Hello and welcome to cookie issues this is Dave are older host of cookies coming to you live from newsstands studios in Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City. joined as usual witness Stasio the hammer Lopez although she's still in California chillin How you doing stuff? I'm good are you doing well you decided not to fly home in the in the snowstorm decided that would be a bad idea. Yeah. Well that's I had COVID During Christmas, so it's nice to see my family. Yeah, yeah, you did have the COVID Christmas the most enjoyable Omicron solo Christmas. We got course. John behind me. How you doing, John? Doing great. Thanks. Everything good?

Yep, everything's great.

Where are you back in New York City. Are you are you Oh, Connecticut. No, no, back in New York. Okay, listen, I have another hot dog. We can talk about it in a minute. I have another hot dog to add to the list of hot dogs someday. By the way, Joe, hazing in the booth. How you doing? Joe? I'm doing great. How are you guys? Doing? Well. And in our roving? I'm just gonna call Jack a roving booth from now on, because I never know where the hell he is. He's either California, Mexico, Long Island. You're in Mexico now. Right, Jack?

Mexico probably for the last time. So

where there's life there's ever been for the last time or now at least, you know, I do go to places at this point. And I'm like, I will never be here again. I do that now. Like, like, it's weird. It's weird. It is weird to be like, even places that like I'm like, I will never be here again. You know what I'm saying? Anyway, I meet somebody somewhere like here. I'm like, I'll never see you again. Probably ever. Yeah. For me, where's the time? That's good. You know what I mean? It's not that I don't like people, but it's just like a lot to try to try to maintain you know, anyway, Patreon, people who are listening live call in your questions. 2917410 1507, that's 9174010 1507. If you don't know what Patreon is, or you're not a Patreon member, go look us up. Right right on. Yep. And remember, Patreon listeners get 20% off the Book of the Week at kitchen Arts and Letters. This week's book is going to be high on the hog by Jessica Harris. So go check it out kitchen Arts and Letters. Let me introduce who I have with us. I've known I've known her a long time. I don't think she's been on. Maybe she's been on the show a long time ago. But we have with us today's special guest Dr. Jessica Harris. Hello. Hi. How are you doing? Well, doing well. So she's here I just I just figured I usually I rant for about 15 minutes before I even get around to introducing the guest. But I figured let's just have you in here. So you can feel free to chime in at any point ramped along. Yeah, read along, Read along with me. So. So you know, I'll just introduce who you know, in case you don't know who she is. She was a professor at Queens College for eight. You know, what, like, a long time how long? Half a century? Yeah. And started writing books at some point in the 80s. Correct? Yeah. And has how many books have you written so far?

Written 12, written, edited, translated, whatever. 18. So, a few. And

the first book, The first book of yours that I bought was the African cookbook, which I think was in the mid 90s. Yeah, it was in the 90s. Yeah. And at the time, it was the almost only non colonial, colonial focused book on on other than Northern African that I could find that I could get. So what's it like being a pioneer in that field?

Just mean, somehow. I mean, the thing is that, you know, you do what you do when you died, who knew pioneer? What the heck, um, you know, I had written about other things. Basically, I was sort of tracing a culinary curve from the African continent through to the so called New World. And, um, you know, the editor finally said, Okay, let's do it. So it's like, okay, Africa is so there was, and then

1015 years, how many books in between 1015 years after that. You wrote a book, which has now been turned into a Netflix series high on the hog. Right. And so I think a lot of people who maybe didn't know you before, know you because of high on the hog. So kind of what's that been like to have this book that you wrote, like, you know,

less a decade ago? Yeah, it's actually it's 11 years ago now.

