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behind_all
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Posted: Monday August 29th, 2005 17:53 |
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In modern-day America, the term "soul food" simply means African-American cuisine. In order to appreciate the meaning of "soul food", you must recognize the traditional foods of Africa.
Many commonplace American foods are also native to the African continent. Various grains, leafy green vegetables, yams, watermelon, okra and pumpkins have been a staple of the African diet for thousands of years. In the 14th century, European explorers brought a supply of their own food with them and introduced them to the African diet. Common foods such as turnips and cabbage originated in Mediterranean coastal areas and became an integral part of African-American cuisine. The African diet consisted mostly of vegetables, although seafood was added when available. Meat was scarce. Simplicity was the key to African cooking. Vegetables were steamed using leaves as a steamer, or boiled in water. The most common African meal consisted of leafy vegetables, with rice, and chicken, when available. This resulted in a delicious and healthy diet.
Then, in the early 1400s, slave trading began. In the horrific conditions aboard the slaves ships, the newly enslaved Africans who survived lived on small portions of rice and beans, with an occasional piece of fruit or vegetable. A concoction of rotten fish and old beef called "slabber sauce" was added to the rice and beans in a half-hearted attempt to satisfy the nutritional needs of the captives. It was during the days of early slave trading that indeginous African foods made their appearance on the American continent.
These foods thrived in the rich soil of the American south and soon became an important part of the slaves' diet. African slaves actually had a healthier diet than did the slave owners. The owners ate foods high in fat and cholesterol with little or no vegetables. Their over-consumption of sugar and alcohol made them listless. As the slaves needed to be strong and energetic to work long hours of back-breaking labor, they were encouraged to eat large vegetarian meals. The vegetables consisted of the throwaway foods from the plantation house. The tops of turnips, dandelion greens and beets, as well as new types of greens such as collards, kale, mustard and pokeweed were combined with a lot of lard from the slaughtered hogs and cracklin' from its skin. This made a filling meal and a sufficient supply of energy. On most plantations, weekly rations of molasses, corn meal and a few pound of meat were given to the slaves. The women turned the corn meal into a bread, while the meat (ham hocks, pig's feet, tripe, chitterlings, pig ears, hog jowls and cracklin') became the main dish with large portions of greens.
When slaves entered the plantation house as cooks, the slave diet evolved with an array of new ingredients. Slave cooks were soon preparing delicious new foods for their masters. Fried chicken and sweet potatoes soon appeared on the masters' tables. Local fruits such as apples and peaches became delicious desserts. Opossum was the most readily available meat for slaves, as hunting was only permitted after the day's labor was completed, usually late at night. Soul food was good wholesome food that used everything that was available; nothing was wasted. Leftover fish became croquettes. Stale bread became bread pudding.
In January 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation signaled the migration of former slaves to other parts of the country. Black cooks were soon working in the train kitchens, hotels, and in the homes of wealthy and middle class whites. This brought southern black cuisine into the mainstream of American culture.
In the 1960's, with the emergeance of the Civil Rights Movement, the term "soul" was used in connection with the black community. Someone coined the term "soul food" and it became part of Americana.
In the twenty-first century, when most people think of soul food, it is a table with a lot of fried chicken, ribs, watermelon, greens and sweet potatoes. Hogshead cheese. Carrot and raisin salad. Hush puppies. Crab cakes. Fried corn. Red beans and rice. Liver and onions. Greens. Butter beans with ham hocks. Stewed okra and tomatoes. Fried catfish. Smothered chicken. Pickled pig's feet. Cornbread dipped in buttermilk. Neckbones. Fried cabbage. Chittlin's. Gumbo. Tripe. Breaded pork chops with a mess of greens. Black-eyed peas and grits. The aroma of soul food can fill the house and let the neighbors know that someone's eating well tonight.
In your quest for the best soul food restaurant, keep one thing in mind: If you walk by, and the smell of Mama's cookin' greets you at the door, you've found the right place.
Basically I mentioned I enjoy the outdoors especially during the summer and made some observations about what I ate affected the quality of activities I engage in.
