Rooted by Emma Scudder

ROOTED

stories, recipes, and traditions from the Dudley Street neighborhood

WHY ROOTED Everybody has a story about food. It might be about a favorite family dish, the first time you grew tomatoes and tried one, or a food that brings you home when you taste it. Food is meant to be shared. Just as coming together around the dinner table brings people together, so does sharing the many unique stories that people have to tell about food. ROOTED showcases stories, recipes, and traditions from the Dudley Street neighborhood in Boston.

TABLE OF CONTENTS HISTORY STORIES TRADITIONS RECIPES ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

1 5 29 33 43

H I S TO R Y

1940s

A number of factors led to shifting neighborhood demographics, causing Roxbury became a center for the African American community in Boston, both due to segregated suburbanization and the migration of African Americans from the south to the north.

1630

Roxbury was established by English colonists

1820s Streetcar service allowed for movement out the city and into suburban Roxbury.

late 1800s

Electric trolley service allowed people with means to move even futher outside of the city, while Roxbury became increasisngly urbanized.

1600s and 1700s 3

1800s

1900s

2010

The Dudley greenhouse opened its doors as a community garden space

As a result, there were 1,300 vacant lots in the Dudley area by the 80s

1995 The Food Project helped

transform two vacant lots into urban farms in Dudley. To date, they have built 873 raised bed gardens at residentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; homes.

arson became a constant threat

1984 The Dudley Street In the 1960s and 70s, urban renewal projects, housing discrimination, and resulting disinvestment led to a decline in the neighborhood.

Neighborhood Initative was founded as a community-based planning and organizing force, leading to positive change.

late 1900s

1992 The first

community garden was built on a vacant lot in Dudley.

1988 DSNI won eminent

domain over the city for ownership of vacant land. The Urban Village was built.

2000s 4

STORIES

SUSAN Nutritionist, Gardener, Cook, Neighbor

Originally from China, Susan and her husband came to the United States in 1994. She is constantly busy, whether she is giving nutrition consultations, cooking for her family, working in the garden, or selling her vegetables at the Dudley Farmers Market.

We grew up in the countryside. When I was young we had a big piece of land. Every household in China in the countryside has a big piece of land. You grow everything, and you eat from there. That was 30 years ago. We didn’t have a store, or anything close by. So we ate vegetables from the garden, greens from the field, you know, whatever we have, soybeans, potatoes, everything. So we are very familiar with this practice. We know the seasons, when to plant what. We moved into this house four years ago. Before, we lived in an apartment, so we didn’t have a piece of land or anything. When we moved to here, we saw that outside we have a little bit of space. In the first year, there was a lot of weeds and grass here. It was like the wild. We didn’t like that. And then we thought, we need to take care of this, otherwise it will not look good, and you won’t feel good, living in the wild or something. No matter if it’s a lawn or vegetables, you have to take care of it. So why not plant some fresh vegetables? The second year, we planted a little bit, but we didn’t sell, we just ate it. Then last year, we had some extra, and my husband said, oh we have so much, where can we put it? We can’t put it in the trash. We can’t let them rot. What can we do? In the spring I met Jessie, she was in charge of The Food Project farm at that time and we got to know her. I said, ‘Jessie, we have so many vegetables, where can we put them?’ ‘I don’t know, you can sell or something. You can come to the farmers market.’ When I sell to people, I always weigh it out, and then I give some extra. And they say, ok, I will come back. This way, you feel very happy. Really. Because I know by doing this I cannot get rich. You know, I cannot. Why not just share? Everyone will be happy. Sometimes you don’t do everything for money. Share something you have. It’s real enjoyment.