So yeah, what's it like to have a book that you wrote back then hit so hard now that's got to be I guess, gratifying, but like,

it's weird. It's deeply weird. I mean, it's, first of all, I tend to not read my books after I write them. So people will now tell me things that he's like, oh, did I say oh, okay, I guess I did. All right. Well, Oh, no. Mmm. It's, it's interesting. It's deeply gratifying, in, in many ways, all of the kinds of wonderful things that people are saying certainly about the show, and equally about the book. It's surprising, you know, I've become this person that I kind of look around at who the heck is she, you know, um, but it's it's very interesting

for me even named at times 100 Most Influential People, I mean, to me,

that's wacko. Fantastic write up wacko, because

everybody that knows you already, like, you know, knows that you should be up on those lists, like, since forever ago, you know what I mean? But it's, uh, it's so funny, because everybody, like, if you go around in the kind of food world, you're kind of one of those. You're one of those people that. I don't know. Everybody respects it's weird. It's like, just kind of like, and people don't want to say no to you. Like when we went to. You told me Yeah, we thought, well, you know, you told me to go to dooky Chase's last time I was in New Orleans. And because, you know, you spend part of your time in New Orleans part of your time in Brooklyn and party time in Martha's Vineyard, right. It's not a bad way to be. I'm not complaining about would it be? So you told you sent me there? And you said, I needed to talk to them about cocktails, and you told them that they needed to talk to me and both of us were like, I don't know. But she told us that we needed to talk to each other. So here we are, because like everyone just listens to what you say. We had a good conversation. It was great. By the way that I think I told you the the recipe, the printed recipe for their shrimp clam, and so is inaccurate because they do something different to the shrimp clam. And so they're To me that was the it's those old pots. Yeah. To me. That was the that was the money dish. And not even just the shrimp. It's the butter.

It's yeah, it's the butter. It's the garlic. It's I've actually never tasted because I'm allergic to shrimp. But I do know that it is the dish that, you know, the late and sainted Leah Chase would send out when she wanted to send somebody something special. She'd always send the shrimp Clemmer so so it's always what I say, go have

Yeah, I I tried making it according to the published and there's two or three published recipes from them, you know, because she, uh, she used to make it on when she used to do the rounds and talk shows. That was one of the not the same mean, like, I'm pretty good at hitting a recipe. Like, if I'm following the recipe, not the same. You say it's the pots? Well, I

mean, I think you know, there is that thing that in? Well, Happy New Year, by the way, it's Lunar New Year. So there is that thing that grace Young has informed me about, let's call the walk hand, which is the hand of the cook in the dish. You know, no matter how accurate the recipe is, you don't get the hand of the cook in the dish. And that may just be something as simple as knowing a smell and doing something when the smell occurs, or turning the spoon one way and then another way. And then you know, you know, all of those kinds of technical, scientific things, but there are all of those little tiny things that you can't encapsulate in a recipe, right?

This is why like, even like, it's better. I mean, I shouldn't say this, because I'm trying to write a book now. And I want people to buy it. The nice thing about YouTube is you can physically watch what people do. And I always say it's better to watch Cook,

in many ways and to listen to them. Because well, I mean, and sometimes the cook doesn't even know it. And in most the time, you know, the cook doesn't know it. It's something that happens automatically that unless something goes ping and you know sort of sets it off in their memory, they don't even think about it. And those are the imponderables I hate writing recipe, as you know, I need to stop saying that because I am actually working on a cookbook too. But recipes we have come to think of as being, you know, like blueprints for a house, if you move this wall, the house will fall. It's like no, no, it won't, you know, the house will still stand. And it might be a better house for you, if you do it the way you think it should be.

So I also have this problem with recipes, right? Because

we both gonna talk ourselves out of these cookbooks. So let's go quiet down.

There, the issue is right, that it's like, people want recipes, and I get that. But it's more like the structure of how to think I'd rather just talk to people about you know, how to think about a certain process or, you know what I mean? Or

if you think of old cookbooks, old cookbooks made assumptions about people knowing how to cook and so they didn't say you've got to do this and wait for 50 Cook until done. Yeah. You know, not 15 minutes or until this or until, you know, we have dumbed down our cooks

that people hate that and recipe to hate it you know what I mean? Like Like Like literally John right or wrong. My what I always tell people style is you back me up is like how long? How much should I add the right amount? exactly enough. Yeah, enough

how I have threatened to write a cookbook that just has ingredients, not even measures just ingredients.

Well, this is why I feel that people before you should. Okay. Look, sometimes you can't help it. No baking.

