Gravy shares stories of the changing American South through the foods we eat. Gravy showcases a South that is constantly evolving, accommodating new immigrants, adopting new traditions, and lovingly maintaining old ones. It uses food as a means to explore all of that, to dig into lesser-known corners of the region, complicate stereotypes, document new dynamics, and give voice to the unsung folk who grow, cook, and serve our daily meals.
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Apalachicola Oysters and the Battle for a Florida Bay
Wednesday, September 11, 2024 • Duration 28:32
In “Apalachicola Oysters and the Battle for a Florida Bay,” Gravy producer Betsy Wallace takes listeners to Franklin County, Florida to find out if a new tourist development could be the biggest threat to a decades-long, $30 million investment in the Apalachicola Bay Oyster Fishery Restoration.
Franklin County is tucked into Florida’s Forgotten Coast, a stretch of the panhandle known for white sand beaches, off-shore fishing, and the iconic Apalachicola Bay oyster. It is distinctly Old Florida; there are family-owned seafood restaurants next to mom-and-pop bait shops. You won’t see a high-rise hotel until the next county over. When the black bears get hot in the sticky heat of July, they lumber across Highway 98 to swim with the jellyfish in the salty Gulf Coast water.
This area is home to one of the few remaining working shorelines in North Florida. For about a hundred years, up until a devastating fishery crash in 2013, the oyster industry powered Franklin County’s economy. At its peak in 2012, the industry brought in over $9 million and employed about 2,500 locals in the small Florida panhandle towns of Eastpoint, Apalachicola, Carrabelle, and Panacea. In 2013 the oyster industry crashed and took the local economy down with it.
Now, more than a decade later, join Wallace as she digs into the restoration of the Apalachicola Bay oyster reefs and a newly proposed (and highly divisive) large-scale tourist resort. Will the Forgotten Coast stay forgotten long enough for the seafood industry to recover and provide stable, well-paying jobs for the next generation? Or will tourism and real estate development finally take over, as it has up and down the Florida coast?
In this episode, Wallace talks to Josh Norman, who grew up in an oystering family and is a marine biologist turned VP of the locally owned Bayside Coffee; Charles Pennycutt, owner of Fisherman’s Choice Bait and Tackle; Paddy’s Raw Bar restaurateur Patrick Sparks; Florida State University scientist Dr. Sandra Brooke; and oyster farmer Xochitl Bevera.
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The Kitchen Electric: Selling Power to Rural America
Wednesday, August 21, 2024 • Duration 24:32
When we think of the industrialization of America and the rise of electricity, we’re printed to think about people in cities and factories, where machines and assembly lines abound. We think of Charlie Chaplin tangled up in conveyor belts and cogs in the movie Modern Times. We think of electric motors, coal mining, steam engines. But electricity transformed another area almost as much as it transformed the city or the factory… and that area is the house. And because of that there’s one really key demographic that’s impacted by electricity perhaps more than any other: women.
Electrification prompted a redefinition of house work and those who did it, according to scholar Rachele Dini. She wrote a book called “All-Electric Narratives,” which focuses on how advertising and literature represent electricity and electric appliances in the home.
Rachele says that the change in expectations for women and housework can be charted through advertisements: for instance, General Electric sponsored “Gold Medallion” campaigns in women’s magazines that recognized homes with all-electric “automated” kitchens. These adverts always showed sparkling clean kitchens and promised less labor for the housewife… but, the truth is, in actuality, more women were doing more labor on average.
This is because there were fewer adults in each household to share responsibilities as nuclear families became the norm: husbands were now generally expected to go to work to support the household through their wages and women were generally expected to shop, cook, clean, and manage the household. What had once been the work of multiple adults, perhaps including extended family members or hired cooks or maids, now, in most middle- and working-class nuclear families, became the job of one woman: the so-called housewife.
In fact, a whole new discipline emerged during the period of industrialization: Home Economics. You’re probably most familiar with it as a middle school elective class where you learn how to care for an egg as a practice in parenting. But in the twentieth century, home economics was a serious science.
“No one really appreciates what a degree in home economics is, until you look at a college notebook,” says Hal Wallace. They did “laboratory experiments on how foods for example, caramelize, when they're heated, or how the proteins might rearrange in an egg as it's been heated…. There is a lot of science involved, real science involved with this.”
At that time, home economists were concerned not just with how to teach others to cook, clean, and care for a household, but also with how to teach them to be smart consumers of new electric technologies, like electric stoves, toasters, and coffee-makers.
The U.S. government hired home economists to promote the formation of rural electrification when they kicked off the “Rural Electric Circus.” They toured shows in rural communities across the South and Midwest where they taught audiences how to skillfully place lightbulbs, or launder shirts in a new dryer, or cook scrambled eggs on an electric stove. The shows were both educational and promotional: teaching new technologies and encouraging these residents to form electrical cooperatives to access them.
Katie Jane Fernelius reported and produced this episode.
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Wherefore art thou, ROMEO? At Jack’s!
Wednesday, May 8, 2024 • Duration 27:38
In “Wherefore art thou, ROMEO? At Jack’s!" Gravy producer Irina Zhorov takes listeners to a busy fast food restaurant in Jasper, Alabama, to sit at a round table with a group of friends who meet there daily. The group, who call themselves ROMEO—Retired Old Men Eating Out—are a fixture at this restaurant. Over coffee and biscuits they share stories, reminisce, discuss the day's news and, when it's necessary, offer up prayers for each other. They gather to fellowship, to joke, to relieve loneliness. Other groups like them meet at similar locations around the county.