* * * 8

MULLER Former Food Project Intern and Assistant Greenhouse Manager, College Student, Neighbor

When I first started with the Food Project, I was 14 I think, and I was looking for a summer job. I was on the waiting list for a while. I got mad. But they called me and I didn’t have anything to do so I just decided to join. I wasn’t interested in it at all. I was just interested in the money aspect of working. But after that, you tend to get attached to it. What surprised me is seeing how it can change the people around you. Being able to grow collards and bringing them to your neighbors, you’re like, ‘oh, any collards today?’ and you can see that excitement on their faces. Or walking home with a bag of raspberries, I’ll stop by the park and kids are like, ‘What is that? Let me get some of that!’ Being able to bring vegetables home, it’s very different than just going to the grocery store. You actually know like, I worked hard to grow it and harvest it. The way it’s running right now, the greenhouse is really part of the community. When you’re here you just tend to blend in with everything. You know everything. You know who’s coming in, you know what time they’re coming in. I just met a group of people. Working in the greenhouse, you see little kids coming through and you tend to get attached. I could walk around like, ‘oh hey, how ya doin’, how was your day?’ When you see ‘em around, little kids will introduce you to their family, like ‘hey, that’s my friend at The Food Project.’

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like creating a new family within the old garden environment

Felix was my little buddy during the summer. He’s like 10, 11. He would come help me when I’m working. He’d come through and help harvest tomatoes and put ‘em in boxes. He was just like my little assistant. The assistant’s assistant. He’d be here everyday, right on time. He’s not getting paid for it, but it’s just the experience of having someone you can look up to and like having someone you can talk to. I’m like, a relaxed person, so it doesn’t matter how old you are. Food plays a big role in everything. Living in this neighborhood for a while, I walk around and see people standing looking at a garden, just, like, admiring it for a second, or they wanna know, ‘what is that?’ Me, knowing the knowledge, I’d probably stop by and say what it is. Seeing all these vegetables growing around, people wanna know what it is and how to be a part of it. I like growing food and being part of a community of people, and starting to change things around. I went to Tuskegee University last year. I transferred to Bunker Hill, and now I’m just planning on doing the Marines, going about that. Sometimes you just gotta try something new. Boston’s just too small. Going to Alabama, it just made me open my eyes and want to experience new things and I think the Marines is a good way to experience new things. You never know, you might meet somebody from Texas or someone from out far. You could always talk about food. It goes back into everything. It’s just always something you can talk about every day.

* * *

SAYED

Sayed came to the US in 1999 from Nubia, a region surrounding the Nile River in Northern Sudan. He grew up in an agricultural area, and was a farmer himself. On his journey to the US, he has worked as a chef for the Saudi royal family and a taxi driver, among other jobs, but always, he has been a gardener. In 2005, he started NUBIA, an organization dedicated to the preservation of Nubian history and culture.

Around the river, you know, when we grow up, we grow up with gardening. Every year, when the river Nile floods and comes back, we start growing food, and we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t water at all for the whole season. I started helping the family when I was maybe 3 years old, because there is no way to leave us at home. They took us when they go to the garden. Back home, I finished school in the beginning of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;84, and I started growing fava beans and onion and wheat the first year. When I started, I started just to have a big garden by myself. I had 5 acres for myself. I am farmer from back in Sudan, but when I came here and I tried to start to gardening, I found that there is a huge gap between what we are doing back home and here, so I had to find some ways to learn something about gardening here. I never grew any food in a small space. I never grew in beds, even inside houses. We donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do that. The insects, the fertilizers, the compost, all this is new for me. so I had to study and know about everything.

* * * 14

MAKING

S P A C E We started NUBIA while I was driving a taxi, in 2005. We started first with a youth program. When we came here, my kids, no one spoke English, but very quickly, they catch on to English and forget our native language. So I said, ok, we will start an organization, and this will be the first goal, to do a program for them. We needed a space, but I had a small budget. At that time, we had only my kids and my friends kids, like, 7, 8 kids. My daughter asked me, why we don’t check in Charlestown? She said, ‘let’s go and see.’ I met someone working for the Kennedy Center, and when I explained to him, he said, what do you think about this hall? I said, ‘this will be very good, good enough.’ Very quickly, I think in two weeks or three weeks, the number went to 30. There was no way to continue there, so we had to find another space. We went to Charlestown Community Center. They gave us two classes. We said ‘ok, that is good.’ But we found the number was still going up, so the two classes was not enough. We went to another community center, they gave us one level, 3 classes. So we got the kids, we got the families coming everyday. At that time, the Charlestown community garden was all Chinese and Asian ladies, and one sick white man originally from Germany. Every day he was telling me, ‘oh, the doctors told me I’m going to die in one week.’ This continued 3 or 4 years. Every time he needs help, I go and help him in the garden, because he’s sick. One day he told me, ‘Sayed, you are doing good, why don’t you come and have a space here?’ I said, ‘this would be good, but there is no empty space.’ One of my friends connected me with a gardening for refugees organization in Mattapan. They had $800,000 for 3 years. So that was the beginning of starting gardening programs. We got permission to build as much as we want from the empty spaces in Charlestown. 15