Baking is something else now. Well, you're talking, I'm talking, cooking, not baking, but

you should have a target. I always say this a lot. You should taste something before you attempt to make it unless there is no other choice. You know what I'm saying? If you're, if you're trying to make something specific, if you just want to make something delicious, then sure. Do what you do read the bones of the recipe, make it your own. But if you're trying to make something, you should taste the target before you know what you're getting at. Yeah, so speaking of target, so I have something for us to taste that's outside of the realm of what we normally do. So do you normally do we don't normally eat things? So I was in California? I took my first trip since COVID. You Yeah, I have for word what happened? Okay, so Okay, so I was supposed I was supposed to go to I was supposed to go to an event that got canceled because that got Omicron doubt by the way, you know who else is allergic to shrimp? Speaking of great minds are allergic like is McGee can't have shrimp Harold. Really? Yeah. Can't have can't have any crustaceans. So Okay.

Well, I always loved him another reason to love him. Yeah,

yeah. You know what he's considering? Like, he's not I'm trying to get him to consider taking the shots. You know, I used to be allergic to cherries and now like, I'm back to being cherry proof because

but of course you cherry proofer you just cherry resistant resist cherry efficiently. Yeah.

Anyway, I don't know if they can do it with with crustaceans. But anyway, because they are delicious. Although I have to say Have you always been allergic?

I think it's an adult onset. For me. I vaguely remember peeling and maybe eating shrimp as a child. But healing shrimps no

fun. wasn't a

problem. I was a kid. I had little tiny fingers. Getting that little black vein out was fine. It was an adventure. Are you

okay with crayfish powder, like in small amounts. So it's makes it difficult for

me. It's iodine. And so I'm very careful in you know, I mean, particularly in Asian restaurants where there's a lot of fish sauce that may have oysters and stuff. I pay attention.

So, so anyway, I'm in California. And the one day I'm supposed to fly back is the day we have the snowstorm here, right? So like my flight gets canceled. And you know, thanks. No, thanks, delta delta hosed me I got on a JetBlue flight. Did you know they have a category of flight that you're not allowed to have a check bag on? It's like, it's like a

yes. That's the you know, the super is super super saver.

Yeah. Are you there's like a, b, c, d, e, and then like, like, right before they shut the door. They're like and Group F group Q. Yeah, that that was me. So But thankfully, Nastasia found it for me. Otherwise, I would have been hosed. Because I'm one of those guys. I just want to get back. I just wanted to get home. You ready? Yeah. Yeah, I want to get back. So like, you know, my choice was hanging out in you know, beautiful San Francisco. I know stars has their issues with San Francisco right stars. Oh, I thought you didn't like it either. Like San Francisco. I just there's aspects of it. Like why can't i Why aren't there 24 hour stores in San Francisco? Like, it's not New York. Do you know that right now in San Francisco. Like it's a new thing that people get on social media and say we're gonna go break into XYZ store and so all of the fancy stores have 24 hour security guards outside of them. Do not I read about that. It's bananas. So I'm out there. So like, you know, I get there and I'm still on New York time. So I get up at five in the morning and I'm thirsty as hell. I am thirsty as hell and I know people are gonna say oh, what to do what to do that I think it's as strong as I can go right and family show. Yeah, so I seltzer water. I want seltzer. I just want bubbly water. All right. I just want it. I'm 50 I want my water the way I want it. I've earned it. So anyway, so like, I'm like, I'm gonna go outside and I'm gonna get it. Nope, walked an hour. And I have not felt in physical danger in an American city. The way I felt walking in some parts of San Francisco since the 80s. It was crazy. It's crazy over there.

I'm not gonna say anything. But anyway, I know some places you can visit that you feel physical danger. So let's draw the veil of discretion over that. Yeah, when we get all right, you know, sort of exit off of all tourist offices. Yeah,

yeah. But it was uh, but you know, look, that's when it's, you know, in the middle of the more as early early early in the morning, but I'm just surprised at how it shuts down at City. I love you San Francisco but why do you shut down I guess that's why we're the city that never sleeps. You know that only like 20 minutes outside or half hour outside of San Francisco. They have redwoods so beautiful there Alright, anyway, so I get so JetBlue is like hell with it. I'm gonna fly back to New York even in a snowstorm we get almost all the way but of course the folks at JFK even though the snow stop hadn't swept the runway clean yet so we couldn't land and they divert us to of all places buffalo so I'm really snow whilst while so I'm in Buffalo in the airport, and they don't let me out of the airport. But one of the things I've always wanted to try In Buffalo is this stuff they have called sponge candy.

