Gravy
227 episodes - English - Latest episode: 6 days ago - ★★★★★ - 533 ratingsGravy shares stories of the changing American South through the foods we eat. Gravy showcases a South that is constantly evolving, accommodating new immigrants, adopting new traditions, and lovingly maintaining old ones. It uses food as a means to explore all of that, to dig into lesser-known corners of the region, complicate stereotypes, document new dynamics, and give voice to the unsung folk who grow, cook, and serve our daily meals.
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Episodes
What's in the Fridge?
February 16, 2022 12:00 - 24 minutesWhat’s in the fridge? In New Orleans, solidarity means a stocked fridge. In this episode of Gravy, producer Sarah Holtz takes listeners inside a mutual aid society called New Orleans Community Fridges, which formed during the pandemic to help feed people in need. Since its start, the group has been gifted around 20 fridges. They sit on neighborhood sidewalks, plugged into power strips, some powered by generators—filled with food that’s free for the taking. In this episode, Holtz talks to N...
"Married," by Jo McDougall
February 09, 2022 12:00 - 4 minutes"Married," by Jo McDougall. Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Thresh & Hold
January 26, 2022 12:00 - 5 minutesMarlanda Dekine is a poet and author obsessed with ancestry, memory, and the process of staying within one’s own body. This poem appears in their collection Thresh & Hold, forthcoming from Hub City Press on March 29, 2022. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
"Carlo Flunks the Seventh Grade," by Greg Brownderville
January 05, 2022 12:00 - 6 minutes"Carlo Flunk the Seventh Grade," by Greg Brownderville. Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Filipino Balikbayan is Homecoming in a Box
December 15, 2021 12:00 - 28 minutesIn "Filipino Balikbayan is Homecoming in a Box," Gravy explores the histories underlying the balikbayan box—a large box filled with everything from tubes of toothpaste to cassette tapes to cans of Spam—that Filipinos in the United States customarily send home to family in the Philippines. There is an entire industry in Filipino enclaves across the United States dedicated to the logistics of shipping these boxes, which have been popular since the Philippines established the Balikbayan Program ...
New Orleans Street Vendors, Then and Now
December 08, 2021 12:00 - 28 minutesIn "New Orleans Street Vendors, Old and New," Gravy explores the history of street food vendors in New Orleans, from Mr. Okra to the pralinière, or praline vendor. A conversation with urbanist Amy Stelly, who grew up in Tremé and remembers when street vendors populated her neighborhood, reveals that there is a fraught line between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation. What is the legacy of street vendors today? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Skinny on the South Beach Diet
December 01, 2021 12:00 - 26 minutesIn "The Skinny on the South Beach Diet" producer Katie Jane Fernelius speaks with Adrienne Bitar, author of Diet and the Disease of Civilization, all about diet books and why they capture the American imagination. They discuss the South Beach Diet, in particular, and the ways it answered a specific moral panic over obesity in the early 2000s. But who and what are the inheritors of the diet book industry’s values today? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Kitchen Electric: Selling Power to Rural America
November 24, 2021 12:00 - 25 minutesIn this episode of Gravy, "The Kitchen Electric: Selling Power to Rural America," producer Katie Jane Fernelius looks at the role of women in campaigns for electricity and electrical appliances. She speaks with scholar Rachele Dini at the University of Roehampton about how advertising portrayed and defined the modern housewife in print ads and commercials. Then, she speaks with Hal Wallace at the Smithsonian about the government-funded campaign for rural electrification, which featured home e...
Pulp Fact: How Orange Juice Created the Sunshine State
November 17, 2021 12:00 - 28 minutesIn this episode of the Gravy podcast, “Orange Juice and the Making of the Sunshine State,” producer Katie Jane Fernelius examines how, for decades, the Florida Citrus Commission not only peddled orange juice, but Florida’s popular image as the sunshine state. She talks to James Padgett, a scholar who has studied Florida oranges; Fred Fejes, professor emeritus in the school of communication and multimedia studies at the Florida Atlantic University; and Ronni Sanlo, an LGBT historian and native...