I went to Home Depot, and we got the cheapest wood. I didn’t know that some wood is not good for raised beds. I got enough wood for 6 beds. I started to ask families to come garden in the beds. I got 3 families, but I still had 2 beds without gardeners. So I thought, why don’t we leave two open for the kids, and the produce can go to the families? After we started growing food, a lady came to me and said, ‘do you know, Sayed, this wood is not good for the soil?’ I said, ‘why, what’s the problem?’ She said, ‘it’s going to poison the soil within five years.’ I said, ‘ok, 5 years, we have time! We had funds to build 30 more beds. There were 8 families from Somalia, and 17 beds for gardeners from my community, and 5 for the Charlestown community. The next season, Sayed moved to another empty space in Dorchester. They built 16 beds and donated over 2000 lbs of produce from that garden.

That same season, he got three beds in the Dudley greenhouse

That next season, he built 17 more beds at the Dimock Center.

After recieving recognition for his gardening programs, a man at Sayed’s mosque approached him. He asked me, ‘are you a gardener?’ Could you do anything here? This land will not be used for at least 4 years.’ Sayed built ten beds there. The food from the garden is donated to the mosque.

In 2010, Sayed got permission to build 6 beds at the Dimock Center in Roxbury. Along with those beds, he grew food in over 200 plastic buckets, in order to show people that anyone can grow food in a plastic bucket, on the porch, behind the house, with limited space.

This year, he built another 12 beds in that space.

To date, Sayed has built and maintained 85 raised bed gardens around the city of Boston

Do you enjoy your life? That is my question. To enjoy things is just a glimpse of h a p p i n e s s .

AATGA 15

I love plants. It started in Sudan. Since I was young, I found myself loving plants. We didn’t have a big, big yard. It wasn’t even an acre or half an acre. So we started to plant in pots. But the sun, I mean it’s the summer the whole year. There is no snow or anything, you know. So we started to plant certain things and they started to grow green with me. It grows well, so more, and more, and I start to put one next to another. It’d be green and when I look at it, it’s so beautiful. There are lots of flowers, and they bloom the whole year. And you know, it’s so hot, but in the evening, you sit outside in the yard, and we’d drink tea. When you have flowers and drink tea, it’s really beautiful. Women, especially in Khartoum, they don’t plant. Me, I find myself with a lot of flowers in my house, even when I went to the university. But sometimes I dig in the ground, and people say, ‘Are you crazy? Are you a woman? What are you doing? I’d plant the flowers and paint the pots, red and blue, and it was so beautiful to me. It goes with me, you know. Really, really, I love green. Even the color green, everything green, I love it. I started to plant and plant. When I got married and I came here, I was sad, you know, leaving my plants. The first year I went back, and as I get into my parent’s apartment, I go, ’where are my plants? What happened to my plants?’ Some people do this for a job. It’s just my hobby, but I wanted to study this. I wanted to go to the university for this. But at that time, in my country, if you studied that, you don’t get a job easily. At that time, they need economics. So I went for economics just to get a job. As soon as I graduated, I got hired, but I didn’t stay long. I came here. I wish I had studied it.

How many people move to the States just for the opportunities? And who is an American, you know? All of them are from outside. Why did they move here? For the opportunities. Sometimes you seek to find something different, to find something better. And once you start, its difficult to go back. Once you establish your family, it’s difficult to go back. For me, I didn’t like it here in the beginning. I had lots of friends back in Sudan, I had a job, my family. The first year I went back. The second year I went back. My husband finished his Master’s.