I don't know. I love it. It's amazing. I'll eat it all. Here's

it well, I have, I have a couple of darks and mostly milk, like take salmon and pass them around so that John and Joe can have molasses puff. It's kind of what they do is so if you guys might know it as honeycomb candy, differences in Buffalo, they in Buffalo, they, they've added some gelatin to it. So the bubbles are real small. So most honeycomb candy, the bubbles are kind of all different size because you cook sugar and syrup until it gets you know up to kind of hard crack stage. And then you put the baking soda in and then puffs Yeah. And then they cut it into a block with a saw and then dip it in chocolate. But they add gelatin to this one before they add the baking soda. And so what that does is it creates a real fine texture on it. And I've always wanted to have sponge candy. So thank you storm. Now I got to have the sponge candy. And who

knew because you could have come by my house, I order honeycomb. It's just It's candy. From my childhood, they used to be a shop on the vineyard called darlings candy store. And they used to sell it as molasses puff. And as molasses puff, it wasn't chocolate covered. It was just the sponge. And it was absolutely amazing. And it's been one of those tastes of my childhood for forever. So about five years ago, maybe 10. I actually found it in London, I think it may be a British thing that's come over. But I found it in London where they call it honeycomb. And you can go into the you know those massive candy stores that they have in London. So you can go and buy it buy the the ounces or whatever. So I would always come home with a suitcase packed full of Honeycomb. But about well since COVID. I've you know, on the net here midnight or one o'clock because what else am I going to do except shop. And there it is honeycomb. So I've ordered it. In fact, there's some that's going to be delivered today or tomorrow I

think of the buffalo version, which is like a crunchy bar. Really good. Yeah, right. Only this one I think is older than the crunchy bar. I think buffalo started making it in the 40s I think I don't know, but delicious. Thank you. But someday I'm gonna get to go back to Buffalo cuz I want to try their beef on weck. I've never had that either. I

don't know that either. But this one I do know. It's lovely. Thank you. Nice.

So you know, is good news to gain diverted. Right, John?

Yes. All right, a couple times.

So and just so people, you know, you don't only write cookbooks, or books about food, you also write about cocktails, right. And then in 2017, which I can't believe this is the maybe I have not seen you obviously I haven't seen hardly anyone. I haven't seen you since the the pandemic. So in my mind, your your memoir is still a recent thing. Even though that was four, four years ago now and came out. You have a memoir, where it is, my soul looks back. And it's it's music paired with, like chunks of your life and kind of the amazing people that you've kind of hung around. So that's another aspect of Jessica Harris people need to look at. But there's a new book that I didn't even know was out that I looked at. And I want to talk to you about before we talk about the museum the food and drink, which is kind of why we brought you here today.

Not for myself, well,

for what you have done. Yeah,

sure. Sure backstroke.

Vintage postcards from the African world in the dignity of their work and the joy of their play. A book came out, I guess, right near

the end of 2020. So I looked at

this book, and I kind of just want you to talk about it a little bit because it's kind of amazing. It's first of all, there's this word that I didn't even know existed Delta geologist,

adult geologists,

do you know what that is done? Don't look at my don't look at my notes. Do you know what that

is? Did not know until I looked at your notes. Oh, he's cheating. Well,

I can see right here. But you're from Belgium, which is one of the player Yes. If I'm correct. Now, my dad is from Delta, your dad is from Belgium. But I mean, so delta geologist is one who collects postcards. And some of the rate well, some of one of the things that started me on my postcard journey, if you will, is the flea market. It's sub long in Brussels. Hence, that was the Belgian mass. But so I collect postcards I specifically collect Well, I collect a lot of different areas. But the book is about cards that I collect about. Early images, and when I say early, some of the oldest postcards go back to the turn of the 20th century. So very, very 1904 1890s, the end of 1890s. About Africans, and Africans in the diaspora and food and that means everything from growing it to, you know, serving it, to processing it to eating it, and then celebrations so that's a bulk of the collection.

