SFA Past Events
2011 – Cultivated South
SFA Symposium
The Cultivated South
October 28-30, 2011
The Southern Foodways Alliance, an institute of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, hosted the fourteenth annual Southern Foodways Symposium October 28-30, 2011, in Oxford, Mississippi, and on the campus of the University of Mississippi. This year’s theme was the Cultivated South. For much of our region’s history, agriculture has driven the Southern economy. From sugarcane plantations in the Gulf South to bean-and-corn subsistence farms in the Mountain South, our lives have long revolved around the cultivation of soils and the propagation of crops.
Much good recent work has been done on the documentation and preservation of our natural resources. We now know the names of imperiled strains of rice and their histories in the Lowcountry. We know the value of saving the seeds of shuck beans to ensure the future of Appalachian biodiversity.
Now it’s time to explore the culture of agriculture. To investigate the farm ideal, from both Christian and Muslim perspectives. To comprehend the unfulfilled promises of Forty Acres and a Mule. To reclaim the pimento as a vegetable. To welcome the return of olive trees to Georgia and South Carolina. Now it’s time to explore the Cultivated South.
Curious eaters sampled Lowcountry riffs on the prevailing farm-to-table ethic from Mike Lata of Charleston, South Carolina. And April McGreger, a daughter of Mississippi, now pickling and preserving in Carrboro, North Carolina. And Billy Allin, the locavore-in-charge at Cakes & Ale in Decatur, Georgia.
Curious drinkers tasted tipples from the late Eugene Walter, bard of Mobile. And listened to the musings of Dave Wondrich and Jack Pendarvis, who know a thing or three about cultivating a taste for drink.
Artistic expressions of food culture continue to make our hearts go pitter-pat. Amos Kennedy, the Alabama letterpress maven, paid broadside tribute to okra’s import. And on Sunday morning, following hard on the heels of the ballet we staged a couple years back, we commissioned an opera, based on Leaves of Greens, a collection of poems from Ayden, North Carolina’s Collard Festival.
Each year the SFA presents three awards. Ken Hardy and Brad Hardy, of Hardy Family Farms in Hawkinsville, Georgia, accepted the Ruth Fertel Keeper of the Flame Award. The Ruth Fertel Keeper of the Flame Award honors an unsung hero or heroine of the culinary world, a foodways tradition bearer of note. In honor of their work, SFA collaborator Joe York made a short film, “Hot Wet Goobers,” which focused on Hardy Farms and their boiled green peanut stands in South Georgia.
The John Egerton Prize – which comes with a $5,000 cash stipend -- was awarded to artist Phil Blank. The John Egerton Prize recognizes artists, writers, scholars, activists and others whose work addresses issues of race, class, gender, and social and environmental justice through the lens of food.
The SFA’s Craig Claiborne Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Dori Sanders, a writer who still operates her family's peach farm outside of Filbert, South Carolina. The Craig Claiborne Award goes to an individual whom all thinking eaters should know, the sort of person who has made an indelible mark upon our cuisine and our culture, the sort of person who has set regional standards and catalyzed national dialogues.
For the event brochure, click here.
For the final schedule of events, click here.
For access to lecture podcasts, click here.
June 23-25, 2011
From New Orleans to Eunice, Louisiana
In June's heat, the SFA drove the prairies of Cajun Country with SFA app-loaded smart phones in hand. Down blacktop back roads. Through dog-in-the-road towns. To meat markets that sell liver-flecked boudin. And crawfish boiling points where the tables are draped in newspaper.
We began in New Orleans, above Cochon, at Calcasieu. That night, Stephen Stryjewski dished catfish courtbouillion and rice. And Paul Prudhomme and Donald Link will held forth. We ended on Sunday morning, when, bellies full of boudin and crawfish, arteries pumping Tabasco, we drove home, again using smart phones to find breakfast boudin for the ride.
Along the way, we heard from experts and raconteurs, including: Marcelle Bienvenu, author of the classic Who’s Your Mama, Are You Catholic, and Can You Make a Roux?, who dished gumbo gossip; Jim Gossen, founder of Louisiana Foods, who shared how crawfish came to be farmed rather than fished; Pableaux Johnson, a writer and photographer who grew up in New Iberia, is, in the words of SFA board vice-president Sara Roahen, a “master smotherer” of all God’s creation; and Gerald Patout, director of the Arnold LeDoux Library at Louisiana State University, Eunice, who talked of rice dressings and other delights.