"Easy," by Ed Madden
October 13, 2021 11:00 - 6 minutes"Easy," by Ed Madden. Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Take the Woods Ballistic! Black Belt Nightlife
September 22, 2021 11:00 - 21 minutes"Take the Woods Ballistic! Black Belt Nightlife" disrupts the sleepy picture of rural life by taking you into its nightlife. In Alabama’s Black Belt, the night scene has a beat all its own, rooted in a sense of deep community. We dive into bootlegging, clubbing, and a legendary Black Belt festival: the Footwash in Uniontown. Catherine Shelton of the Coleman Center for the Arts in York and Bosephus Gary of Bo’s Fashions in Uniontown take us into the mix, revealing how Black Belt residents bala...
Migration: Making Meals and Homes in Alabama
September 15, 2021 11:00 - 24 minutesAlabama’s Black Belt has always been a place of migration: the site of both forced and elective movement. Today, our reasons for leaving and coming home are still shaped by the desire for better lives and livelihoods. In "Migration: Making Meals and Homes in Alabama," we meet three women whose very different paths all led to a home in the Black Belt: Maria escaped violence in Mexico; Margaret fled religious persecution in Egypt; and Sarah came home to do some good, opening Abadir’s Light Fare...
Alabama Hunters: Pretty Don't Tree No Coon
September 08, 2021 11:00 - 21 minutesFor generations, rural families in the Alabama Black Belt grew and hunted what they needed to sustain themselves. Wild game was a major and critical part of the diet. Today, hunting is still a popular Black Belt pursuit, but it’s less about sustenance and more about camaraderie, challenge, and immersion in nature. We meet Jerry Dawson, a coon hunter in Sumter County, who illuminates the world of coon dogs, and Nikki Baker, a dove hunter in Marengo County, who loves to beat all the men on the ...
Cooking Up a Living in Alabama
September 01, 2021 11:00 - 22 minutesAs "Cooking Up a Living in Alabama" reveals, culinary entrepreneurship, whether running barbecue stands, holding neighborhood fish fries, or selling sweets around town, has long enabled African Americans to earn income, stick together as a family, and express creativity. Georgia Gilmore of Montgomery is the quintessential model in Alabama. In this episode of Gravy, we visit Thomas and Tommie Taylor of T-N-T BBQ in York and Martha Hawkins of Martha’s Place in Montgomery for a modern look at B...
New Stewards on Old Homesteads in Alabama
August 25, 2021 11:00 - 23 minutesAlabama’s Black Belt stretches in a strip 25 miles wide across the center of the state. Named for the rich soil that enabled cotton to flourish, the Black Belt was once Alabama’s most prosperous and politically powerful region. It held most of the state's enslaved people, and African Americans still comprise the majority of the Black Belt population today. "New Stewards on Old Homesteads in Alabama" provides a contemporary look at Black Belt land and its stewards: the most recent chapter in ...
"Pesach in Blacksburg," by Erika Meitner
August 04, 2021 11:00 - 6 minutes"Pesach in Blacksburg," by Erika Meitner. Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
"Grace," by Jake Adam York
July 14, 2021 11:00 - 6 minutes"Grace," by Jake Adam York. Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Mithai Life of North Carolina
June 23, 2021 11:00 - 27 minutesYou’d be hard-pressed to find a major city in the United States that doesn’t have Indian food. Despite some of the nation’s limited ideas about what American food is, Indian favorites like chicken tikka masala, biryani, and samosas have become nationally recognized, and are often the dinner or lunch of choice for millions of Americans. But, what about the dessert? In this episode of Gravy, Kayla Stewart travels in search of the mithai—or sweet—life of North Carolina’s Indian American communit...
The Southern Genius of the Cuban Sandwich
June 16, 2021 11:00 - 26 minutesThe Cuban sandwich. If it’s made with ingredients someone else doesn’t like, you might find yourself in an hours-long argument in the middle of Little Havana. In Miami and Tampa, Florida, restaurant owners, historians, and Cuban Americans recount their own memories of the Cuban sandwich, as well as the story of its origins. In this episode of Gravy, reporter Kayla Stewart explores the sandwich’s long-standing origin story, new research about the Cuban sandwich, and how the South influenced th...
