crippled, whilerunning a laundry in Virginia and, later, a boardinghouse and pastry shop on Chuckey Mountain in Tennessee.With this information, Mrs. Longone, who had worked asa rural sociologist early in her career, was sure shecould pick up Mrs. Russell's trail. Her husband, DanLongone, an emeritus professor of chemistry at theUniversity of Michigan, shared her conviction.In the summer of 2002, the couple spent their 48thwedding anniversary trip chasing reports of Malinda,Mylinda, Melinda and Russel, Rusell, Russell in townhalls, cemeteries, newspapers and historical societiesacross Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee. Theyalso began riding a seesaw of exhilarating hope andcrashing disappointment."We'd get a lead that seemed solid and go zooming offto study the evidence," Mrs. Longone said. "But as soonas we saw the documents, we'd find that the woman ofrecord was either too old or too young to be ourMalinda, and we'd just be crushed."After returning to Ann Arbor, they continued spendingtheir evenings studying census reports and genealogies,searching archives for recipes that might beantecedents of Mrs. Russell's and consulting academicsand amateur food historians across the country.Their efforts speak to both the limits and thepossibilities of using cookbooks to understand history."Since food is not written about in charters andtreaties, the historian has to go back to primarysources, to letters, travel accounts, diaries andgenealogy," said Sandy Oliver, the publisher of FoodHistory News in Islesboro, Me. "It's the mostpainstaking research there is, and even then it is allbut impossible to find the beginnings of things, and nocookbook alone can provide an accurate view of African-American food ways in the 17th and 18th centuries."Scholars who studied early books by blacks - like "TheHouse Servant's Directory," by Robert Roberts,published in 1827, and Tunis G. Campbell's 1848 "HotelKeepers, Head Waiters and Housekeepers' Guide" - tendedto see their blend of Yankee, European and Southernrecipes as a reflection of who was being served morethan who was doing the serving. The plantation kitchenrecipes in books like "What Mrs. Fisher Knows About OldSouthern Cooking," by Abby Fisher (1881), who was borna slave, were championed by these historians as abetter mirror of the African-American kitchen.In May 2007, Mrs. Longone published a limited-editionfacsimile of the only known copy of Mrs. Russell'scookbook and distributed copies at a symposium at theLongone Center for American Culinary Research, part ofthe Clements Library at Michigan. The volume wasgreeted with great emotion."It is an Emancipation Proclamation for black cooks,"said Toni Tipton-Martin, a journalist and foodhistorian in Austin, Tex., who has spent a decaderesearching the cooking of African-American women."In isolation, Malinda's book might appear to be anaberration," she said. But in the context of the black-written cookbooks that followed, many of whichreflected a sophisticated international kitchen, Mrs.Russell's cookbook "dispels the notion of a universalAfrican-American food experience, which is why the term'soul food' doesn't work for so many of us," she said.The release of the facsimile (copies of which areavailable for $25 plus postage from the ClementsLibrary, www.clements.umich.edu/culinary or734-764-2347) also brought new leads. One of them sentthe Longones west this summer to Paw Paw, Mich.,Malinda Russell's last-known whereabouts.After eight years of running the boarding house andpastry shop in Tennessee, Mrs. Russell wrote, she had"by hard labor and economy, saved a considerable sum ofmoney for the support of myself and my son." But thenin 1864, she was robbed again, this time "by aguerrilla party," she wrote, "who threatened my life ifI revealed who they were." Taking her son, she flednorth to Paw Paw.The Longones felt that familiar frisson of hope as theydrove into the town.And they felt the familiar sinking of hope when theylearned that within months of the publication of Mrs.Russell's book, the little town had been all butdestroyed by a fire. They found no trace of her.Locating the woman they call Malinda seems, therefore,increasingly unlikely. But to the Longones, abandoningthe search is unthinkable."Our needle in the haystack gets smaller and smaller,"Mrs. Longone said softly, "but we'll find her. Shewants to be found, and we got some great new leads."Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company"Your silence will not protect you" - Audre Lorde You keep typing, we keep giving. Download Messenger and join the i’m Initiative now. Join in!