I mean, what's kind of a mess? hazing to me about it. So it's a, you know, for those of you that, you know, go take a look at it, but it's, there's a, there's an essay about it or like, you know, and then like just a bunch of amazing images as well. And I think what's kind of, I don't know, it's just such a, you wouldn't expect it, just just saying what the book is. But the richness, it's there all the layers, that and the different ways you can approach the

images. That's the thing that's so much fun about postcards, because they're, they're so layered. You can I mean, I've had people who are dressed historians who have written to me to say, Oh, my God, what a resource for anybody that's working on costume. I have people who are looking at tools. And just some of the tools, some of the old mortars there is one where a woman has a particular kind of hole that is, you know, sort of native, if you will, to the African continent, there all of these kinds of layers on which you can look at things. They're, they're really snapshots of a moment in time. And as such, they're kind of fun. I mean, you know, you I always wonder, what were the people thinking? Some of them were posed, clearly posed, some of them are, are mislabeled. I mean, there's a whole set that were done by a Frenchman named Fauci and thought he was actually an ethnographer, large quotation marks around that word, who was in Western Africa at the turn of in the very early 20th century? Who took pictures, but he took pictures all over the place that then became postcards he had there's a whole collection of his I think they have some at the University of oh, gosh, Midwest somewhere. And, and they're, they're just extraordinary. But as they became postcards, some of them are

mislabeled. Actually take one like says it's in the car, but

that car, but it's actually in between Exactly. And so you get so you can look at things and go, No, that's a bad car. You can look at the baskets, the way the baskets are woven, you can look at the type of market it is. And you can begin to sort of see all of those, all of those things. And then if you juxtapose the cards, you can see things, you know, oh, wow, that's a basket. And that's the same basket in South Carolina, you know, kind of thing. So you can see things like that. But equally you can sort of you get the colonial eyes. Well, because who's taking these pictures? And who's consuming them? Yeah. And who were they taken for? You know, so there's so many layers and levels on which you can look at them. They're kind of fun, right?

Trying to see the person behind the pose, behind the eye that it was intended for. But then then you can just turn all that off and like, like, I'm trying to understand how the agricultural works. I'm looking at the size of those damn oysters,

right? Or the size of the fish. Fish and they say, you know, nobody's catching fish that size anymore.

What about the coconuts? Either those are the tiniest people on Earth. Or like, John, like, right where those water coconuts right there were like this big around. Wow. Yeah, there's, I mean, they're they're pretty amazing. Like, people can't I know I'm on radio. I hold my hands. People really gonna see Yeah, yeah. Big, big. Okay. Anyway, so like, I think it's definitely a book people should check out. Thank you. And, yeah, it's such an unusual, it's also like, what's nice about it is yeah, trying to find like, the people behind it. No, it's just, like I say, a lot of layers with which to look in. And who was it? Was it? Who was it that talked about pictures, pictures being about death? Is it Bart? Is that Roland Bart? Thanks. So anyway, he's like, yeah, there's

only a French major. I have no, yeah,

I think, wasn't it?

I think so. Yeah, well, since I read that,

but just like so like, that's how I grew up kind of like the philosophy of photography as a photography as a form of death, because you're looking into someone who's static and stasis is death, right? So it's like, and you're looking at that, but you can tell that they were alive. It's kind of an amazing thing. Yeah. You know,

I mean, one of the cards specifically that calls to mind is there is a card of a woman who was an ex slave, you know, somebody who had been enslaved, actually standing on the auction block on which she had been sold when she was five. And so you want to talk about layers and levels and just everything that's encapsulated in that with the price tag. Well, and then you've got the well in the captain Academy amount, because I think she was $15,000 1500 100 $1,500 like that. And she was sold as a young child. Yeah. And that's, that's just so horrific, and it's unspeakable and it's

in New Orleans. And yep, and The image is so compelling that I went and looked up that hotel. And as you rightly point out the old St. Louis hotel it I guess got destroyed in a hurricane and they rebuilt it in a similar fashion.

And it's like those things that just make you go you know, it's it's there's, there's a lot I mean, there's there's more to postcards the most fun. Just wish you were here

to look at looking at kids eyes who's delivering meals that like, right turrible boy, but like, Man, those eyes? Yeah.

