COLLARD GREENS WITH SMOKED TURKEY
WHITE RICE WITH BLACK EYED PEAS
JALAPENO CORNBREAD
Needless to say, everyone is screaming RAAACIST, and Michelle Malkin suggests they all chill out.
Me, I just want to yell “wrong!” at this mutant menu. No self-respecting southerner of either color would eat collard greens with “smoked turkey”. How lame can you get? Smoked jowl, fatback, or maybe just some bacon grease, but none of that smoked turkey nonsense.
Who are these people and why didn’t their mammas teach ‘em to cook right?
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Besides that, “white rice with black-eyed peas” is properly named “Hoppin’ John”. Fry ham or fatback, onion and creasy sallett till the onion and the cress are both wilted. Put in cooked black eyed peas with some of their pot liquor. Then add the rice and mix thoroughly. Heat well.
This is eaten on New Year’s Day for good luck all year. Saving it for Black History Month leaves you about thirty one days behind your chances for having any luck this year. Hoppin’ John doesn’t have squat to do with any Black History month. It’s about using up little left-over pieces of the Christmas ham and scrounging around outside for some stray sallett that’s come up since the last hard frost.
And if you’re going to serve fried chicken the least you can do is add mashed potatoes and cream gravy. Potato salad would do, too, but not hoppin’ john, for land’s sakes.
Now if you’re from New Orleans, you might get away with dirty rice, real spicy. Hoppin’ John is from the Carolinas, but dirty rice is Cajun. The “dirt part” comes from simmering the innards - gizzards, necks, and hearts (but not the liver. Save that for eggs) - with onion and celery. When the meat is cooked, then you add enough rice to the broth to absorb all the liquid. Once the rice is done, you can chop the bigger pieces of meat but take out the necks, pull the meat off and toss it back into the pot along with enough hot sauce to make everyone say “whoo boy”. Toss it up good with a fork, then set it on a real low burner for a few minutes to finish while you chew the bits of meat off the neck bones.
That corn bread sounds mighty Tex-Mex to me. A southern corn bread has bits of bacon or maybe crispy pork skin, but no way jalapenos. Please. We’re talking about corn bread here. If you’re not serving biscuits and ham then at least leave the cornbread in peace.
And if we’re going to do this circus, where’s the watermelon and the sweet potato pie and the big jars of cold sweet tea? I can’t believe that NBC was offering…get this, Aquafina water. Soul food? That stuff is for lost souls who don’t have enough sense to come in out of the rain.
Now that I think of it, why is February Black History Month, anyway? Who thought that up? Why isn’t it August, when all the gardens are peaking with okra and tomatoes and string bean vines and cucumbers are climbing around their fences or up their poles or tied onto stakes with old cotton rags?
This is sure one disordered world. It’s enough to make a body wonder what fools are running the show. Sure isn’t regular folks in charge…Aquafina water. If that don’t beat all…
6 comments:
Lord have mercy, those NBC New York types are pitiful clueless.
I'm gonna have to break out some of the fried corn and slow-cooked green beans we put in the freezer this summer. You got my hungry goin'.
And make up some cornbread, and pan fry it in country bacon fat.
And wash it down with sweet iced tea!
Lordy!
The so-called black food is one of the bigger scams put over unsuspecting libs I have ever seen. I'm surprised it has lasted 40 years. I'm from eastern NC. My family raised 75% of the food we ate. That means salt-cured hams and shoulders (country ham), chickens, field peas, crowder peas, corn, sweet potatoes, collards, mustard greens and turnips (greens) and, yes, watermelons. This "soul" food was typical fare for blacks and whites. This serves as a reminder just how silly the politically correct libs are.
BTW. After I moved to New Orleans, my father flew in with a country ham as carry on because he just knew I'd probably starve down there.
I'm a Japanese-Yankee, so all I know about "soul food" is from being stationed dow South a couple of times and being stationed with Southerners a couple of times. But what would you serve for "Black History Month"? You have it right, dude, I mean, I'd tell them;" I mean, fer gawds sake, stopping bitching about "racism" and tell me what you would serve." Lutefisk? Saerkraut?
And now I'm hungry. Thanks Dymphna! I was trying to lose weight. Time to raid the fridge again...
Food stereotypes are unjust, though not in the way people seem to use the word these days ("unjust" now being a synonym for "I don't like what you just said"). I still get people asking me if I eat blood pudding and kidney pies. As if I'm from Yorkshire... nope, it's mutton, neeps an carrots for me!
Thing is, stereotypes only have power if you buy into the idea that there's "normal" and there's "abnormal", and that your stereotyped behaviour is "abnormal". In fact if a lot of black guys eat fried chicken, why is that a bad thing? I like fried chicken. It's tasty.
This reminds me of a legit soul food joint I used to go to on the lower east side of NYC in the 80s called "Princess Pamela's house of soul". I dont even think the place had a license. But it was some of the best Soul Food north of the Mason- Dixon line. Pamela was a piece of work. Besides singing for the customers, she would often sit at your table and chew your ear off about all the celebrities she fed. She is long dead now. All that soul food I suppose.
The chef defends herself
Calhoun is also worried that, after fighting for 8 years to get the right to pick the menu for Black History Month, the controversy may prevent her from doing so next year.
I don't say this often...but...*facepalm*.
What about drama? Was that on the menu? Well, it is now!
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