‘I’m going to do my PhD.’ ‘You said Master’s only.’ He said, ‘This is an opportunity.’ ‘Go ahead.’ I go back every year, but my kids were born here. After I take them the first few years, they can’t because of school. They offered my husband a job. ‘Let me get the experience.’ That’s what he said, ‘just a few years, and we’ll go back.’ So it’s getting worse and worse and worse. He gets the job, I get a job too, my children start just speaking English, and so, that’s it. We stayed. I’ve become busy, it’s a reality, and that’s 30 years now. At that time I was by myself, only a few people from Sudan, nobody else, but now it’s a big community. I just started to plant to kill the time. 17

When I came here, the weather was different. You can’t plant outside for a long time. So I started to look at the windows. I can do something, you know. I planted a lot. I used to plant just flowers, and indoor plants, and that’s it for me, but I knew Sayed, and he started to plant vegetables and things. Seeing him working hard, looking at his plants, I loved it. In the summer, he plants tomatoes, and carrots, and it’s beautiful. So I started to go to the Nubian organization. He’d bring tomatoes to the house and I loved that he’d just give it to us for free. So we started to go see his plants. Me, I can spend hours looking at plants, seeing everything. Give me something else, and I’ll get tired of it. But this, I don’t get tired of it. Sayed used to tell me, ‘you have this yard and you have this house. You just plant flowers inside. Why don’t you plant outside?’ I just love flowers, I love indoor plants. And he said, ‘you know, I should take this house from you. You should live in a condo or something.’ It took lots of work, but I started to plant tomatoes outside and it grew well. I loved it. So after that, I planted carrots, watermelon. I will plant anything. Right now I have a lime plant outside, a grapefruit plant. I don’t know why, but they won’t get their fruits. I put them here by the window. When it starts to get cold, I put them here with the light on them, and in the summer I bring them out. It becomes an obsession. If I eat something, I plant it. I want to see if it’s going to grow. This is avocado. I eat them and I plant them. I have three of them. Believe me, in the morning, when I wake up, when I drink my tea, you’ll find me just sitting by myself, enjoying, looking, talking to the plant. Now, I’m getting old, I’m getting tired, but I can’t stand seeing plants dying here. I can’t. Still, I have to put the soil, to bring it the water. What is going to happen to my plants, you know, when I get old? I don’t know, I just - I love it.

* * *

MARIA

The lot behind Davey’s Market had been vacant for years, until a few neighbors decided to change that. Maria Barbosa was one of them. The lot, which she can see from her house, was not nice to look at, she said. So she talked to the market’s owners about using it to grow food. Maria, along with family, friends, and neighbors transformed the space. They use the land to grow corn, beans, squash collards, peanuts, and more. Some of these crops, which are traditional Cape Verdean varieties, cannot be easily found in the stores. When friends come, Maria sends them home with food. “They get so happy.” At the size it is now, the garden is really helpful at home.

When I see things growing, something in my soul is in place. I like gardening, and I like when I see the things growing. Instead of buying it, you have your own. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s nice, fresh. When you made it, you feel very comfortable. Something is made by you.

In Cape Verde, my town is all gardens around the house. We all do this. Everyone is growing. The gardens are very, very big. You have to share with other people and do it together. When I was working at a clinic there, I was responsible for the garden. We planted all the kind of fruits you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t find to buy a lot for your people, so I have bananas, mangoes, papaya, all kinds of fruits, and then vegetables. I make them work to start and do something, because if theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re just sitting, sitting, they get worse. So they have to be working. We planted everything there. We had animals, had milk, and meat, chicken, pork. So we had all those kinds of things. 21

Our garden now, mostly it’s the neighbors, all neighbors. When we were starting it was just a little piece down there, so we do that the first year, and then the next year we do a little bit more, and this year we try to do the whole thing. It’s been about four years. This year was excellent. Sometimes the neighbors stand there and they watch and watch. Sometimes they come in and help. Everyone passes on the street and they stop, and say ‘oh you working? You do that? Oh, it’s nice!’ Some people see me some place else, they’ll say, ‘I saw your garden!” I have a friend down there, he said, ‘oh, some day you’re gonna teach me to garden, too.’

I believe next year is going to be better. 22

HONARIO & CINDY

Honario moved to Dudley from Cape Verde in 1981. His home is hard to miss. His yard is a flourishing garden, with rows and rows of corn, towering nearly a story tall. He grew up farming, and has continued the tradition here. In the late 90s, Honario bought the vacant lot next to his house and expanded his garden. He and his wife still live in that house, and their seven children, including his daughter Cindy, all live in the area. One of his sons owns a restaurant in the neighborhood that serves traditional Cape Verdean foods with a modern twist.