[Guest guest]

Thanks, Dr. Natural! -ZakhahBrother Natural <brothernatural wrote: THE BOOK THAT REDEFINES SOULFOOD IS THE BOOK CALLED THE JOY OF LIVING LIVE BY ZAKHAH ISBN NUMBER 0-9701134-7-1DR.NATURAL718-783-3465DOCTORNATURAL (AT) HOTMAIL (DOT) COM blackveggies ; bvsny From: plumbun_1 Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 09:57:26 -0800[bVSNY] A cookbook that

could re-define 'soul food' >>INFO: a cookbook that could re-define 'soul food'=======================================http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/21/dining/21cook.html?th & emc=thNew York TimesA 19th-Century Ghost Awakens to Redefine 'Soul'By Molly O'NeillFor nearly seven years Jan Longone, an antiquariancookbook collector, has been haunted by a ghost. Thespirit came into her life as thousands of other vintagevolumes from book dealers had before: in a plain brownwrapper. But as soon as she held Malinda Russell's"Domestic Cook Book: Containing a Careful Selection ofUseful Receipts for the Kitchen," she could see itsauthor and her world - the small, seldom-discussedsociety

of free blacks in the 19th century - coming tolife before her eyes."I felt like an archaeologist who had just stumbled ona dinosaur," said Mrs. Longone, who is the curator ofAmerican culinary history at the William L. ClementsLibrary at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "Iwas in awe."Mrs. Longone, long considered the top expert on oldAmerican cookbooks, knew immediately that she washolding the earliest cookbook by an African-Americanwoman that had ever come to light. Turning the 39fragile pages of the 1866 pamphlet, she realized, too,that it could challenge ingrained views about thecuisine of African-Americans.The black liberation movement of the 1960's hadcelebrated "soul food": dishes with a debt to Africa,like black-eyed peas, greens, gumbo and fried chicken.Neither the activists nor the scholars who laterdevoted themselves to black studies intended thosedishes to be seen as

the food on the stove of everyblack cook in America. But that is exactly whathappened, historians say."Southern poverty cooking was mistakenly established asthe single and universal African-American cuisine,"said Leni Sorensen, a researcher at Monticello outsideCharlottesville, Va., specializing in African-Americanhistory.And then the volume by Malinda Russell surfaced.The evidence of a single cookbook is not enough torewrite culinary history. Still, Mrs. Russell's booksuggested that a more nuanced view might be in order.Instead of rustic Southern "soul food," it served upcomplex, cosmopolitan food inspired by Europeancuisine.Mrs. Russell, who had operated a pastry shop inTennessee, provided mostly dessert recipes, but theywere for puff pastry and delicate rose cake, not sweetpotato pie. Her savory recipes included dishes like anelegant catfish fricassee and sweet onion custard -

nota mention of lard-fried chicken legs, beaten biscuitsor slow-cooked greens. Here was a black cook who wasalready two generations removed from the plantationkitchen by the time Lincoln died.And what seemed even more remarkable to Mrs. Longonewas Mrs. Russell's voice and the brief first-personaccount that she provided of her life. "I found myselfstraining to hear her voice, and trying to talk toher," Mrs. Longone said. "She had such an Americanstory, and it seemed like her message was timeless."Mrs. Longone soon became obsessed with finding MalindaRussell. And that is when the heartache began.Old cookbooks, particularly small, privately publishedones, can provide an intimate portrait of cultures andplaces and eras. But their authors tend to be unknownwomen who leave no record other than their own words.Such women can be all but impossible to track down,particularly if they were

African-Americans who livedat a time when the births and marriages and deaths ofblack people were recorded haphazardly, if at all.Mrs. Longone was undaunted. Mrs. Russell, she reasoned,had provided many clues. She wrote of having been bornand raised in eastern Tennessee and of being a memberof one of the first families set free by a Mr. Noddieof Virginia. She said she had joined a party thatintended to resettle in Liberia, but after one of itsmembers robbed her she had been forced, instead, toremain in Lynchburg, Va. There, she worked as a cookand lady's companion and married a man named AndersonVaughan.Four years later, Mrs. Russell wrote, her husband died.She raised their son, who she said was crippled, whilerunning a laundry in Virginia and, later, a boardinghouse and pastry shop on Chuckey Mountain in Tennessee.With this information, Mrs. Longone, who had worked asa rural sociologist

early in her career, was sure shecould pick up Mrs. Russell's trail. Her husband, DanLongone, an emeritus professor of chemistry at theUniversity of Michigan, shared her conviction.In the summer of 2002, the couple spent their 48thwedding anniversary trip chasing reports of Malinda,Mylinda, Melinda and Russel, Rusell, Russell in townhalls, cemeteries, newspapers and historical societiesacross Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee. Theyalso began riding a seesaw of exhilarating hope andcrashing disappointment."We'd get a lead that seemed solid and go zooming offto study the evidence," Mrs. Longone said. "But as soonas we saw the documents, we'd find that the woman ofrecord was either too old or too young to be ourMalinda, and we'd just be crushed."After returning to Ann Arbor, they continued spendingtheir evenings studying census reports and genealogies,searching archives for recipes that

might beantecedents of Mrs. Russell's and consulting academicsand amateur food historians across the country.Their efforts speak to both the limits and thepossibilities of using cookbooks to understand history."Since food is not written about in charters andtreaties, the historian has to go back to primarysources, to letters, travel accounts, diaries andgenealogy," said Sandy Oliver, the publisher of FoodHistory News in Islesboro, Me. "It's the mostpainstaking research there is, and even then it is allbut impossible to find the beginnings of things, and nocookbook alone can provide an accurate view of African-American food ways in the 17th and 18th centuries."Scholars who studied early books by blacks - like "TheHouse Servant's Directory," by Robert Roberts,published in 1827, and Tunis G. Campbell's 1848 "HotelKeepers, Head Waiters and Housekeepers' Guide" - tendedto see their blend of

