"Southern Food and Beverage Museum" news and stories

Sweet potato pie is a Southern food superstar, immortalized in song, celebrated in literature and beloved by American food authority President Barack Obama, who confidently called the filling his favorite while on the campaign trail. And then there's sweet potato cake.

Sweet potato cake is so thoroughly obscure that René Simon, spokesman for the Louisiana Sweet Potato Commission, claims he's never tried it: "I've lived in South Louisiana all my life, and I don't think I've ever had sweet potato cake," Simon tells Slashfood.

According to him, the Pelican State's sweet potato scene is all pie, all the time. "Here, America means mom and sweet potato pie," Simon says.

On any given day, I've said ten nice things about the Southern Foodways Alliance before it's even lunchtime. Today, there are pom-pon shakes, fist pumps and spirit fingers of glee at the news of their latest endeavor.

"Announcing SFA's Skillet Brigade

Roll up your sleeves and join SFA's Skillet Brigade. It's a new initiative, one designed to put our vision statement into action: To set a table where black and white, rich and poor, all who gather, may consider our history and our future in a spirit of reconciliation.

Show SFA spirit in your community. Don't think large scale; you don't need to rebuild a storm-damaged fried chicken restaurant. Think smaller scale, and work with an existing effort. Serve lunch at a soup kitchen. Staff the hospitality tent at your local farmers' market. Lend time and talents to the community food pantry." (Read more here.)

For folks unfamiliar with the SFA, they're a member-supported organization of 800+ academics, chefs, writers, and plain ol' food fans who've banded together to celebrate and preserve the food cultures of the American South via conferences, publications, documentary films, and general full-throated evangelism. Won't you please lend a spatula? It's for an awfully delicious cause.

[via: The Southern Foodways Alliance's Skillet Brigade]

It started as an innocent hobby. I'd pick a cookbook or two up at thrift stores and used bookstores when I was traveling or visiting my parents. Then I got a real job and had a bit of disposable income and so started filling the gaps in my cookbook collection, buying the ones that I had always longed for. Then I acquired books from the collections of others, including my aunts Flora and Anne, reader Kate and the mother of a friend of a friend. Suddenly my apartment was overflowing with cookbooks. I love the abundance of cookbooks, but at times it makes walking through the living room challenging.

So I was thrilled to discover on Shuna's blog that the Southern Food and Beverage Museum is in need of cookbook donations. They are located in New Orleans and lost more than half of their collection to Hurricane Katrina back in 2005. They are looking for new and used cookbooks that have something to do with Southern food, cooking and culture. I plan on culling my collection in order find anything that they might be interested in and putting together a package for them.

If you have some appropriate volumes in your collection, you can send your (fully tax-deductible) donations to:

Southern Food & Beverage Museum
attn. Liz Williams
1 Poydras Street, #169
New Orleans, Louisiana 70130

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