* * *

HONARIO: My father was a farmer in Cape Verde. Between June and August, that is the season to plant. So during the season, me and my father would go out and work. Here we have beds, but there we use the actual ground. You dig up the ground, you add the seeds. The majority of our crop was corn and beans. In Cape Verde, there are a lot of people that aren’t able to have their own land, or they aren’t able to farm, so if they’re your neighbors, you don’t sell to them, you give to them. The same here, if there are people that don’t have access to food. I feed the family. I feed friends. CINDY: I think it’s pretty cool that he farms. For him, it’s more like tradition. You do it because you grew up with it, and you have to continue it. I remember when I was younger, he would come home from work and he would go straight to the farm. He’d wake up really early to begin, or wait until the sun set. I asked him last year, ‘could you teach me?’ and he’s like ‘sure,’ but he gets up too early and wouldn’t let me know when he was getting up. HONARIO: Next year, I will teach you how to farm. CINDY: I think it’s really important. I feel like food is equality. It just makes things better. If you don’t know someone, you bring food, and that’s like a connection to people, it’s like a peace offering, like ok, were not having issues, the food is here. That’s how people really get together. Food is important. Where would you be if you didn’t have food? 24

ELIZABETH

Elizabeth was 21 years old when she came to the US. “One day,” she said, “my mother took me here.” I had a beautiful job, the best job I ever had. It was so cool. I worked in a restaurant my father had built. My father was a builder, so he built the restaurant, and we were - we were supposed to be there. It was right on the beach, right behind the airport, on the beach, right there in Puerto Rico. My mother went and told my boss that I have two weeks notice, and then she told me, ‘oh, I gave your boss two weeks notice.’ I didn’t know. She would go time to time and get the money I made. All the money I was making when I was young, I gave it to my mother. I came back to her after my two weeks and she said no, we’re not going yet, another year. And I said ‘no, I’m not going back. You gave the two weeks. I’m not going back.’ So with the money I got, I bought two pigs, one a boy and one a girl, little ones. Fifty dollars, the pair, and with those two, I got the money to come here for me, my mother, my sister and my brother. After that, I sent for my father and my other sister.

In their kitchen, Elizabeth and her husband each have their own shelf in the spice cabinet. Her husband, who is from Bangladesh, has curry powder, coriander, cardamom, turmeric, and ginger, while Elizabeth’s is stocked with cumin, adobo, culantro, and chili. Despite the separate shelves, their kitchen is a bold mix of both backgrounds. On a chilly fall afternoon, Elizabeth works at her kitchen table, saving the seeds of a spinach-like plant from her garden, which her husband loves. “Here in this country, we plant it for the flower, but in Bangladesh, they do it for the leaf.” When she makes panadijas, a Puerto Rican snack similar to empanadas, she makes two fillings: one Puerto Rican and one Bengali.

People say, you know how to cook Bengali food? I do not know the language, but the food, I do. I learned how to make biryani, which is a rice dish, and it was so cool. My husband wasn’t in the house, and the niece that speaks English wasn’t there, so it was my sister-in-law, no English, and the maid. And every time they open one thing, they give it to me to smell, and then I will smell, oh, it’s this. And that’s how I learned how to cook it. They were cooking it as they were showing me. I always say, if you have a person that really loves to cook and loves food, you can learn to make any recipe without the language. I learned how to cook when I was 8. Everybody in my house had to. That’s when my mother stopped cooking, probably because she had a hard time when we were little, and she was working in the restaurant, and she was taking care of her mother and her father. My mother was 75 pounds. My mother was a little shorter than me, but she was so skinny. We were lucky when we stayed with my grandmother. She was not strong, and we had a stove that had just two burners. It was very primitive, and that gas made black smoke. It would go into the ceiling and into the walls. And my grandmother would make this dough, with you know, flour and water, and a little bit of salt and a little bit of sugar. To knead it, she just threw it into the wall, and we ended up with, instead of white cookies, it was black cookies. But we ate it. To us it was, like, the greatest.

