feedthemalik
Mar 8, 2022
Updated: Jun 11, 2022
I associate road trips with my childhood. I'm sure in my memory they are exaggerated, mere hours turned into long days in the car by the recollection of my impatient youth. We'd drive for extended trips to see family over summer or to explore on vacation. I was, and still am short. I'd grab a pillow and blanket and lie all the way flat stretched out across the backseat, sleeping easily while my dad drove through the night as he preferred. Otherwise, I'd be reading, able to somehow ignore the motion of the car and tune out the world in favor of an imaginary world in a book.
When I think of those road trips, I think of roadside meals at places like Cracker Barrel, where I'd impatiently use the bathroom and it felt so good to stand upright after hours in the car. I remember the canned Starbucks drinks being a favorite, or at least something my dad would get and I'd be able to sneak a sip of. I also think of national monuments, parks, and historical sites. My parents both loved to stop at what I used to think were the most boring, absolutely unnecessary, "whyyyyy are we here?" places like museums and historic buildings important to US history.
As you can likely tell, it seems I've become more like my parents as I've aged. I love exploring historical buildings, monuments, and parks. They prompt me to think about legacy, history and how our tellings of history change over time, and in the case of the most recent site I visited, about food and how deeply entwined it is with other parts of our lives, society, and economy.
A bit of that exploration below through the lens of a visit to the George Washington Carver Monument.
Take care,
Anela
Video Description: Scenes from Anela's trip to the George Washington Carver National Monument.
I drove from our house in Northwest Arkansas to the monument, listening to music loudly alone in the car as the brown winter grasses and bare trees passed by out of the window. In less than an hour I arrived, turning off the highway onto a rural road that seemed to lead only to trees, fields, and sparse houses in between. From that narrow and empty road, I spotted the sign for the George Washington Carver National Monument, a 240-acre park and the first dedicated to an African American by the National Park Service. I stepped out into a breezy and warm spring day - one of those perfectly comfortable days you wish could last forever - to explore the legacy of one of America's most famous men, the Black scientist everyone can name but most people can't tell you much more about.
I admit, before this trip I knew about George Washington Carver primarily through the lens of his work with peanuts. Considered a truly "Southern" food, the popularity of boiled peanuts can be traced to the same origin as many other regional dishes, the traditions of enslaved peoples. Though peanuts originate from South America, they were introduced to the North American colonies by enslaved peoples and were a crop and food associated with Black folks in the South. Like other ingredients and dishes, peanuts eventually made the leap from the subsistence gardens and dietary practices of enslaved peoples to white populations, becoming a common snack and street food beginning in the late 1800s.
Peanuts, this very Black food that had been accepted and adopted by broader American culture, eventually became a key feature in George Washington Carver's legacy, at least the legacy most of us remember today. Carver did work with peanuts extensively, proposing a number of uses for them and promoting them as a cash crop that could also help enrich nutrient-depleted soils. Many credit Carver's work with peanuts for saving the economy of the South. But as the monument made clear and subsequent reading has pointed out, peanuts are only a small part of a complicated legacy.
Both during and after his life Carver was a symbol, one that meant vastly different things to different people. He was a prominent Black man who had overcome enslavement, denial of education, racism, and more, to take on a position of power and influence. Though many would be extremely upset at me for saying so, he was an influencer, one of the first Black influencers in the United States. Carver was able to take his position, his friendships with figures such as Henry Ford, and leverage it. As with many historical figures, reports conflict as to his true level of humility, his aims, and the import of his work.
It's impossible to parse which of these conflicting narratives is exactly true about Carver. They likely all contain an element of truth. Maybe the real lesson of Carver's legacy is that many things can be true at once and there are likely no clear lines between issues. Who says that George Washington Carver couldn't be a deeply humble man concerned with uplifting the Southern poor, in particular Black communities, while also enjoying the level of fame and attention he received? Why can't he be the "plant doctor," peanut proponent, and learned scientist while also having numerous failed or fizzled projects? And why can't he be deeply concerned with food production and agriculture but that concern connected to other aims or goals?
Carver began experimenting with plants as a child and learning about natural remedies to improve the health of gardens and orchards, earning him the nickname of “the plant doctor” among local farmers due to his unique abilities.
Carver was the first Black student to attend Iowa State Agricultural College (now Iowa State University), where he studied botany. Upon graduating in 1896, he became the first Black man in U.S. history to receive graduate training in modern agricultural methods.
In 1896 at the invitation of Booker T. Washington, Carver joined the Agriculture Department at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama (now Tuskegee University) - where he remained for 47 years, despite offers from other institutions.
Carver’s work with peanuts eventually led him to create peanut-based bread, cookies, sausage, ice cream, and even coffee - many of which are included in his “300 uses for peanuts”.
Carver did not invent peanut butter. While peanut paste can be found in his lists for uses of peanuts, Carver acknowledged that many uses were not his original ideas and gave credit to dozens of sources including magazines, newspapers, and cookbooks.
Not all of the uses of peanuts discovered by Carver were food-related - insecticides, glue, charcoal, rubber, face powder, shampoo, shaving cream, hand lotion, are among some of the valuable peanut products he discovered.
In 1906, Carver launched the Jesup Agricultural Wagon - a mobile school with agricultural equipment and materials - to reach rural farmers unable to travel and share methods to improve their crops. In its first summer of operation, the wagon reached 2,000 people a month.
Carver became a close friend of Henry Ford, working with him to develop a synthetic rubber due to wartime shortage in the 1940s. Ford also donated generously to the Tuskegee Institute, helping fund Carver’s agricultural experiments.
I'm headed to Oklahoma City for work soon and found this read on The Promise of Oklahoma fascinating
Lately, I've been really enjoying recipes from Kale Me Maybe's Good Mood Food newsletter. I feel like the recipes are always accessible, simple, and tasty.
Virtual Cooking Class: March 16th at 6 PM CST, 7 PM EST – Join me and Chef Taffy Elrod and learn to make Lentil Shepherd's Pie! Register at the link above. Taffy Elrod is a chef, cooking instructor, and food writer with a passion for making good food accessible to everyone. She has been cooking and teaching in New York for over 20 years. In 2015 she and her husband opened a pizzeria in the Hudson Valley, where they built a dedicated following for their thin crust pizza and homestyle cuisine. Unfortunately, like many restaurant owners, they were forced to close their doors in 2020.
Book Talk & Virtual Baking Class with Cheryl Day: April 7th at 6 PM CST, 7 PM EST – Join me and extraordinary Southern baker Cheryl Day for a combined book talk and baking class. We will discuss her new cookbook, Cheryl Day's Treasury of Southern Baking, called "the definitive book on Southern baking" by Bon Appetit, and learn to make biscuits together. Cheryl is a dear friend, James Beard-nominated baker and co-founder of Back in the Day Bakery in Savannah, Georgia. She's the great great grandaughter of a skilled enslaved pastry cook, author of multiple bestselling cookbooks along with her husband Griffith, and one of the cofounders of Southern Restaurants for Racial Justice, a collective to raise funds and provide resources for Black-owned food businesses.
No stats to report this week as I'm in prep mode! Prepping for Iraq, prepping for an upcoming press trip to Oklahoma City, and prepping for a content series focused on NW Arkansas. As I'm getting more settled here I've found some truly incredible small businesses and am working on a video series about them, their work, their stories, etc... These are all spots with little to no marketing arms, many of them Black-owned. It's taking me some time as I have to schedule, interview, film, and edit for all of them to get the series ready. But I'm hopeful when it debuts it will show a new side of this region to everyone in my comments making statements like "but there's nothing there ugh."