In hot weather I would say avoid large portions of meat. Why. For me, meats make the body work harder which means you will become thirsty faster and require to drink large amount of liquid which bloats you. In addition meats will sedate you and make you tire out if your trying to get some outdoor activity done. Same thing with refined sugar and milk on the whole. When I cut out the refined sugar and milk from my diet, I automatically lose a significant amout of weight. I do get craving for sugar but eating fruits usually satisfy it. However if I am not active I do break this. When I eat leafy green vegetables and get proper rest, I am energized to accomplish the task of the day. Also you will find that many leafy greens have health benefits. It gives the body vital nutrients for healing and health. Maybe that is one reason why we were able to get back to work sooner on the plantations when injury arised. Salt is okay especially if its sea salt. I gather this up myself. It does not have the iodine punch of table salt but putting a little bit in you water does wonders. If you drink gaterade powder form it the same but without the artificials.
If you are familiar with the syrup Aunt Jemima, in the past the newer syrup bottles have her different you can see she had a bandanna tightly around her head. That was in the past used by southern African-Americans to cure headaches from eating greasy meats.
Enslaved Africans pretty much retain their steadfast diets from the continent and this may be one reason it gave them the energy to work tirelessly on the plantations. This article just shows above shows that when we come in more contact with whats fashionable or pop in this case what the slave owner ate we began to take on "his" problems while we had "our" problems in health. So we were giving ourselves more work for our bodies.
I believe many of todays diets are probably based on historic evidence of this. When I was living down south I remember we would eat pokeweed which is quite poisonous if you eat it raw. This is a native plant of this country and it grows here in New York to my suprise. That's definitely a strong plant in my book. Either Enslaved Africans themselves figured out how to cook this or contact with the indians. Either way it helped them survive here to give their contribution. Something perhaps we should give thanks to.
Last edited on Monday August 29th, 2005 18:06 by behind_all
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behind_all
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Posted: Wednesday August 31st, 2005 21:26 |
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I wish to touch upon this a bit more with a bit of imagination, studies, and personal experience. I felt that I left this above post is incomplete. Perhaps this can be lasting otherwise I wish to contribute this to folks that help others especially what is going on in New Orleans, LA and the rest of the Gulf coast.
Now here is the situation. We read that enslaved Africans in the New World had to practice their religion in secret. We also are given accounts to Africans practicing self-defense in secret such as capiera or martial arts from Brazil excuse my spelling. Now I wish to state my miniature theory that enslaved Africans in America had to eat in secret also.
Now basically from the above post slaves ate what the slave owner gave them in terms of scraps. Now the slave owner had capital or money to buy food for himself and his family. He knew giving slaves his scraps was the cheapest for him. He wanted to maximize profits and minimize loss like how so many businesses operate. But if the slave population was growing in terms of the plantantion but the slave land owner consumption of food and the given scraps did not match in order for slaves to eat. And just like any farmer there was an year or so with losses. This left the enlsaved African at alot of times with an empty stomach. What was he or she suppose to do?
The enslaved African probably used the knowledge he or she learned in their respective homeland. They planted themselves garden probably in the woods or a distance from the plantation. They did not plant these gardens in the plantation because the slave land owner wanted their attention to his crops. Plus the enslaved African had very little children still to young to work on the plantation but young enough to venture off into the woods and fields away from the plantation to perhaps tend these gardens. Perhaps they were put to task for this because in Africa every able body was needed to get things done. If the enslaved African was tending these gardens himself he had to be working either well before dusk, which is when Africans waked up to handle their agriculture based on my African studies instructor or late at night. There was no time during the day.
Because the only folks that had proper affinity to the land was native Americans, we know that the whites once establishing themselves had driven them out. So, much of what the enslaved African knew was from his experience from the motherland or in route such as the West Indes. With this in mind obviously enslaved Africans did not have much in terms of lugguage and only possess very little things literrally such as seeds and other "precious" things. These "precious" things turn out to be lifesavers for them. And because of this, we survived to be able to continue with the business of America and elsewhere in the New World.