Yankee, European and Southernrecipes as a reflection of who was being served morethan who was doing the serving. The plantation kitchenrecipes in books like "What Mrs. Fisher Knows About OldSouthern Cooking," by Abby Fisher (1881), who was borna slave, were championed by these historians as abetter mirror of the African-American kitchen.In May 2007, Mrs. Longone published a limited-editionfacsimile of the only known copy of Mrs. Russell'scookbook and distributed copies at a symposium at theLongone Center for American Culinary Research, part ofthe Clements Library at Michigan. The volume wasgreeted with great emotion."It is an Emancipation Proclamation for black cooks,"said Toni Tipton-Martin, a journalist and foodhistorian in Austin, Tex., who has spent a decaderesearching the cooking of African-American women."In isolation, Malinda's book might appear to be anaberration," she said. But in

the context of the black-written cookbooks that followed, many of whichreflected a sophisticated international kitchen, Mrs.Russell's cookbook "dispels the notion of a universalAfrican-American food experience, which is why the term'soul food' doesn't work for so many of us," she said.The release of the facsimile (copies of which areavailable for $25 plus postage from the ClementsLibrary, www.clements.umich.edu/culinary or734-764-2347) also brought new leads. One of them sentthe Longones west this summer to Paw Paw, Mich.,Malinda Russell's last-known whereabouts.After eight years of running the boarding house andpastry shop in Tennessee, Mrs. Russell wrote, she had"by hard labor and economy, saved a considerable sum ofmoney for the support of myself and my son." But thenin 1864, she was robbed again, this time "by aguerrilla party," she wrote, "who threatened my life ifI revealed who

they were." Taking her son, she flednorth to Paw Paw.The Longones felt that familiar frisson of hope as theydrove into the town.And they felt the familiar sinking of hope when theylearned that within months of the publication of Mrs.Russell's book, the little town had been all butdestroyed by a fire. They found no trace of her.Locating the woman they call Malinda seems, therefore,increasingly unlikely. But to the Longones, abandoningthe search is unthinkable."Our needle in the haystack gets smaller and smaller,"Mrs. Longone said softly, "but we'll find her. Shewants to be found, and we got some great new leads."Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company"Your silence will not protect you" - Audre Lorde You keep typing, we keep giving. Download Messenger and join the i’m Initiative now. Join in!

Be a better pen pal. Text or chat with friends inside Mail. See how.

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U R WELCOME

CALL ME AFRICAN QUEEN

718-783-3465

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From: zakhah7Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 12:21:23 -0800Re: RE: [bVSNY] A cookbook that could re-define 'soul food'

 

 

 

Thanks, Dr. Natural!

 

-ZakhahBrother Natural <brothernatural (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote:

 

 

THE BOOK THAT REDEFINES SOULFOOD IS THE BOOK CALLED THE JOY OF LIVING LIVE BY ZAKHAH ISBN NUMBER 0-9701134-7-1DR.NATURAL718-783-3465DOCTORNATURAL (AT) HOTMAIL (DOT) COM

 

 

blackveggies ; bvsny From: plumbun_1 Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 09:57:26 -0800[bVSNY] A cookbook that could re-define 'soul food'

 

 