With SFA Oral Historians Amy Evans Streeter, Sara Roahen, Rien Fertel, and Mary Beth Lasseter leading, we experienced the Mowata Store where Bubba Frey stuffs boudin links and crawfish rice-larded chickens; an okra supper at Ruby’s Cafe, open since 1959, in Eunice, where Dot Vidrine presides; Falcon Rice Mill, doing business in Crowley since 1942, and one of the last family-owned rice mills in the state; boudin biscuits, glazed with Steen’s Cane Syrup, from Justin Girouard of The French Press in Lafayette; beer, boudin, and fiddles at the Savoy Music Center in Eunice and Fred’s Lounge in Mamou; the debut of the SFA Boudin Trail Traveling Exhibit; Joe York’s new film, on the cochon du lait tradition; a smothered lunch featuring cooks from the SFA’s Plate Lunch Oral History Project; the live Rendezvous des Cajuns radio show at the Liberty Theater in Eunice; a morning romp through the crawfish fields with Craig West and Troy West, who run one of the oldest commercial crawfish operations in the state; crawfish at Hawk’s, which “you could easily drive past while mistaking it for a tractor garage or chicken coop.” That would be a shame, wrote SFA board member Brett Anderson, “because in actuality it's among the best boiling pots on the planet.” And we ended the weekend with zydeco at Slim’s Y-Ki-Ki, a dance hall, in business since 1947, famous for staging some of the best live music in the state.
For a full schedule of events, click here.
Saturday, April 9, 2011
6:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Children's Museum of the Upstate
(300 College Street, Greenville, SC)
On April 9 from 6-9 p.m., the Southern Foodways Alliance pitched its tent at the Children’s Museum of the Upstate. On the menu: SFA-produced South Carolina foodways films. Smart words. Good local drinks. Honest local foods. Cool music. Good company.
By way of Joe York-directed films and George Singleton-crafted words, we celebrated South Carolina food titans like Emile DeFelice, and Glenn Roberts.
Joe and Heidi Trull of Grits and Groceries, Joe Clark of American Grocery, Shaun Garcia of Soby’s, Anthony Gray of High Cotton, John and Amy Malik of the late great 33 Liberty, and Jordan Johnson of OJ's Diner were our cooks for the evening. Guests tasted potlikker, and other delights, and sipped refreshment from local favorite Thomas Creek Brewing.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
5:30 - 8:30 p.m.
Upstairs at McCrady's Restaurant
(2 Unity Alley, off East Bay Street)
On March 2, on the eve of the Charleston Wine + Food Festival, the Southern Foodways Alliance pitched its tent at McCrady’s Restaurant. On the menu: SFA-produced Lowcountry foodways films. Smart words. Good local drinks. Honest local foods. Cool music. Good company.
By way of Joe York-directed films, John Simpkins-crafted words, and the bass drum stylings of Mr. Jenkins, we celebrated South Carolina food titans like Robert Barber, Buckshot Colleton, Emile DeFelice, Bertha Grant, and Glenn Roberts.
Sean Brock of McCrady’s and Husk, Robert Stehling of Hominy Grill, and Sarah O’Kelley of Glass Onion, were our cooks for the evening. Guests tasted potlikker, squirrel gravy, and other delights. They sipped oyster-flavored beer from local fave Coast Brewing. SFA founders Vertamae Grosvenor, Marion Sullivan, and Nathalie Dupree held court.
Blackberry Farm
January 6-9, 2011
At the 2011 Blackberry Farm Taste of the South Gala, Blackberry Farm hosted David Guas of Arlington, Virginia's Bayou Bakery, Bryan Caswell of Houston's REEF, Allison Vines-Rushing of New Orleans's MiLA, Edgar 'Dook' Chase of New Orleans's Dooky Chase, and Lee Richardson of Ashley's Restaurant in Little Rock's Capital Hotel. We toasted the talents of Tuck Beckstoffer of Napa Valley's Tuck Beckstoffer Wines. Gary Nabhan, author of Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Food, was the featured guest scholar. To see a video of his lecture, click here.
- Click here for the menu.
