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October 27-28, 2023
Southern Foodways Symposium ⟶
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October 27-28, 2023
Southern Foodways Symposium ⟶

Oral Histories

The SFA oral history program documents life stories from the American South. Collecting these stories, we honor the people whose labor defines the region. If you would like to contribute to SFA’s oral history collections, please send your ideas for oral history along with your CV or Resume and a portfolio of prior oral history work to info@southernfoodways.org.

< Back to Oral History project: Faith and Foodways in Alabama

ORAL HISTORY

Adele Boohaker

St. Elias Maronite Catholic Church

Adele Boohaker was born in Lebanon in 1943. She immigrated to the United States with her family in 1956. Her father and brother owned and operated barbecue restaurants in the Avondale community of Birmingham, Alabama. Boohaker learned to cook Lebanese food from her mother.

Boohaker’s family joined St. Elias Maronite Catholic Church when they settled in Birmingham. She and her mother often prepared dishes and worked as servers for the Thursday night Ladies Altar Society meals that raised funds to pay for the church building. Boohaker continues to work at the annual Lebanese Food Festival put on by St. Elias. Her specialty is the Lebanese thin bread.

Date of interview:
2019-08-21

Interviewer:
Michelle Little

Photographer:
Cary Norton

Download Transcript

“

"And lot of people in the Middle East made that type of bread. And it was nothin' but water and flour . . . and in the olden days, they cooked it on kindlin', on wood. The dome that it's cooked on, it's like an upside-down wok. They used to make a pit out of stone, whatever, put—it's called saj, which is the dome, metal dome—and they'll feed the fire under that dome. And you cooked your bread on top of the fire on that dome.” - Adele Boohaker

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