>>INFO: a cookbook that could re-define 'soul food'=======================================http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/21/dining/21cook.html?th & emc=thNew York TimesA 19th-Century Ghost Awakens to Redefine 'Soul'By Molly O'NeillFor nearly seven years Jan Longone, an antiquariancookbook collector, has been haunted by a ghost. Thespirit came into her life as thousands of other vintagevolumes from book dealers had before: in a plain brownwrapper. But as soon as she held Malinda Russell's"Domestic Cook Book: Containing a Careful Selection ofUseful Receipts for the Kitchen," she could see itsauthor and her world - the small, seldom-discussedsociety of free blacks in the 19th century - coming tolife before her eyes."I felt like an archaeologist who had just stumbled ona dinosaur," said Mrs. Longone, who is the curator ofAmerican culinary history at the William L. ClementsLibrary at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "Iwas in awe."Mrs. Longone, long considered the top expert on oldAmerican cookbooks, knew immediately that she washolding the earliest cookbook by an African-Americanwoman that had ever come to light. Turning the 39fragile pages of the 1866 pamphlet, she realized, too,that it could challenge ingrained views about thecuisine of African-Americans.The black liberation movement of the 1960's hadcelebrated "soul food": dishes with a debt to Africa,like black-eyed peas, greens, gumbo and fried chicken.Neither the activists nor the scholars who laterdevoted themselves to black studies intended thosedishes to be seen as the food on the stove of everyblack cook in America. But that is exactly whathappened, historians say."Southern poverty cooking was mistakenly established asthe single and universal African-American cuisine,"said Leni Sorensen, a researcher at Monticello outsideCharlottesville, Va., specializing in African-Americanhistory.And then the volume by Malinda Russell surfaced.The evidence of a single cookbook is not enough torewrite culinary history. Still, Mrs. Russell's booksuggested that a more nuanced view might be in order.Instead of rustic Southern "soul food," it served upcomplex, cosmopolitan food inspired by Europeancuisine.Mrs. Russell, who had operated a pastry shop inTennessee, provided mostly dessert recipes, but theywere for puff pastry and delicate rose cake, not sweetpotato pie. Her savory recipes included dishes like anelegant catfish fricassee and sweet onion custard - nota mention of lard-fried chicken legs, beaten biscuitsor slow-cooked greens. Here was a black cook who wasalready two generations removed from the plantationkitchen by the time Lincoln died.And what seemed even more remarkable to Mrs. Longonewas Mrs. Russell's voice and the brief first-personaccount that she provided of her life. "I found myselfstraining to hear her voice, and trying to talk toher," Mrs. Longone said. "She had such an Americanstory, and it seemed like her message was timeless."Mrs. Longone soon became obsessed with finding MalindaRussell. And that is when the heartache began.Old cookbooks, particularly small, privately publishedones, can provide an intimate portrait of cultures andplaces and eras. But their authors tend to be unknownwomen who leave no record other than their own words.Such women can be all but impossible to track down,particularly if they were African-Americans who livedat a time when the births and marriages and deaths ofblack people were recorded haphazardly, if at all.Mrs. Longone was undaunted. Mrs. Russell, she reasoned,had provided many clues. She wrote of having been bornand raised in eastern Tennessee and of being a memberof one of the first families set free by a Mr. Noddieof Virginia. She said she had joined a party thatintended to resettle in Liberia, but after one of itsmembers robbed her she had been forced, instead, toremain in Lynchburg, Va. There, she worked as a cookand lady's companion and married a man named AndersonVaughan.Four years later, Mrs. Russell wrote, her husband died.She raised their son, who she said was crippled, whilerunning a laundry in Virginia and, later, a boardinghouse and pastry shop on Chuckey Mountain in Tennessee.With this information, Mrs. Longone, who had worked asa rural sociologist early in her career, was sure shecould pick up Mrs. Russell's trail. Her husband, DanLongone, an emeritus professor of chemistry at theUniversity of Michigan, shared her conviction.In the summer of 2002, the couple spent their 48thwedding anniversary trip chasing reports of Malinda,Mylinda, Melinda and Russel, Rusell, Russell in townhalls, cemeteries, newspapers and historical societiesacross Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee. Theyalso began riding a seesaw of exhilarating hope andcrashing disappointment."We'd get a lead that seemed solid and go zooming offto study the evidence," Mrs. Longone said. "But as soonas we saw the documents, we'd find that the woman ofrecord was either too old or too young to be ourMalinda, and we'd just be crushed."After returning to Ann Arbor, they continued spendingtheir evenings studying census reports and genealogies,searching archives for recipes that might beantecedents of Mrs. Russell's and consulting academicsand amateur food historians across the country.Their efforts speak to both the limits and thepossibilities of using cookbooks to understand history."Since food is not written about in charters andtreaties, the historian has to go back to primarysources, to letters, travel accounts, diaries andgenealogy," said Sandy Oliver, the publisher of FoodHistory News in Islesboro, Me. "It's the mostpainstaking research there is, and even then it is allbut impossible to find the beginnings of things, and nocookbook alone can provide an accurate view of African-American food ways in the 17th and 18th centuries."Scholars who studied early books by blacks - like "TheHouse Servant's Directory," by Robert Roberts,published in 1827, and Tunis G. Campbell's 1848 "HotelKeepers, Head Waiters and Housekeepers' Guide" - tendedto see their blend of Yankee, European and Southernrecipes as a reflection of who was being served morethan who was doing the serving. The plantation kitchenrecipes in books like "What Mrs. Fisher Knows About OldSouthern Cooking," by Abby Fisher (1881), who was borna slave, were championed by these historians as abetter mirror of the African-American kitchen.In May 2007, Mrs. Longone published a limited-editionfacsimile of the only known copy of Mrs. Russell'scookbook and distributed copies at a symposium at theLongone Center for American Culinary Research, part ofthe Clements Library at Michigan. The volume wasgreeted with great emotion."It is an Emancipation Proclamation for black cooks,"said Toni Tipton-Martin, a journalist and foodhistorian in Austin, Tex., who has spent a decaderesearching the cooking of African-American women."In isolation, Malinda's book might appear to be anaberration," she said. But in the context of the black-written cookbooks that followed, many of whichreflected a sophisticated international kitchen, Mrs.Russell's cookbook "dispels the notion of a universalAfrican-American food experience, which is why the term'soul food' doesn't work for so many of us," she said.The release of the facsimile (copies of which areavailable for $25 plus postage from the ClementsLibrary, www.clements.umich.edu/culinary or734-764-2347) also brought new leads. One of them sentthe Longones west this summer to Paw Paw, Mich.,Malinda Russell's last-known whereabouts.After eight years of running the boarding house andpastry shop in Tennessee, Mrs. Russell wrote, she had"by hard labor and economy, saved a considerable sum ofmoney for the support of myself and my son." But thenin 1864, she was robbed again, this time "by aguerrilla party," she wrote, "who threatened my life ifI revealed who they were." Taking her son, she flednorth to Paw Paw.The Longones felt that familiar frisson of hope as theydrove into the town.And they felt the familiar sinking of hope when theylearned that within months of the publication of Mrs.Russell's book, the little town had been all butdestroyed by a fire. They found no trace of her.Locating the woman they call Malinda seems, therefore,increasingly unlikely. But to the Longones, abandoningthe search is unthinkable."Our needle in the haystack gets smaller and smaller,"Mrs. Longone said softly, "but we'll find her. Shewants to be found, and we got some great new leads."Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company"Your silence will not protect you" - Audre Lorde