Now I am not trying to discount other peoples contribution because obviously today many of the foods we eat come from different parts of the world such as maize or corn, tomatoes, and peanuts which are New world plants and have added more food to the pallete including in Africa. But I wish to give thanks to them for their understanding of what was "precious" for them and it helped us grow here and support our identity and way of life. Here is a list of foods that Africans brought to the New World and some background information. Many of these foods are fast growing so in essense this is what probably keep them fit to work tirelessly on plantations because in my estimates they grew and ate them in secret. They became public when the slave owner wanted to increase his consumption in lean times for him and his slaves. Ancient knowledge that helped them survive a terrible time in human history and ancient knowledge to help get back health because these crops survive the birth and collapse of civilizations and continue to bring vitality.
WATERMELONS grow on a sprawling vine which is a member of the gourd family. It is native to Africa where it probably has been cultivated for at least 4000 years; early explorers of North America also found Indian tribes growing watermelons.
Native to tropical Africa but currently grown in more than 96 countries on every continent excepting Antarctica, watermelon has a marked place in the history of agriculture and human diet. The first watermelon harvest was held in Egypt approximately 5,000 years ago, as depicted in the art and hieroglyphs found on ancient Egyptian buildings. From Africa, the fruit traveled to the Middle East, China, the countries of the Mediterranean, and subsequently the remainder of Europe, whose explorers, settlers, and slaves later introduced the plant to the New World.
- By weight, watermelon is the most-consumed melon in the U.S., followed by cantaloupe and honeydew.
- Early explorers used watermelons as canteens.
- The first cookbook published in the United States in 1796 contained a recipe for watermelon rind pickles.
- Food Historian John Martin Taylor says that early Greek settlers brought the method of pickling watermelon with them to Charleston, South Carolina.
- Every part of a watermelon is edible, even the seeds and rinds.
Okra probably originated somewhere around Ethiopia, and was cultivated by the ancient Egyptians by the 12th century B.C. Its cultivation spread throughout North Africa and the Middle East. The seed pods were eaten cooked, and the seeds were toasted and ground, used as a coffee substitute (and still is).
Okra came to the Caribbean and the U.S. in the 1700s, probably brought by slaves from West Africa, and was introduced to Western Europe soon after. In Louisiana, the Créoles learned from slaves the use of okra (gumbo) to thicken soups and it is now an essential in Créole Gumbo.
Today okra is popular in Africa, the Middle East, Greece, Turkey, India, the Caribbean, South America and the Southern U.S. It is not a very common vegetable in most European countries, except for Greece and parts of Turkey.
Due to increased interest in American regional foods, these bright green, tender pods have gained more respect as a vegetable in the U.S., aside from its use as a thickener.
Facts
Okra is a tropical plant which grows best in warm climates. It is available year-round, with a peak season during the summer months. The pods grow rapidly, being ready for harvest in about 60 days of summer weather, when grown from seed. They must be picked about 4 to 5 days after flowering, when 4 inches or so in length, before they mature and toughen. Okra comes in varying shades of green (there is also a new red variety), and can be smooth or have a ribbed surface.
Collard greens are a form of kale. Collards arrived in the US with the slave trade, but it is not known if they came from Africa or Haiti. Popular in the southern US states, it is also cooked in other countries around the Mediterranean, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Collards is the ancient plant of Eurasian origin and represents the oldest form of cabbage. It remains much the same as it did centuries ago. The botanical classification is confusing as it shares the same grouping as kale. Acephala means headless, and is the designation that separates most kale and collards from other cabbages (except the Black Cabbage) because the two grow in loose bouquet forms and not a tight head.