I would not change my life one bit.

I remember one time I didn’t have the money, I was like 15, you know. I had no money for my mother’s gift for Mother’s Day. So I started early, and I went and I planted beans. But the soil, it was all uphill. We had three and a half acres and nothing could grow on that thing. I would go and pick up water and go up the hill with my water, without my mother seeing me, so I could put water to the beans. I wish I know then what I know now, about how can you put the stuff in the soil and make it more fertile, but I didn’t. When it was Mother’s Day, I took mother there and I gave it to her. She loved fresh beans. My aunt too, and when she was sick, I would take beans from here, and I would peel it and I would freeze it, and then send it overnight to New York. She would call me: ‘guess what I’m eating?’ It took me a long time to plant beans again. I didn’t plant them last year or this year. My aunt has been dead for ten years, and it still bothers me to grow beans. To me, food is who you are. It defines a person. Food is amazing. My mother was a great cook. Even singers in Puerto Rico knew. The restaurant that she worked at was really, it’s like, I don’t know, just a restaurant, but it was more than that for the people there. There are some dishes that my mother used to make, that I love, but I can’t make. I think in my mind that if I make it, I don’t need her anymore. And that’s - I’m not willing to let her go yet. It’s been 23 years, but not yet. She was the most precious thing I ever had. My children love food, they love how I cook. Having people to eat my food, that’s one of the things that I love. My mother and me, always, we cooked big. When we came here, anybody would visit my house and always there was a plate of food, always. I still try to cook small, because my family is small, but it’s so hard. Like Thanksgiving, I make a big meal, and Christmas. I love Christmas. What was Christmas for us? Food. I start making the food a week before, because it’s so big. That way I have more time to eat it.

* * *

TRADITIONS

TELL US ABOUT A FOOD TRADITION THAT IS MEANINGFUL IN YOUR LIFE

I used to live around here. I’m 62 years old, but as a child, at 11 or 12, I used to live a couple blocks over, and I would get my pail in the summertime and I would walk from here to the beaches in South Boston, and then I would dig clams, cause you could get clams all over the place, and I would put them in my bucket, go back through South Boston, come home, and my mother would put them in cornmeal. She said it would clean them. So we’d have steamers, and I’ve been eating steamers ever since. We’re a seafood family. We were a seafood family. I lived in Boston my whole life. I go to South Boston now, and I don’t think there’s any more clams out there. You could just go on the beach, right on the beach, you could just go there, you’d stomp your feet, you’d get the bucket, and sometimes I’d get a little harassment, but most of the time, it was a safe course. Cause I didn’t have any money, I just walked with my bucket and my mother would put cornmeal in it!

GWENDOLYN

A tradition we have in my family is making me breakfast on my birthday morning, which is on December 25th, also known as Christmas. So the tradition is that my mom makes me breakfast, or whatever I ask for she’ll make it. I guess I hold that tradition valuable because I’m going off to college soon, and when I come back, always know that she will make me breakfast on the day of my birthday, and I wake up to the smell of pancakes all the time.

KHALISE

I’m from Cape Verde island. My traditional food is Cachupa. Some people like Cachupa with vegetable, some like with meat. Typically we use pork. And we use tuna, fresh tuna, no can. We mostly make it on the weekends, because it’s like a slow cooker. You can wash your clothes. You can clean the house. That’s typical weekends making dinner. My grandmother taught me. MARIA

I’m Jamerican: half-Jamaican, half-American. Thanksgiving and around Christmas and New Years, that’s when my family started baking, pulling out all the stops. I can’t live without baked goods. Strawberry rhubarb pie. My grandmother would cook. My father, he’d just occasionally show that he could cook a little bit. My grandmother would always come up with the Caribbean dishes. My mother would do dishes from the States. We might be Italian one night, we might be Asian another night, we might just be American. We always had fish on Friday though. Don’t care what happened. Yeah we had a full gambit. ROSS To tell you the truth, one of my first big movement memories of growing food is when we wanted to start a farmers market, me and my wife. And The Food Project actually came out and did a test farmers market for us, and the people in our neighborhood really took to it. So we started our own farmers market. But the funniest thing about it is that we couldn’t get any farmers to come to our farmers market. So we became farmers. Nobody wants to come? We’ll do it. I love to grow food, it’s just one of my things. BOBBY On Lunar New Year we would invite a whole bunch of our family and friends over and have this huge potluck, where we’d make my favorite dish, pho, a Vietnamese traditional dish. We’d all sit down and talk about the things that happened in the past year, what our new year’s resolution is, and we’d just eat food, joke around, play some games, and go home. TRANG