 

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[Guest guest]

I love the recipes in the Joy of Living Live....one of my favorite food preparation books by far!!! Please let us know when you will be having more food preparation classes in the D.C. area.

 

Dawn

 

 

 

Zakhah <zakhah7

 

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 3:21 pm

Re: RE: [bVSNY] A cookbook that could re-define 'soul food'

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks, Dr. Natural!

 

-Zakhah

 

Brother Natural <brothernatural (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote:

 

 

THE BOOK THAT REDEFINES SOULFOOD IS THE BOOK CALLED THE JOY OF LIVING LIVE BY ZAKHAH ISBN NUMBER 0-9701134-7-1

DR.NATURAL

718-783-3465

DOCTORNATURAL (AT) HOTMAIL (DOT) COM

 

 

blackveggies ; bvsny

plumbun_1

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 09:57:26 -0800

[bVSNY] A cookbook that could re-define 'soul food'

 

 

 

>>INFO: a cookbook that could re-define 'soul food'

=======================================

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/21/dining/21cook.html?th & emc=th

New York Times

A 19th-Century Ghost Awakens to Redefine 'Soul'

By Molly O'Neill

 

For nearly seven years Jan Longone, an antiquarian

cookbook collector, has been haunted by a ghost. The

spirit came into her life as thousands of other vintage

volumes from book dealers had before: in a plain brown

wrapper. But as soon as she held Malinda Russell's

"Domestic Cook Book: Containing a Careful Selection of

Useful Receipts for the Kitchen," she could see its

author and her world - the small, seldom-discussed

society of free blacks in the 19th century - coming to

life before her eyes.

 

"I felt like an archaeologist who had just stumbled on

a dinosaur," said Mrs. Longone, who is the curator of

American culinary history at the William L. Clements

Library at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "I

was in awe."

 

Mrs. Longone, long considered the top expert on old

American cookbooks, knew immediately that she was

holding the earliest cookbook by an African-American

woman that had ever come to light. Turning the 39

fragile pages of the 1866 pamphlet, she realized, too,

that it could challenge ingrained views about the

cuisine of African-Americans.

 

The black liberation movement of the 1960's had

celebrated "soul food": dishes with a debt to Africa,

like black-eyed peas, greens, gumbo and fried chicken.

Neither the activists nor the scholars who later

devoted themselves to black studies intended those

dishes to be seen as the food on the stove of every

black cook in America. But that is exactly what

happened, historians say.

 

"Southern poverty cooking was mistakenly established as

the single and universal African-American cuisine,"

said Leni Sorensen, a researcher at Monticello outside

Charlottesville, Va., specializing in African-American

history.

 

And then the volume by Malinda Russell surfaced.

 

The evidence of a single cookbook is not enough to

rewrite culinary history. Still, Mrs. Russell's book

suggested that a more nuanced view might be in order.

Instead of rustic Southern "soul food," it served up

complex, cosmopolitan food inspired by European

cuisine.

 

Mrs. Russell, who had operated a pastry shop in

Tennessee, provided mostly dessert recipes, but they

were for puff pastry and delicate rose cake, not sweet

potato pie. Her savory recipes included dishes like an

elegant catfish fricassee and sweet onion custard - not

a mention of lard-fried chicken legs, beaten biscuits

or slow-cooked greens. Here was a black cook who was

already two generations removed from the plantation

kitchen by the time Lincoln died.