Fast food restaurants have long been demonized for both the lack of nutrition in the food they tend to serve, as well as their potential to replace locally owned community spots. But at this Jack's, the ROMEOs have adapted the place to their needs, transforming a corporate space into a community one, where they are able to socialize on their own terms, bring in their own food, and build relationships with the staff. More than a third of older Americans are socially isolated, which leads to poor health outcomes, including increased risk of dementia, depression, and heart disease. In many places, particularly rural areas, so-called "third spaces," where people can meet outside of the home or work with friends and strangers alike, can be hard to find. Some researchers see fast food restaurants—with their affordable meals, accessible seating and restrooms, and ubiquity—as one potential outlet for older adults to meet their social needs.
In this episode, Zhorov talks to the ROMEOs, including John Miller, a retired health inspector, and Dorman Grace, a farmer. Jessica Finlay, assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, in the Department of Geography and the Institute of Behavioral Science, researches how older adults use fast food restaurants and talks about why they're appealing as meeting spaces.
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Visible Yam
Thursday, September 3, 2020 • Duration 21:01
The SFA mourns the passing of Randall Kenan, a long-time member and frequent presenter at SFA events. This Gravy episode is a re-broadcast of Randall Kenan's presentation at the 2018 Southern Foodways Symposium, which studied food and literature.
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We the People are Larger Than We Used to Be
Thursday, August 27, 2020 • Duration 23:15
What are the legacies of our pasts? How does the past shape our today? How do the lives our parents and grandparents led affect the lives we lead today? Those are some of the questions writer Tommy Tomlinson of Charlotte has been asking himself. And he's asking them in a really interesting way. We are accustomed to hearing that question asked about something like education. If your parents went to college, you have a greater chance of going to college. But how does the life and work of your people affect your health? How does it affect what you eat? That's a newer and now urgent question for many Southerners.
Tommy Tomlinson is the author of The Elephant in the Room, a memoir about his decision to swear off Krispy Kreme and chili dogs as he approached 50 years old at 460 pounds. His podcast SouthBound features interviews with Southerners–artists, athletes, preachers, and politicians–exploring how place shapes what they do. He worked 23 years as a reporter and columnist for the Charlotte Observer.
This presentation was originally shared at the 2019 SFA fall symposium on food and labor. Matt Pearl produced the episode.
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Magic City Poetry
Thursday, August 20, 2020 • Duration 26:52
In this episode of Gravy, Ashley M. Jones and Lee Bains III share verses about food labor.
Jones is an award-winning poet from Birmingham, Alabama. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University, and she is the author of Magic City Gospel (Hub City Press 2017), dark / / thing (Pleiades Press 2019), and Reparations Now! (Hub City Press 2021). Her work has earned several awards, including the Silver Medal in the Independent Publishers Book Awards and the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. She is founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival. She shared the poems in this episode at the 2019 Winter Symposium in Birmingham.
Bains, also a native of Birmingham, is a singer/songwriter who founded the Glory Fires. His first interest in music came from the church he attended as a child. He went on to study literature at college in New York, but returned to Alabama and refocused his writing attention on music. Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires have released 4 albums, including 2019’s Live at the Nick. The songs shared in this episode were performed at the 2019 Southern Foodways Symposium in Oxford, Mississippi.
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Punchin' the Dough: Singing about Food Labor
Thursday, August 13, 2020 • Duration 19:57
From Punchin' the Dough to Peach Pickin' Time in Georgia, music has long included songs about labor. Scott Barretta, who once served as editor of Living Blues magazine, shares songs about food labor in folk, blues, and country music traditions.
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Food Festival Financials
Thursday, August 6, 2020 • Duration 22:26
Festivals are terrific ways to celebrate place and food, to showcase community and culture. At their best, festivals are gathering spots for people who see each other all too seldom. They're celebrations of what a community values. And food festivals can democratize access to artisan goods and artisan producers by offering a bite, a taste, a glimpse, and a sip of the rarefied world of white-tablecloth dining. But that access comes with costs. Most festival-goers likely think their ticket price covers the food and wine they've queued up to taste. Most festival-goers would be wrong.
Hannah Raskin reported this story. Raskin explores food and culture for The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina. This presentation was originally commissioned for the 2019 Southern Foodways Fall Symposium on Food and Labor.
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Shucking, by Elton Glaser
Thursday, July 16, 2020 • Duration 06:19
"Shucking" by Elton Glaser
Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verses from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018.
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Cajun Kibbe: Eating Lebanese in Louisiana
Thursday, June 18, 2020 • Duration 24:54
In 1983, a Lafayette housewife named Bootsie John Landry self-published a cookbook called The Best of South Louisiana Cooking. Sprinkled among the expected Cajun staples were less familiar recipes like fattoush and something called Sittee’s Lentil Salad. Bootsie was part of a large Lebanese family and a greater community that began emigrating from Lebanon to Louisiana as early as the 1880s. Her cousins are the Reggie family, who for the past century have been cooking up traditional Lebanese comfort food from their home in Lafayette. Fred Reggie and his daughter, Simone, share how they’ve peppered traditional Lebanese recipes with Cajun lagniappe to create “LebaCajun” food.
The episode was reported and produced by Sarah Holtz.
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