The terms, Collards and Kale, are often used interchangeably. The English words of cole, kale, and collards all come from "colewort", which means cabbage plant. Collards have smooth, thinner leaves than true kale, taste milder, and are more heat tolerant. Both the stalk and the leaf are the same shade of green. The flavour is like cabbage, but has a smoky element. Unless young collards are used, the stalk becomes too tough to be a palatable addition to any dish. They do require longer periods of steaming or stir frying than other greens. In certain dishes, collards have an affinity for oranges and can withstand the heat of added hot peppers. They should be served with a milder flavoured dish as potatoes or polenta to offset their strong taste. Collards are a feature of Portuguese potato soup. In the tropics, they are marketed as collard greens. Few greens can match the nutritive power of collards as they are an excellent source of fiber, folate, vitamins A, C, and E, calcium, potassium, iron, riboflavin, and sodium. Some varieties are: Champion, Georgia, and Hicrop Hybrid.
Black eyed peas. Cowpea is a tropical legume crop of African origin. Most recent speculation on the crop’s center of origin focuses on a band of diversity of wild cowpea stretching across southern Africa from Namibia to Mozambique, with a center of speciation in the Transvaal region of South Africa. Nevertheless, the center of greatest diversity of cultivated cowpea is in the northern guinea savanna regions of west Africa. In many fields, as a result of hybridization, almost continuous variation exists between the more elite, large-seeded varieties of cultivated cowpea, the small-seeded, more weedy varieties, and true wild species of cowpea. Cultivated cowpea has been shown to cross regularly with wild cowpea growing on the periphery of fields in east Africa. Cowpea plant remains dating to 1500 B.C. have been discovered in a cave dwelling in Ghana.
They were known in ancient Egypt, where they were a symbol of good luck. The peas are the seed of a somewhat vining plant. They are a true pea, and not a bean. They are extensively cultivated for livestock feed. According to one source, in the South, they were first consumed by humans during the civil war at the siege of Vicksburg. I have found historical references to indicate that they were consumed much earlier than that. Some native Americans of the Southwest obtained cowpeas from the Spanish, and cultivated them for food. The Afro-Americans almost certainly introduced the southern U.S. to their use as food, and brought the first seeds from Africa; cowpeas are still widely cultivated in Africa by subsistence farmers. They are now an immensely popular southern dish, and are traditionally eaten on New Year's Day; this practice is thought to bring good luck, and this belief may have evolved from superstitions of ancient Egypt/Africa.
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Mafdet
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Posted: Wednesday August 31st, 2005 21:38 |
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@Behind_all
I haven't read your second piece I will do so later on but after reading the first which I enjoyed I have to say why oh why didn't we leave those white slave master to continue eating their high fat heart attack food or better still why didn't we poision more of them.
BTW very good historical read 
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BlackBrainChild
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Posted: Wednesday August 31st, 2005 22:47 |
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Wow that is quite interesting. Like Mafdet said, I wish black people would get more into what our bodies are naturally accustomed to instead of this high fattening, refined crap.
Thanks for this information behind_all.
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lostindahood
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Posted: Tuesday September 6th, 2005 07:21 |
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Very interesting post. Yes, why DID African Americans start eating all the high carb, sugar refined crap they do now? Also how does this explain how the black people who emigrated to England in the 50's ate so good when now many of their grandchildren eat the same crap as African Americans.
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Omaar
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Posted: Wednesday September 7th, 2005 01:57 |
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Lostindahood
Yes, why DID African Americans start eating all the high carb, sugar refined crap they do now?
The answer is simple, we were forced to.
Most of what constitutes as "soul food" isn't African food but various types of European foods modified with by our own creativity for taste.
Fried chicken, hog guts, fried catfish, spaghetti, potato salad, macaroni & cheese....these foods commonly marketed as "soul foods" are much too starchy for our bodies and we're made for us originally.
Cornbread was actually made for mules and horses to feed them on long journeys, and white people started feeding it to their slaves.
But we still lived longer and healthier off that type of food than off of the nutritionally depleted junk-food we're eating today.
That food may not have been the healthiest for us, but atleast it was wholesom and organic.....natural.
We could work the excess fat and carbohydrates off with all the work we did.
This sh*t we're eating today is genetially modified and chemically process and not fit for human consumption period.
It's like eating glue.
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BlackBrainChild
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Posted: Wednesday September 7th, 2005 20:19 |
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| What do some of you suggest most African-Americans eat?
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