Syrian-ish: Damascus Meets Little Rock at Layla's Restaurant
June 09, 2021 11:00 - 25 minutesArab American and Middle Eastern immigrants have had a unique experience in the U.S. With a history that dates back more than 100 years, Arab Americans of every generation have brought their food and history with them, and have often used restaurants as a center of culture and a way to create their own American and Arab story. In Arkansas, one popular restaurant owner has married his love of his hometown Damascus, Syria, and his love of his present home of Little Rock. The result is delicious...
Ethiopian Atlanta: A Tale of Three Restaurants
June 02, 2021 11:00 - 26 minutesThe home of Civil Rights leaders like John Lewis and Martin Luther King, Jr., Atlanta has a remarkably storied Black history. It’s birthed the musical careers of legends like Andre 3000, Usher, and Gladys Knight. And recently, it made political history when the state—largely due to Black voters—flipped blue for the first time in nearly 30 years, impacting one of the most consequential elections in modern history. The state’s role in Black culture and identity extends internationally, too. Atl...
Tempeh Brings Indonesia to Houston
May 26, 2021 11:00 - 28 minutesThe largest city in Texas doesn’t disappoint when it comes to food. Houston is one of the most diverse cities in the United States. There is a bustling and ever-growing immigrant community that has brought food and culture to almost every corner of the city. Amid strip centers filled with pho shops, taco trucks, and Indian restaurants, however, Indonesian immigrants have struggled to make their food recognizable and understood in the city’s dining community. In central Houston, Gravy reporter...
"Drill," by Atsuro Riley
May 05, 2021 11:00 - 5 minutes"Drill," by Atsuro Riley. Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
"Because Men Do What They Want to Do," by TJ Jarrett
April 14, 2021 11:00 - 6 minutes"Because Men Do What They Want To Do," by TJ Jarrett. Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Holy Trinity: From the Bayou to the Bay
March 24, 2021 11:00 - 27 minutesNearly every cuisine has its own flavor base. In Louisiana, this technique has become doctrine. The Holy Trinity, a base of finely chopped and sautéed onion, celery, and green bell pepper, is the starting point for jambalaya, gumbo, and étouffée. So iconic have these dishes become that the Trinity manifests whenever Louisianans have migrated. In this episode, we find the Holy Trinity in Oakland, California—an unexpected hub for chefs with Louisiana roots. Learn more about your ad choices. Vi...
Puerto Rican Pasteles: Unwrapping the Diaspora
March 17, 2021 11:00 - 26 minutesPasteles mean Christmas to many Puerto Ricans, both on and off the island. Why is this beloved, labor-intensive dish popping up at plate sales in suburban Orlando—and what does climate change have to do with this phenomenon? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Horchata: An Ancient Drink that Crossed the Globe
March 10, 2021 12:00 - 26 minutesHorchata, a refreshing drink originally made from tiger nuts, made its way to present-day Texas and Mexico via the Islamic conquest of Spain and the Spanish conquest of the Americas. How do indigenous populations reckon with colonialism in their diets? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A Pea for the Past, A Pea for the Future
March 03, 2021 12:00 - 26 minutesThe black-eyed pea is not your average bean. Like many staple foods of the African Diaspora, it’s become a powerful symbol of food sovereignty and survival. With the migration of the black-eyed pea from West Africa during the transatlantic slave trade came a superstition about good luck. This belief combines folklore from West Africa and Western Europe in the American South. Our episode follows the journey of the black-eyed pea, time-traveling through the folklore of the past and an Afrofutur...
The Deli Diaspora
February 24, 2021 12:00 - 27 minutesOrder a hot pastrami on rye at any delicatessen and you’ll taste the briny terroir of the Jewish Diaspora. Pastrami is an iconic cured meat that migrated with Eastern European Jews to America and became synonymous with the deli, a beloved third place for Jewish communities across the country. In Jackson, Mississippi, that place was the Olde Tyme Deli, which Judy and Irv Feldman owned and operated from 1961 until 2000. In this episode, we’ll trace the migration of pastrami to the Deep South, w...
