I started a debate about this a year ago, here... http://www.thatsjustnotright.com/forum/ind...showtopic=21997

So, this appears to be becoming an annual rant for me.

The company I work for has a full service cafeteria and occasionally they will have "themed" lunches. Well, today's lunch is labeled BLACK HISTORY MONTH CELEBRATION - just like that in bold capital letters.

Today's menu consists of the following choices ONLY.

Breakfast: Sausage & Biscuits with Country Gravy
Stockpot: Bean & Smoked Ham Hocks
Fish: Fried Catfish with Cajun Tartar Sauce
Grill: BBQ Ham Sandwich with Sweet Potato Fries
Classic: Southern Fried Chicken
Sandwich: Fried Green Tomato Sandwich with Bacon
Salad: Tuna Macaroni Salad

Why is this a "black history" celebration? Isn't this really just a "Southern food" celebration? Why does Southern food equate to being a black menu? I don't get it. It seems insulting to me. Maybe I'm just a sheltered white boy who doesn't understand such things... But seriously, what gives?



P.S. I got the fried chicken. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm, good.

If I were black, I think I would be insulted. It seems stereotypical to me.

Then again, I'm from the South so what do I know.

Eh, I find the whole concept of dedicating a month to a race to be stupid. The menu is more of a southern thing, but I can see the stretch to call it 'black food'.



If they really wanted to make it authentic they should have made you pay with food stamps.

Don't they already get Black Friday?

And is it just the Asians and African Americans who get months?

All the choices look pretty good. Where was the watermelon?

Haha I don't know if you purposely meant to do this or not, but you started this exact thread last year.

http://www.thatsjustnotright.com/forum/ind...l=black+history

I do believe that's why he linked last year's thread.

I saw on the news this morning that by the year 2050, whites will be the minority in the US. What will we eat during White History Month?

White rice, mashed potatoes, and roast turkey?

I'm planning on doing my part to celebrate/observe Black History Month....


I even got a t-shirt...

I think my efforts will be praised by all of my black friends......here in Utah.....one of the whitest states in the union...



And I Sooooo want a Fried Green Tomato Sandwich with Bacon samich right now!!!!!

Dont forget your hood.

Well, don't white people from the south also eat that food as well? So isn't that food really just synonymous with anyone who is from the South regardless of race?

Yes, that's kind of the point of the thread there skippy.

So what IS black food?

Raisin, Caviar, Olives, Beans, squid ink soup.

I find that offensive, not all beans are black.

Who do you think cooked "Southern food" for like two or three hundred years?


Some of it is what they cooked for massa and some is the scraps they were allowed to eat.

I like them black foods
I like them white foods
I like them Asian foods
I like them mixed race foods
I like them Spanish foods
I like them Italian foods
I like them French foods

Greek?

I don't think any white person would be caught dead eating chitlins.

I'm pretty sure it's fried pig intestines.

There are multiple ways to cooks chitlins (chitterlings is the actual spelling even though it is pronounced "chitlins"); they don't have to be fried.



Yes, chitterlings started in America as a slave food, but there are Southern whites that eat chitlins. The slaves cooked all of the leftover parts, but eventually massa wanted a taste of that too.



Head cheese in another one, but many meat deprived Eastern European countries make a similar food.



The recipe for head cheese is:


1. Boil pigs head(s).
2. Remove skull once everything has boiled off.
3. Chill.
4. Serve as you would "luncheon meat" or "cheese".

You haven't at least tried it?

As someone that grew up in a very southern family, I'm no stranger to Chitlins....not great stuff, but a lot of people in small southern towns eat it, not just black or white.

As far as Soul Food, what most people consider "black food" you have things like Pickled Pigs Feet (seriously), boiled and fried pigs feet, neck bones, etc. Really any kind of pork, like fried tenderloins, or pork liver, even though most butchers won't sell pork liver anymore, just beef or chicken. Pork Liver really has the better flavor of all of them.

Of course chicken is big, but not just fried Chicken, but Chicken Liver and Chicken Gizzards, which are kind of tough to chew, but taste really good.

For vegetables, you have: Collard Greens, Mustard Greens, Black Eyed Peas, Fried or Boiled Okra (Boiled is really slimy and gross to me)

Peach Cobbler is always a big dessert favorite.

And my personal favorite is Brunswick Stew, which consists of basically corn, okra, butter beans, chicken, pork, tomatoes onions, and seasoning to make it taste really good. It's a traditional favorite for Pork BBQ dinners. True old Brunswick strew really used parts of pork that were scraps when making other pork dishes. I remember when I was young my grandmother would literally boil the head of the pig, and take all the meat from the jowls, etc, and put it into the Brunswick Stew. Every Christmas we would smoke whole hogs on big metal and wire racks, flipping it over hot coals for 14-16 hours and then eating for days. There would be 50 to 100 people there all day just eating, drinking, having a blast.