What is he saying? Yeah.

And of course now dead? No, all

of them. Yeah, all of them. Because the postcards date. Unless they were absolute infants, none of the cards are later than the 1930s 1940s. You know, so that they are you know, if they are alive, they're very, very old.

And you have I think one or two. I can't remember where you have the that hand tinted version and the black. Yeah.

Yeah, to see how people tend to them. And unfortunately, what what I didn't get to show a lot was some of the comments on the back. Oh, okay. Sometimes you get to see, you know, the sender commenting on the card.

You know, and were they mostly white folks sending the cards till pretty much

uh, you know, I would say 99%. Yeah. Yeah. You can't always tell. Right, but you get that sense. Because remember that back then postcode? You know, there was no Snapchat, there was no, you know, whatever, you you're using this instant communication. So postcards were a little bit of that it was quicker than a letter, you didn't have to write a letter made less formal, less formal. And, you know, certainly something that was public because the mailman could read it, you know, as well, so that you get a whole nother sense of how how people, so one of them says, you know, won't be on the morning train coming later, you know, kind of thing. So they didn't go necessarily quite that rapidly, but they were a way of communicating, you know, things that might otherwise you know, nowadays you'd call you send a text you do whatever, even in

the 70s. I love postcards. Yeah, I used to love them. Yeah, I'll tell you a quick story, because I'm gonna get in trouble. But I used to work for the I worked for the post office as a casual employee when I was in college in summertime. Very careful, although it's a credit. So it's a credit job. They really, anyway, it's good. If you can get in the Postal Union, if you're a casual worker, not so much. But the I remember once I was like, you would have all these catalogs come in, right. So I would see, I would see. So when Publishers Clearing House sends you the envelope, and it's like, you know, you may have one, I would see the entire town. I would like put all of those who may have may have didn't may have anyway, it's I remember, I was reading someone's catalog once and I just, I just planted maybe 200 of these catalogs, you know, and the guy's like, that's somebody's mail. You're committing a federal offense. I was like, Really, dude. Really? So it's like you're saying, you know, the mail, you know, the carrier can read that, that postcard? And yeah, they frown on it. But come on, we look at that stuff.

I mean, you know, it's there. It's it's, you know, you're putting it in the box. You can't help but read it.

So the guy, the guy who he wasn't super mad at me, but he was the Nixie clerk, you know, about Nixie clerks know, in every zip code, there's at least one person whose job it is to figure out completely undeliverable stuff. And that's the person who knows the most people who work at the post office. least they used to have a surprising amount of knowledge about who you are and where you live. And who is. Yeah, yeah. And so the Nixie clerk is the person who knows the most so when something's just like, scratched across, and like it comes into that post office, they're the ones who figured out how to get it to you. Or not, or not. If they're good, they get it to you. And if they if they don't, they don't. Alright, so now. I have I have John's gonna get back to me. Let's talk about the Museum of food and drinks. So I don't know how long ago it was. I mean, since basically, since forever, you know, I've wanted to have you work with the Museum of food and drink on a project. And then it was four years ago now.

Oh, it's longer than four. I think it's your fault. S Yes. No, but I mean, in terms of just the current exhibition, it's longer than four I think. Remember that first meeting? We lost two for COVID. Yeah. And then it took us a while. There were at least two years before we ran into COVID. So it's probably drive. All right. So I'm verse do we age?

Yeah. Right. And people. For those of you it gets, it gets worse. Time runs faster. It's so weird. You think it would run

slower? My grandfather used to say that it's like, you know, he I never knew him. But my mother always quoted him as saying you know, as you get older, it just moves faster. It moves more Number one it used to take forever to get to Christmas. I know now you Blinken it's Christmas again.