Eating a Muffaletta in Des Moines, by Brian Spears
February 10, 2021 12:00 - 7 minutes"Eating a Muffaletta in Des Moines," by Brian Spears. Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
It is Simple, by Jon Pineda
January 20, 2021 12:00 - 6 minutes"It is Simple," by Jon Pineda. Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Scrap That: Charlotte's attempt to compost food waste
December 30, 2020 12:00 - 26 minutesIn 2018, Beverlee Sanders launched a novel pilot project in Charlotte, North Carolina: collecting food scraps from a small number of homes and sending them to a composting facility, rather than to the landfill. Food is the number one category of waste going to landfills. Once dumped, it produces methane, a very potent greenhouse gas. Beverlee, who works for the city’s solid waste services division, thought if she could show how much food she kept out of the landfill—seven tons after just 18 w...
Christians Take Up Climate Change
December 23, 2020 12:00 - 27 minutesAnna Shine is an Episcopal parish priest in Boone, North Carolina. Her focus, both during her education and now in her work, has been 'creation care,' which is theologically motivated environmentalism. She sees food security and climate change as intrinsically Christian issues, with representation and instruction present in scripture. And she's not alone. Other church leaders in the South—who continue to hold sway that clergy in less religious parts of the country may not—are also renewing th...
Take it Easement: Save a farm to save the future?
December 16, 2020 11:00 - 25 minutesThe U.S. is losing agricultural land to commercial, industrial, and residential development. Every state is converting ag acres to other uses, but the South is losing more farmland than any other region. Southern states' policy response has also lagged behind other parts of the country. Why does this matter? First, it matters because we need land to grow food. And second, agricultural land can sequester carbon and it emits less greenhouse gases than developed land. Some municipalities, like...
Low-Carbon Dining: How much can restaurants do?
December 09, 2020 12:00 - 24 minutesRestaurants—and not just those working with Zero Foodprint—are starting to wake up to the issues around climate change, food, and the role chefs can play in driving change. That can mean being purposeful about the kinds of farmers they work with, but also educating diners, who may ultimately bring more sustainable ingredients to their home kitchens, too. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A Peach for a Warming South
December 02, 2020 12:00 - 23 minutesLawton Pearson grows more than 30 peach varieties in his Georgia orchard. Among them is a special new cultivar, the Crimson Joy peach, designed to thrive in the warmer temperatures climate change brings. But that might be a hard sell for farmers like Pearson, for whom the peach is not only an important crop but also a cultural touchstone. Can scientists keep up with climate change? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Goat is the Future: An Interview with Tom Rankin
October 29, 2020 11:00 - 35 minutesGoat Light provides focused reflections by Tom Rankin and Jill McCorkle upon their home and farm northwest of Hillsborough in rural Orange County, North Carolina. In this episode of Gravy, Tom Rankin talks about how goat can figure into a Southern future. This episode is part of a 4-episode 2020 symposium series where Gravy interviews authors whose work shapes our ideas about the future of the South. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Praising Fireflies with Aimee Nezhukumatathil
October 22, 2020 11:00 - 33 minutesGravy host John T Edge talks with poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil about her book, World of Wonders. The poetry collection integrates everyday life, family history, and natural history, and offers a path, to see and think anew. This episode is part of a 4-episode 2020 symposium series where Gravy interviews authors whose work shapes our ideas about the future of the South. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Pondering the Fate of Food: An Interview with Amanda Little
October 15, 2020 11:00 - 30 minutesIn her book The Fate Of Food: What We'll Eat In A Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World, Amanda Little considers the sustainable food revolution in light of growing global populations and climate change. Gravy interviews Amanda Little in this special episode that considers the future of food. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mapping the Green Book: An Interview with Candacy Taylor
October 08, 2020 11:00 - 31 minutesAuthor, photographer, and cultural documentarian Candacy Taylor's most recent project is Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America (Abrams Books). In this interview with Melissa Hall, Taylor talks about the process of researching the Green Book, visiting the sites, and taking photographs. She also speaks to the way the work connected her with her stepfather, who had personal stories that enriched her study. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.f...