 

And what seemed even more remarkable to Mrs. Longone

was Mrs. Russell's voice and the brief first-person

account that she provided of her life. "I found myself

straining to hear her voice, and trying to talk to

her," Mrs. Longone said. "She had such an American

story, and it seemed like her message was timeless."

 

Mrs. Longone soon became obsessed with finding Malinda

Russell. And that is when the heartache began.

 

Old cookbooks, particularly small, privately published

ones, can provide an intimate portrait of cultures and

places and eras. But their authors tend to be unknown

women who leave no record other than their own words.

Such women can be all but impossible to track down,

particularly if they were African-Americans who lived

at a time when the births and marriages and deaths of

black people were recorded haphazardly, if at all.

 

Mrs. Longone was undaunted. Mrs. Russell, she reasoned,

had provided many clues. She wrote of having been born

and raised in eastern Tennessee and of being a member

of one of the first families set free by a Mr. Noddie

of Virginia. She said she had joined a party that

intended to resettle in Liberia, but after one of its

members robbed her she had been forced, instead, to

remain in Lynchburg, Va. There, she worked as a cook

and lady's companion and married a man named Anderson

Vaughan.

 

Four years later, Mrs. Russell wrote, her husband died.

She raised their son, who she said was crippled, while

running a laundry in Virginia and, later, a boarding

house and pastry shop on Chuckey Mountain in Tennessee.

 

With this information, Mrs. Longone, who had worked as

a rural sociologist early in her career, was sure she

could pick up Mrs. Russell's trail. Her husband, Dan

Longone, an emeritus professor of chemistry at the

University of Michigan, shared her conviction.

 

In the summer of 2002, the couple spent their 48th

wedding anniversary trip chasing reports of Malinda,

Mylinda, Melinda and Russel, Rusell, Russell in town

halls, cemeteries, newspapers and historical societies

across Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee. They

also began riding a seesaw of exhilarating hope and

crashing disappointment.

 

"We'd get a lead that seemed solid and go zooming off

to study the evidence," Mrs. Longone said. "But as soon

as we saw the documents, we'd find that the woman of

record was either too old or too young to be our

Malinda, and we'd just be crushed."

 

After returning to Ann Arbor, they continued spending

their evenings studying census reports and genealogies,

searching archives for recipes that might be

antecedents of Mrs. Russell's and consulting academics

and amateur food historians across the country.

 

Their efforts speak to both the limits and the

possibilities of using cookbooks to understand history.

 

"Since food is not written about in charters and

treaties, the historian has to go back to primary

sources, to letters, travel accounts, diaries and

genealogy," said Sandy Oliver, the publisher of Food

History News in Islesboro, Me. "It's the most

painstaking research there is, and even then it is all

but impossible to find the beginnings of things, and no

cookbook alone can provide an accurate view of African-

American food ways in the 17th and 18th centuries."

 

Scholars who studied early books by blacks - like "The

House Servant's Directory," by Robert Roberts,

published in 1827, and Tunis G. Campbell's 1848 "Hotel

Keepers, Head Waiters and Housekeepers' Guide" - tended

to see their blend of Yankee, European and Southern

recipes as a reflection of who was being served more

than who was doing the serving. The plantation kitchen

recipes in books like "What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old

Southern Cooking," by Abby Fisher (1881), who was born

a slave, were championed by these historians as a

better mirror of the African-American kitchen.

 

In May 2007, Mrs. Longone published a limited-edition

facsimile of the only known copy of Mrs. Russell's

cookbook and distributed copies at a symposium at the

Longone Center for American Culinary Research, part of

the Clements Library at Michigan. The volume was

greeted with great emotion.

 

"It is an Emancipation Proclamation for black cooks,"

said Toni Tipton-Martin, a journalist and food

historian in Austin, Tex., who has spent a decade

researching the cooking of African-American women.

 

"In isolation, Malinda's book might appear to be an

aberration," she said. But in the context of the black-

written cookbooks that followed, many of which

reflected a sophisticated international kitchen, Mrs.

Russell's cookbook "dispels the notion of a universal

African-American food experience, which is why the term

'soul food' doesn't work for so many of us," she said.

 

The release of the facsimile (copies of which are

available for $25 plus postage from the Clements

Library, www.clements.umich.edu/culinary or

734-764-2347) also brought new leads. One of them sent

the Longones west this summer to Paw Paw, Mich.,

Malinda Russell's last-known whereabouts.

 

After eight years of running the boarding house and

pastry shop in Tennessee, Mrs. Russell wrote, she had

"by hard labor and economy, saved a considerable sum of

money for the support of myself and my son." But then

in 1864, she was robbed again, this time "by a

guerrilla party," she wrote, "who threatened my life if

I revealed who they were." Taking her son, she fled

north to Paw Paw.