Remember Christmas morning. Y'all messed up that was even waiting that like 45 minutes. We. Yeah. Anyway, we digress. Yes. So we knew that we wanted to get you win. And so we had done a couple exhibitions, a while, you know, a million years ago, I did something on country ham, then we did. We did flavor. And then we'll do for flavor, the puffing, puffing gun, which was supposed to, we wanted to do all cereal, but we couldn't do cereal, because we didn't have the money. So we just took one component of the serial exhibition, which was the puffing guns, we did the puffing gun, then we did you know, flavor, which was about kind of the the birth of the flavor industry and how you know, your tongue and your palate works. Then we did Chow, which was, you know, how did it come to pass that? How did the Chinese American restaurant come to pass because it's kind of an amazing story. And then we said, Okay, we want you know, we want you to come in, and we want to figure out what kind of story we should tell about black food in America are the contribution of African Americans to American food waste. And so we're like, well, that's we can't that's not us, right? What we have is an apparatus or, you know, a, you know, we have a vehicle, right a thing, the museum, and there was only one person on earth. I swear, there's only one person on earth who I was like, I think it goes back to what I said earlier, is that people may disagree with you. But they're gonna defer to you. You know what I mean? So even

differ. They may disagree, but they, you know, we can we kind of scrap around, right? There's narratively Well,

there's a level of respect that only you can get. And so we got an A mate, how many people did we have on that initial meeting that you ran?

Oh, it was about 30? I think 30? Maybe 40? I don't know. But it was it was a sizable number and an impressive group. Yeah, I was like, we sort of rounded up the usual suspects and dug up some that folks hadn't thought of.

Yeah. So do you want to talk about kind of like, how you conceptualize what the because, you know, from us from a museum standpoint, for those you that don't know, like, I'm on the board of the museum, and

let's talk about conceptualizing a museum, people who just sort of say, And let there be museum that would be Dave.

Yeah. Right. So well, so the the issue is the hard part about an exhibition, any exhibition is you have finite space. So you got to, you got to pare the story you're trying to tell down into kind of the space that you know, is allotted to you, and the budget that you have. And then when you when you're tackling a story, that's so giant, the main problem, the main problem becomes what what are you going to say, with this space a lot. And so to me, like how, you know, you and the group of advisers came up with a story. Maybe you want to talk about that a little because I thought it was kind of interesting process.

Wow. Well, it was, it was certainly crazy. And it was all very discursive. I mean, a lot of it came out in just plain conversation talking. I mean, the centerpiece of the exhibit, as now is a legacy quilt. I mean, it's there are several centerpieces, but the the sort of entry Wow, oh my lord. What is this? And what are we learning is a legacy quilt and I remember we were just riff in one day sitting around a table and I said, you know, I've always thought that a quilt is important. And you were the one that said, Yes, we're going to do a quilt a quilt now, what can we do with the quilt? And so we ended up with a legacy quilt where we've kind of encapsulated 400 plus years of African Americans and food in this country. By the way, I think that the title of the show is sort of informational. And, you know, sort of, you know, not necessarily argumentative, but, you know, there are people who will raise eyebrows, and the title is African slash American, making the nation's table. So the idea of it the backstory, if you will, is the absolute foundational role that African Americans had in the creation, not just of African American food, but of American food. And so that's, that's kind of what we started from. That was the matrix once we all agreed that we agreed on that. Then it wasn't, it was it was difficult, but it wasn't impossible, because it's like, Okay, how are we going to try to break it down? How Are we going to try to look at this? How are we going to try to make this into something that we can actually handle? Because it is enormous? And, you know, it's like, how do you eat an elephant, one piece at a time. So it was about trying to figure out how to come up with those pieces. And so eventually, we kind of wrestled ourselves and you know, whoever else wanted to join in the mud fight down to four basic buckets, if you will, for one of a better way. And they are AGRICO agriculture, and agriculture would take in absolutely everything from the work that the enslaved did, the know how that they brought to that work, which is extraordinary, that we don't always think of, but equally, the botany, the animal husbandry, all of those things fall in that. And so we do that, and we center it pretty much around rice. And rice, because Rice was so transformational in the Carolinas, so that's, that's one bucket, then we move on to culinary arts. So when you start to talk about culinary arts, then you get all of those hands in the kitchen. You get all of those African Americans during the period of enslavement, who worked both while certainly during the period of enslavement, who worked unpaid, unheralded, and for the most part, unknown, but who fixed food for everybody, including those who were fixing the food of the founding fathers. So you get Hercules Posey, you get James Hemings, you get all of those people, as well as all of the people who follow them all the way up through downing who had an oyster Refectory all the way through people today, you know, and I'm not going to name names because I'll forget somebody and then I'll be pilloried, right won't be pretty.

