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

[Guest guest]

Peace, Dr. Natural! Honestly, it will be a long while. I'm now back in Israel after a four-month sojourn to the U.K., Germany, and the U.S. Currently, I'm doing raw food presentations throughout the country and preparing raw foods at our vegan restaurant here in Israel until my baby is due in April. Then I'll be taking it easy for a (short) season. You and all of the members of the group are, however, more than welcome to come visit my family and community (www.kingdomofyah.com ) here in the Holy Land anytime. Dr. Gabriel Cousens is in the country now, we'll be hosting Paul Nison in May, and there's always something going on here related to raw foods as the consciousness level of the people rises higher. Who knows- maybe this non-violent diet and lifestyle could be the key to acquiring peace in the most disputed territory on earth...Israel a.k.a. Northeast Afrika. Love, ZakhahBrother Natural <brothernatural wrote: PEACE AND LOVE ZAKHAHWHEN ARE YOU COMING TO NEW YORKDR.NARURAL718-783-3465 From: boffidst (AT) aol (DOT) comDate: 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 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. More new features than ever. Check out the new AOL

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