 

The Longones felt that familiar frisson of hope as they

drove into the town.

 

And they felt the familiar sinking of hope when they

learned that within months of the publication of Mrs.

Russell's book, the little town had been all but

destroyed by a fire. They found no trace of her.

 

Locating the woman they call Malinda seems, therefore,

increasingly unlikely. But to the Longones, abandoning

the search is unthinkable.

 

"Our needle in the haystack gets smaller and smaller,"

Mrs. Longone said softly, "but we'll find her. She

wants to be found, and we got some great new leads."

 

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

 

 

"Your silence will not protect you" - Audre Lorde

 

 

 

 

 

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[Guest guest]

PEACE AND LOVE ZAKHAH

WHEN ARE YOU COMING TO NEW YORK

DR.NARURAL

718-783-3465

 

 

 

 

From: boffidstDate: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 17:38:01 -0500Re: RE: [bVSNY] A cookbook that could re-define 'soul food'

 

 

 

I love the recipes in the Joy of Living Live....one of my favorite food preparation books by far!!! Please let us know when you will be having more food preparation classes in the D.C. area.

Dawn Zakhah <zakhah7 > Sent: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 3:21 pmRe: RE: [bVSNY] A cookbook that could re-define 'soul food'

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks, Dr. Natural!

 

-ZakhahBrother Natural <brothernatural (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote:

 

 

THE BOOK THAT REDEFINES SOULFOOD IS THE BOOK CALLED THE JOY OF LIVING LIVE BY ZAKHAH ISBN NUMBER 0-9701134-7-1DR.NATURAL718-783-3465DOCTORNATURAL (AT) HOTMAIL (DOT) COM

 

 

blackveggies ; bvsny From: plumbun_1 Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 09:57:26 -0800[bVSNY] A cookbook that could re-define 'soul food'

 

 