Well, my mom and her mom before her were working women, and so they didn’t really do a lot of cooking. They did a lot of takeout, Campbell’s food and stuff. But the one thing she did teach me to do was to make pie crust. We had a plum tree in the backyard, an Italian plum tree, and we used to make plum pies. ROBIN

We would read Blueberries for Sal, and we would go to Maine in the summer and we’d pick blueberries, then make jam. And it was like a really cool experience as a family. I still pick berries with my mom, not every year, but we’ve branched out to strawberries and raspberries. It’s now a triple berry jam. I always liked that cause you’re actually harvesting the food and making it into something delicious.

JEVALIN

RECIPES

Muller’s Tomato-Basil Jam Before he left for school at Tuskegee University in Alabama, Muller and some other greenhouse growers made this tomato jam from the tomatoes they grew. When he returned at the end of the semester, he stopped by the greenhouse to find that people were still enjoying the jam he’d made. “It’s great to see how you can start something, and come back to see the effects of it.” As far as the recipe itself goes, “it was a good, long process, but it was for a good cause, because everyone was enjoying it. Everyone was trying it out.”

2½ ¼ 3 3 1

pounds ripe tomatoes, peeled

cup lemon juice tablespoons fresh basil cups sugar 1.75-ouce package powdered fruit pectin

Seed, core, and finely chop tomatoes. Measure 3½ cups chopped tomatoes; place in a 6- or 8- quart pot. Bring to boil, stirring occasionally; reduce heat. Simmer, covered, for 10 minutes, stirring often. Measure 3 1/3 cups tomatoes. Return to the same pot. Stir in lemon juice and basil. In a small bowl, combine ¼ cup of the sugar and the pectin; stir into tomatoe mixture. Bring to a full rolling boil, stirring. Boil for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Quickly skim off foam with a metal spoon.

Ladle hot jam into hot, sterilized half-pint canning jars, leaving a 1/4 –inch headspace. Wipe jar rims; adjust lids.

Process filled jars in a boiling-water bath for 5 minutes. Remove jars and cool on wire racks. 36

Susan’s Homeade Noodles with Green Beans This dish is a hit at Susan’s house. It is a quick and easy substitute for store-bought pasta. You can swap virtually any vegetable for the green beans, so this is a great way to clean out the fridge or use what you have in the garden!

FOR THE NOODLES

2-3 1

pounds all-purpose flour egg water

FOR THE GREEN BEANS

½ 1½ 1

pound ground pork pound green beans, chopped bunch scallions, chopped finely Fresh ginger, chopped finely Chinese five spice Salt Soy sauce

TO PREPARE THE DOUGH

1 2

In a large mixing bowl, add flour and break one egg in the center. Mix with water until the flour begins to form little clumps. Then knead the dough and gather into a large ball. Let sit at room temperature for 1-2 hours.

TO PREPARE THE GREEN BEANS While the dough is resting, heat vegetable oil in a large frying pan. Add pork and stirfry. Add the rest of the ingredients: green beans, scallions, ginger, five spice, salt, and soy sauce. Add some water and cover. Cook until green beans are tender.

Roll the noodle dough into a thin sheet using a rolling pin. Sprinkle with flour to avoid sticking, then fold in half. Repeat this until dough is folded in on itself three or four times. Slice the folded sheet into thin noodles.

Boil water in a large pot, then add the noodles, stirring once to avoid sticking. When noodles float to the surface, cook for two more minutes and remove from heat. Drain, and rinse with cold water. Serve with green beans, and enjoy! for more recipes by Susan, visit: http://susanzheng.hubpages.com/

Sayed’s Goraasa Goraasa is a traditional Nubian flatbread that is hearty, a bit spongy, and extremely versatile. Back home in Sudan, Sayed says he would eat this for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In his area, where farming is the primary source of income, people eat goraasa in the morning to get energy for the hard work that the day will bring.