But yeah, we want to talk a little bit maybe about that. Because I think this is what is the key insight is that it's not just the things that you think about. No, it's not. It's like the outsize contributions that, you know, that were made to hospitality in general.

Exactly. Well, I mean, I think now, if anybody's seen the Netflix series based on my book, I don't know again, I'll

say it again. What that series needed is more Jessica hair says, I'm gonna say it again.

Oh, Bless you, bless you, from your mouth to god's ear, my dear. But I think that one of the things that you know, just basic stuff, if you look in, I think it's episode two, mac and cheese. For the Lord's sakes, no, I'm not trying to say that African Americans invented mac and cheese, because we didn't. But we certainly popularized it. And we popularized it through Jefferson, and it was James Hemings through Jefferson, that popularized mac and cheese, which now is there is nothing more American.

It's kind of a crazy recipe they used in that episode. You see it if you try that recipe,

I have not but the idea of butter. How bad could it be? Yeah, but she cooks

it in milk. Yeah. And then like she just layers, like the cheese in between the stuff doesn't make it into a salt. So it's unlike any mac and cheese that I've ever had a lot of butter.

Yeah, a lot of butter. But it's not the bishop mill. It's not the bishop mill that you think of but it's another way of doing a kind of Bishop mal if you think about it, yeah. But But I mean, and I think that's part of it as well because then you start to think about remember how they cooked you know, is this the way that you can do it if you are hearth cooking, when you can't really stand there and stare the beige ml you know, when you can't make that sauce that way? Yes, Hemmings was one of the people who brought I think one of the early Portege a, I call it a Portege everybody else calls it a stew hold stove. But I brought one of those back when he came back along with the copper pots to use on it. So he was one of the first who began to move away from hearth cooking into that kind of place where you were regulating flame and and being more able to make that bishop smell the way we know now. But otherwise you couldn't. So that that recipe of necessity speaks to not only time, but also manner of cooking. So that that cooking it in milk and sliding those bits of butter in would have had to do with how it was cooked as much as with what was being cooked. So they're all of those things that you learn. And of course the fact that it you know, it's mac and cheese in my kitchen. I think the thing that people most comment on in my kitchen I have A box of the brand, mac and cheese, the blue box with my face on it because I did some consulting work for the company and they gifted everybody that consulted with boxes of mac and cheese with our faces on them. It is the thing that is most commented on in my kitchen, you know, and their Beard Awards and book covers and pretty good art and all kinds of stuff. walk in and it's like, oh my God, you're on a mac and cheese box. I mean, somebody I think the first time I heard anybody say, Oh my God, you're such a baller. It's like, um that's kind of the mac and cheese box did it?

Well, you know, like, I don't know anyone that didn't mess. You're allergic to dairy. Or, you know, I don't know anyone that hasn't had that. You know what I mean? Yeah, no, no, exactly.

Sooner or later. You got it. He had it. Although like, unless a no, no, my mother never used the box. Always made her own. But she

liked a tiny elbow still. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I like the tiny elbows. I'm not talking to guests, a tiny elbows. What else would you man I know. But I do all kinds of horrible things that you would get mad at? Probably I like to put some peas in with it. You know why? No one because I know. I know. I know. Not all

the time. You had mentioned mushrooms at all. And

I will ask I will ask this question then. People ask some questions hold second. This is Devin wrote in on the Patreon question for Dr. Harris. For cooking collards. You do trim you trim out how much do you trim out of the central stocking colors when you

trim out probably more than most folks. I am a wasteful colored person, but I save them and then do a vegetable broth that I can use for other

things I've never done. That's good. Yeah, I trim a lot out too, because I don't like that stuff.

I don't either. You know, I keep the stock in little ones. Otherwise, I basically take out that whole that whole rib.

Are you a ripper cut?

I'm a ripper. Yeah, well, I'm a ripper. No, I'm a ripper and a terror. Yeah, I don't Oh, you don't cut cut. Now, if I'm doing a Brazilian style, I'm a ripper. I roll them up and then I cut them as the French would say oh shoot for now.