Strickalean is probably one that most people haven't had if you aren't from some really small southern town. It's basically fried pork fat, kind of Bacon before it becomes bacon. It's very salty, crispy, and is eaten with breakfast mostly. Some people call it Fried FatBack, etc. But basically it's just a very salty piece of fat.

No I haven't, and quite frankly, this whole thread is making me want to wretch. Especially since I was looking up black foods and found this:

Head cheese? Mysterious gelatinous substance with bits of pig brain stuck in it? I refuse to believe that people eat this, for I will never be able to eat again if i so much as imagine it.

You have headcheese, along the same disgusting lines, is Blood Sausage, which I refuse to try. Black Pudding (or Blood Pudding) which I was tricked into trying at a Pub Pool League night in England. They convinced me it was some kind of jellied dessert, and I almost puked. Nasty as hell

If you wanna get technical, then that's not actually black food. The scraps are.

/Mike

As for the rest of the nastiness... That's poverty food, with no particular color associated. My dad had pork brains and eggs for breakfast. Chitterlings, jowl bacon and all. I actually prefer jowl to bacon sometimes.

I eat all the fooood, I eat all the fooood!



HAH you pussy! It's not great, but nor is it puke-worthy unless you are a wimp.
(oooh I think I'm channelling the spirit of Joshwa again)

The only reason it is to me is the texture...the taste isn't the worst, but there's something about the texture of it that's just not right. When you're expecting something sweet, and you bite into that thick jellied substance with that flavor instead, it's pretty nasty.

Mmmm black pudding GOOOOOOD!

biscuits and gravy.

You had me at yum.

THANK YOU

I was hoping at least SOMEONE would notice...

Me and my mate were dancing in my room to that last night as I attempted to pack my suitcase!

All the foods discussed here sound delicious, except for the head cheese. I can't fuck with that.

Every McDonalds I've ever eaten at in California has Maxicans doing the cooking, but that doesn't make it Latino food.

White people invented food so what the shit does it matter?

Yeah, but they put twists here and there. For example sweet potato pie is very much like a standard European custard pie, but it uses yams instead of just milk and some other flavoring.



Also it's not what Mexicans eat at home. If Mexicans mostly ate burgers and fries and worked at MacDonalds for the next 200-300 years, then I would call it Mexican food.



Dean have you really never heard of "Soul Food"? You seem dumbfounded by the revelation that there is a such thing as Soul Food. It is quite a common term for the foods you listed.



I think "Soul" was the code word for black people in the 50's or 60's. The current code word is "Urban", although Urban Outfitters predates this usage.



Are you going to deny Italians pasta, because the Chinese invented noodles and tomatoes are a New World plant?

I think that we can all come to the conclusion that there is NO such thing as American Black food, BUT if you want real authentic black food you will have to go to Africa. There food should be authentic since it is native to their countries and continents.

So spaghetti isn't Italian, because noodles come from China and tomatoes come from South America?



How many hundred years does a food have to be associated with a people for it to be their food?



Any food with pork or beef isn't Mexican, because they got those after the Europeans came over. About the same time Soul food started getting cooked.

Noodles, tomatoes, chicken, and beef are all just generic ingredients to make unique dishes associated with different cultures. You can take beef for example and say Carne Asada tacos, Mongolian beef, hamburgers, etc and you can decipher what group makes those although they all use the same ingredients.

It's not the ingredients used that is associated with certain cultures, it's the way they prepare them. So like I said, I don't think that there really is any black food since the way they prepare it is the same as all Southerners. So it should really just be creditted to the South not the black culture. I'm sure there is authentic American black food but I dont' know of any.

You have really never heard of Soul food? Weird, I thought it was a common term.


You guys are acting like I am making this shit up. There is a movie named Soul Food. There is Goodie Mob album named Soul Food. I didn't make up Soul food.

I've heard of Soul Food but's just regular food that everyone eats and that doesn't seem to be associated much with black people. Fried chicken, watermelon, and maybe cornbread are not food that black culture invented. Just something that is stereotyped to them, but everyone eats it. Nobody ever looks at those foods and says "black food" unlike Mexican food, Chinese food, Japanese food, and Italian food.

I maybe wrong about cornbread, that I think is something that was invented by them. Also, I know black people do have their own barbecue food but that is associated with Texan barbecue.

I think food is fuckin food.

You people put way too much thought into this.

The word food has lost all meaning now to me. Anyways, what is your favorite food dan? Mine right now is Chinese and Mexican.

Nothing says yum like dirt, AIDS, and gazelle.



Today I ate black people food for lunch. Country fried steak and cornbread! My coworkers ate fried catfish, collards, fried chicken livers, fried okra, fried pork chops, fried chicken, and grape kool aid - all of which are way too black for my liking.

I prefer my diet to be a bit mocha.


I did wash my food down with some delicious sweet tea, though.

How effete of you, Sampson.....Did you, mayhap, extend your pinky finger whilst looking down your regal nose at all of the heathens eating from their slop buckets?....

that made me hungry.

all except for the chicken livers bit. that shit's just nasty.