Discovering local ingredients — plus history and community — in the kitchen

The Plate Sale founders share what inspires them

By Sarah Berthiaume

What’s your go-to summer meal?

For Shyretha Sheats, summer comfort food is all about what’s fresh, easy and cool.

“When I think about it, the simplest thing comes to mind. I think about cucumbers with salt, pepper and vinegar on the side. Then, a BLT sandwich. That’s the easiest thing I can eat in the summer,” she said. “But if you had asked me 20 years ago or 10 years ago, my answer would have been different. Today, I just think about fresh ingredients — things that are colder and lighter.”

Shyretha and her chef husband Mike share farm-to-table favorites through their pop-up, The Plate Sale. (Spoiler Alert: They’re in the middle of a campaign to launch a brick-and-mortar eatery in Athens called Mule Train. Learn more at theplatesale.com.)

For Mike, summer favorites include beans, peas and peaches — braised or fresh.

“Summer is easy for me. It’s my favorite time. It’s everything I’ve been missing from the winter. Lots of cold fruit and vegetable salads. Lots of grilled foods,” he said. “It’s my favorite time to cook and eat.”

So, where does their food inspiration come from?

For Mike and Shyretha, menu favorites can be inspired by a conversation, a family recipe or local farmers.

“Our menus and food are driven so much by what’s available, what’s being grown, what we have access to, what’s in our community,” she said. “That’s how we begin to form our menu and our recipes.”

Working with local growers to create mouth-watering favorites is just part of what the Sheats love to do.

“I feel like our generation, and especially our parents’ generation, got a little detached from real food. It moved more toward a commodity and what was convenient,” added Shyretha.

Over the years, Mike and Shyretha have learned more and more about connecting with local producers and farmers.

They’ve found ways to connect to their own farming roots, too. Shyretha grew up in Oglethorpe County, next door to the farm where her grandmother Melvie lived.

“She lived off this land. This property was part of her routine. That made her who she was,” explained Shyretha. “She worked with her community and when she wasn’t at home [working at her farm], she worked as a seamstress and an employee at the University of Georgia. That’s where she retired from.”

That sense of family history carries over into their cooking, too. For Mike, who grew up in Athens, food was what brought everyone together.

“[For us,] it wasn’t so much about an exact recipe or food tradition … but family gatherings after church, holidays and Sunday dinners. That’s what inspires my cooking and recipes — the memories from those gatherings. People engaging and socializing,” explained Mike. “That social interaction is missing sometimes, and I look to recreate that community sense when cooking and hosting dinners.”

“In a lot of Black communities, so many recipes are from memories. If they didn’t have anyone writing or reading, the recipes didn’t get passed down. A lot of it, still, to this day, I try to recreate based on just the smell of it or the sight of it. I taste the dough before I cook it. We use more of our other senses in some recipes,” explained Shyretha. “We love to collect vintage recipe books for that reason.

They’re a big foundation in the food we prepare.” In some ways, cooking offers a connection to a larger story, too — whether it’s through a regional southern favorite or via soul food, recipes more specific to African-American culture.

“Soul food can get a negative connotation with it — that it’s not as healthy and wholesome. But we forget about why it was created and how it became a part of the African-American diet. Having those stories and having that history definitely differentiates it from Southern food. It was based on survival and so many other things,” she explained. “It was when we ate and celebrated. It was the liberty to be creative. It runs much deeper than just being food.”

Want to learn more about The Plate Sale and Mule Train? Visit theplatesale.com.

Film Fridays Celebrating Juneteenth –High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America – see page 35 for details!