Such As, by Wo Chan
September 17, 2020 11:00 - 7 minutes"Such As," by Wo Chan. Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
We the People are Larger Than We Used to Be
August 27, 2020 11:00 - 23 minutesWhat are the legacies of our pasts? How does the past shape our today? How do the lives our parents and grandparents led affect the lives we lead today? Those are some of the questions writer Tommy Tomlinson of Charlotte has been asking himself. And he's asking them in a really interesting way. We are accustomed to hearing that question asked about something like education. If your parents went to college, you have a greater chance of going to college. But how does the life and work of your p...
Magic City Poetry
August 20, 2020 11:00 - 26 minutesIn this episode of Gravy, Ashley M. Jones and Lee Bains III share verses about food labor. Jones is an award-winning poet from Birmingham, Alabama. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University, and she is the author of Magic City Gospel (Hub City Press 2017), dark / / thing (Pleiades Press 2019), and Reparations Now! (Hub City Press 2021). Her work has earned several awards, including the Silver Medal in the Independent Publishers Book Awards and the Lucille Clifton Lega...
Punchin' the Dough: Singing about Food Labor
August 13, 2020 11:00 - 19 minutesFrom Punchin' the Dough to Peach Pickin' Time in Georgia, music has long included songs about labor. Scott Barretta, who once served as editor of Living Blues magazine, shares songs about food labor in folk, blues, and country music traditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Food Festival Financials
August 06, 2020 11:00 - 22 minutesFestivals are terrific ways to celebrate place and food, to showcase community and culture. At their best, festivals are gathering spots for people who see each other all too seldom. They're celebrations of what a community values. And food festivals can democratize access to artisan goods and artisan producers by offering a bite, a taste, a glimpse, and a sip of the rarefied world of white-tablecloth dining. But that access comes with costs. Most festival-goers likely think their ticket pric...
Shucking, by Elton Glaser
July 16, 2020 12:00 - 6 minutes"Shucking" by Elton Glaser Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verses from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Cajun Kibbe: Eating Lebanese in Louisiana
June 18, 2020 11:00 - 24 minutesIn 1983, a Lafayette housewife named Bootsie John Landry self-published a cookbook called The Best of South Louisiana Cooking. Sprinkled among the expected Cajun staples were less familiar recipes like fattoush and something called Sittee’s Lentil Salad. Bootsie was part of a large Lebanese family and a greater community that began emigrating from Lebanon to Louisiana as early as the 1880s. Her cousins are the Reggie family, who for the past century have been cooking up traditional Lebanese c...
Two Tales of Donaldsonville: True Friends & The Chance Café
June 11, 2020 11:00 - 27 minutesThis is a story about a briefcase and a cracker box. It’s a story about finding extraordinary things in ordinary places. In the South Louisiana town of Donaldsonville, two families—the Quezaires and the Savoia-Guillots—unearthed time capsules of local history within family keepsakes. These two archives tell the story of a town with a complicated past, unraveling a timeline of slavery, emancipation, immigration, and mutual aid. Roy Quezaire, Jr. shares his memories of the True Friends Benevole...
Nueva Acadiana
May 28, 2020 12:00 - 26 minutesWhen Wanda Lugo opened her Venezuelan restaurant, Patacon Latin Cuisine, in 2015, she wasn’t sure how the city of Lafayette would react. Many Lafayette residents had never tasted Venezuelan food before. Wanda’s opening week was one of the busiest they’ve had in the restaurant’s five-year history. She runs Patacon with her daughter, Maria, her son, Daniel, and her niece, Elimar. It’s no accident that the Lugos ended up in Lafayette. Wanda’s husband, Jose, is an electrical engineer at Halliburt...
The Miracle of Slaw and Fishes: Louisiana’s Lenten Fish Fries
May 21, 2020 13:04 - 21 minutesOrder a catfish po-boy or a few pounds of crawfish in Acadiana any Friday between Mardi Gras and Easter, and you may be surprised to learn that your delight is another person’s sacrifice. The Catholic tradition of abstaining from meat during Fridays in Lent is alive and well in Southwest Louisiana, a region where more than a third identify as Catholic. Thanks to the long list of Catholic churches and restaurants that roll out an array of delectable seafood options on Lenten Fridays, it’s not ...