3 1

1 2 39

cups self-rising flour cup whole wheat flour water salt, to taste

In a large bowl, sift together both types of flour and add salt. While stirring, add water, about 2 cups, until the mixture is a thick batter. Heat skillet with a very small amount of oil. Spread with a cloth or paper towel. Pour the batter onto the skillet. Spread it into a wide circle with the back of the ladle. When bubbles begin forming on the top and the base is a golden brown, flip the goraasa.

NOTE In Nubian culture, there is a traditional way of eating. One member of the NUBIA organization described it this way. “We all eat from one plate. that’s the Nubian way. We eat together, we eat with our hands, and the goraasa we make, you will not find it anywhere, this is Nubian goraasa.”

Sayed’s Okra with Chicken Dried okra is famous in Nubia for being great when you are in a hurry. You could also substitute fresh, pureed okra. This dish is especially important during Ramadan, since it can be prepared in a flash. Served over goraasa, this makes a great family meal.

2 1 4 1½ ¼

onions, chopped chicken, cut into pieces

In a large pot, saute chicken and onions over medium heat. Cover.

Add the remaining ingredients. Simmer, covered, until chicken is cooked through. Serve over goraasa.

cups tomato sauce tablespoons garlic, minced cup wayka (dried okra) cumin and salt, to taste

Elizabeth’s Bacalaítos Bacalaítos are a popular Puerto Rican snack made from bacalao, or dried salt cod. For Elizabeth, it brings back memories. She has been making these since she was a child, living on her family’s coffee farm.

3 1½ 1 1 1 2

ounces bacalao (dried salt cod) cups all-purpose flour tablespoon sofrito tablespoon adobo packet Sazon goya tablespoons cilantro, chopped black papper

In a small pot, combine bacalao and enough water to cover. Heat until soft. Meanwhile, in a large mixing bowl, combine flour, sofrito, adobo, sazon, pepper, and cilantro. Add ½ to 1 cup cold water. Stir. The mixture should be the consistancy of pancake batter.

When bacalao is soft, remove from water. Tear into small pieces and add to batter. Stir to combine.

Heat 1 inch of oil in a heavy skillet or frying pan. Fry until brown on both sides. Drain on paper towels before serving.

I’ve been making bacalaítos since I was a child and I had to. I lived with my uncles, my mother’s uncles, because they were old. I loved them. They had a coffee farm, a big one. They had a lot of people working, so one of my jobs there was first, I had to milk the cows. It was me and my brother and another friend that stayed there, and we did all the cows, and then my aunt boiled the milk. So I ended up doing the breakfast and coffee. I would walk up to the coffee fields to give the people their breakfast. Then I’d come back, make lunch, and take it. It took me almost an hour and a half just to walk there and back. So my brother made me learn how to ride a horse. In that time, bacalao was cheap, so my uncle would buy it in cases. You’d not just have it for breakfast, you’d have it for lunch. You’d have it for lunch every day. We have a lot of root vegetables: malanga, patatas, bananas, plantains, all of that. You eat for lunch what is in season. We boiled that, and then you can put anything, but mainly, bacalao. One day, you just fry it in plain oil, or lard, in that time, or you make a tomato-based sauce and cook it, and you can also do that same tomato-ey sauce, and if you want to stretch it? Put some eggs in there. Or you can make a salad. It was very versatile. I mean you really can dress it up, dress it down, you can make rice, you can make soup. And I mean, so many ways, you’d never get tired of it because you don’t prepare it the same way every day.

* * *

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to everyone who contributed to this book. To Sayed, Susan, Muller, Honario, Cindy, Elizabeth, Aatga, and Maria, for taking the time share your stories, told so eloquently. To Khalise, Jevalin, Bobby, Ross, Trang, Robin, Maria, and Gwendolyn, who shared beautiful glimpses into their traditions. To everyone who contributed delicious recipes, that were a blast to learn and to taste. To The Food Project, for working to make connections for this project and facilitating meaningful discussions. To Linda Martinez and Julian Agyeman for advising on this project, and Leah Lazer, Amanda Miller, Abby Harper, and Lissette Castillo for helping to put it all together.