>>INFO: a cookbook that could re-define 'soul food'=======================================http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/21/dining/21cook.html?th & emc=thNew York TimesA 19th-Century Ghost Awakens to Redefine 'Soul'By Molly O'NeillFor nearly seven years Jan Longone, an antiquariancookbook collector, has been haunted by a ghost. Thespirit came into her life as thousands of other vintagevolumes from book dealers had before: in a plain brownwrapper. But as soon as she held Malinda Russell's"Domestic Cook Book: Containing a Careful Selection ofUseful Receipts for the Kitchen," she could see itsauthor and her world - the small, seldom-discussedsociety of free blacks in the 19th century - coming tolife before her eyes."I felt like an archaeologist who had just stumbled ona dinosaur," said Mrs. Longone, who is the curator ofAmerican culinary history at the William L. ClementsLibrary at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "Iwas in awe."Mrs. Longone, long considered the top expert on oldAmerican cookbooks, knew immediately that she washolding the earliest cookbook by an African-Americanwoman that had ever come to light. Turning the 39fragile pages of the 1866 pamphlet, she realized, too,that it could challenge ingrained views about thecuisine of African-Americans.The black liberation movement of the 1960's hadcelebrated "soul food": dishes with a debt to Africa,like black-eyed peas, greens, gumbo and fried chicken.Neither the activists nor the scholars who laterdevoted themselves to black studies intended thosedishes to be seen as the food on the stove of everyblack cook in America. But that is exactly whathappened, historians say."Southern poverty cooking was mistakenly established asthe single and universal African-American cuisine,"said Leni Sorensen, a researcher at Monticello outsideCharlottesville, Va., specializing in African-Americanhistory.And then the volume by Malinda Russell surfaced.The evidence of a single cookbook is not enough torewrite culinary history. Still, Mrs. Russell's booksuggested that a more nuanced view might be in order.Instead of rustic Southern "soul food," it served upcomplex, cosmopolitan food inspired by Europeancuisine.Mrs. Russell, who had operated a pastry shop inTennessee, provided mostly dessert recipes, but theywere for puff pastry and delicate rose cake, not sweetpotato pie. Her savory recipes included dishes like anelegant catfish fricassee and sweet onion custard - nota mention of lard-fried chicken legs, beaten biscuitsor slow-cooked greens. Here was a black cook who wasalready two generations removed from the plantationkitchen by the time Lincoln died.And what seemed even more remarkable to Mrs. Longonewas Mrs. Russell's voice and the brief first-personaccount that she provided of her life. "I found myselfstraining to hear her voice, and trying to talk toher," Mrs. Longone said. "She had such an Americanstory, and it seemed like her message was timeless."Mrs. Longone soon became obsessed with finding MalindaRussell. And that is when the heartache began.Old cookbooks, particularly small, privately publishedones, can provide an intimate portrait of cultures andplaces and eras. But their authors tend to be unknownwomen who leave no record other than their own words.Such women can be all but impossible to track down,particularly if they were African-Americans who livedat a time when the births and marriages and deaths ofblack people were recorded haphazardly, if at all.Mrs. Longone was undaunted. Mrs. Russell, she reasoned,had provided many clues. She wrote of having been bornand raised in eastern Tennessee and of being a memberof one of the first families set free by a Mr. Noddieof Virginia. She said she had joined a party thatintended to resettle in Liberia, but after one of itsmembers robbed her she had been forced, instead, toremain in Lynchburg, Va. There, she worked as a cookand lady's companion and married a man named AndersonVaughan.Four years later, Mrs. Russell wrote, her husband died.She raised their son, who she said was crippled, whilerunning a laundry in Virginia and, later, a boardinghouse and pastry shop on Chuckey Mountain in Tennessee.With this information, Mrs. Longone, who had worked asa rural sociologist early in her career, was sure shecould pick up Mrs. Russell's trail. Her husband, DanLongone, an emeritus professor of chemistry at theUniversity of Michigan, shared her conviction.In the summer of 2002, the couple spent their 48thwedding anniversary trip chasing reports of Malinda,Mylinda, Melinda and Russel, Rusell, Russell in townhalls, cemeteries, newspapers and historical societiesacross Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee. Theyalso began riding a seesaw of exhilarating hope andcrashing disappointment."We'd get a lead that seemed solid and go zooming offto study the evidence," Mrs. Longone said. "But as soonas we saw the documents, we'd find that the woman ofrecord was either too old or too young to be ourMalinda, and we'd just be crushed."After returning to Ann Arbor, they continued spendingtheir evenings studying census reports and genealogies,searching archives for recipes that might beantecedents of Mrs. Russell's and consulting academicsand amateur food historians across the country.Their efforts speak to both the limits and thepossibilities of using cookbooks to understand history."Since food is not written about in charters andtreaties, the historian has to go back to primarysources, to letters, travel accounts, diaries andgenealogy," said Sandy Oliver, the publisher of FoodHistory News in Islesboro, Me. "It's the mostpainstaking research there is, and even then it is allbut impossible to find the beginnings of things, and nocookbook alone can provide an accurate view of African-American food ways in the 17th and 18th centuries."Scholars who studied early books by blacks - like "TheHouse Servant's Directory," by Robert Roberts,published in 1827, and Tunis G. Campbell's 1848 "HotelKeepers, Head Waiters and Housekeepers' Guide" - tendedto see their blend of Yankee, European and Southernrecipes as a reflection of who was being served morethan who was doing the serving. The plantation kitchenrecipes in books like "What Mrs. Fisher Knows About OldSouthern Cooking," by Abby Fisher (1881), who was borna slave, were championed by these historians as abetter mirror of the African-American kitchen.In May 2007, Mrs. Longone published a limited-editionfacsimile of the only known copy of Mrs. Russell'scookbook and distributed copies at a symposium at theLongone Center for American Culinary Research, part ofthe Clements Library at Michigan. The volume wasgreeted with great emotion."It is an Emancipation Proclamation for black cooks,"said Toni Tipton-Martin, a journalist and foodhistorian in Austin, Tex., who has spent a decaderesearching the cooking of African-American women."In isolation, Malinda's book might appear to be anaberration," she said. But in the context of the black-written cookbooks that followed, many of whichreflected a sophisticated international kitchen, Mrs.Russell's cookbook "dispels the notion of a universalAfrican-American food experience, which is why the term'soul food' doesn't work for so many of us," she said.The release of the facsimile (copies of which areavailable for $25 plus postage from the ClementsLibrary, www.clements.umich.edu/culinary or734-764-2347) also brought new leads. One of them sentthe Longones west this summer to Paw Paw, Mich.,Malinda Russell's last-known whereabouts.After eight years of running the boarding house andpastry shop in Tennessee, Mrs. Russell wrote, she had"by hard labor and economy, saved a considerable sum ofmoney for the support of myself and my son." But thenin 1864, she was robbed again, this time "by aguerrilla party," she wrote, "who threatened my life ifI revealed who they were." Taking her son, she flednorth to Paw Paw.The Longones felt that familiar frisson of hope as theydrove into the town.And they felt the familiar sinking of hope when theylearned that within months of the publication of Mrs.Russell's book, the little town had been all butdestroyed by a fire. They found no trace of her.Locating the woman they call Malinda seems, therefore,increasingly unlikely. But to the Longones, abandoningthe search is unthinkable."Our needle in the haystack gets smaller and smaller,"Mrs. Longone said softly, "but we'll find her. Shewants to be found, and we got some great new leads."Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company"Your silence will not protect you" - Audre Lorde

 

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