As We Eat

Today, Leigh shares her experience with a recipe that embodies the feeling of home: Edna Lewis' Beef a là Mode from A Taste of Country Living. 

The recipes in this auto-biographical cookbook are full of warmth, flavor, and nostalgia, and Beef a là Mode is no exception. This classic comfort food was a favorite of Edna’s family during the winter months in Freetown and was often served for special occasions.

Listen as Leigh shares personal experience with the recipe and how a dish can connect us to our past, our community, and our sense of home.

Books we think you'll enjoy

A Taste of Country Cooking, Edna Lewis

Other episodes we think you'll like

EP 43 Food Pioneers: Life and Career Highlights of People Who Make Food Great

EP 45 Cookbooks: Guardians of Culture and Cuisine

We would love to connect with you

AsWeEat.com, on Instagram @asweeat, join our new As We Eat community on Facebook, or subscribe to the As We Eat Journal.

Do you have a great idea 💡 for a show topic, a recipe 🥘 that you want to share, or just say “hi”👋🏻? Send us an email at [email protected]

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As a member of affiliate programs, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. This helps us to continue to bring you stories, history, and personal musings about food, cuisines, traditions, and recipes

Season 3 kicks off with a cookbook with a heartfelt message of seasonality. The Taste of Country cooking by Chef Edna Lewis provides a beautifully written canvas for Kim and Leigh explore what it means to eat seasonally, and what it means to be home.

Despite growing up in a figurative cornucopia of produce in California, Kim struggled to feel a connection between herself, the food she ate, and the place she lived. It wasn’t that the luscious fruits and vegetables were bad - it just was that the easy availability and agricultural homogeneity made everything less vibrant, less succulent, and less special. 

Reading Edna Lewis’s seminal work The Taste of Country Cooking helped Kim to break through a false dichotomy between the stereotypes of “city” and “country” and encouraged her to examine the development of her own foodways and traditions grown while living in seven different U.S states.

In the pages of this loving tribute to Chef Lewis’ childhood home in Freetown, Virginia and its rich traditions, Kim found inspiration to embrace the place in which she lives now and to nurture roots in her home community by exploring new foods grown locally in season. 

Together Kim and Leigh explore both the fascinating life of Chef Edna Lewis, how she came to write this marvelous book, and the enduring legacy that The Taste of Country Cooking plays in defining not only a key element of American food culture, but also how it loving marks an important time and place in the author’s life.

Sources We Found Helpful for this Episode Biography: Edna Lewis

Edna Lewis Foundation: “About Chef Edna Lewis”

Books We Think You’ll Enjoy Reading

The Taste of Country Cooking by Edna Lewis

The Edna Lewis Cookbook by Edna Lewis and Evangeline Peterson

In Pursuit of Flavor by Edna Lewis

Recipes You Really Need to Try

Edna Lewis’ White Pound Cake the Kitchn

We would love to connect with you

AsWeEat.com, on Instagram @asweeat, join our new As We Eat community on Facebook, or subscribe to the As We Eat Journal.

Do you have a great idea 💡 for a show topic, a recipe 🥘 that you want to share, or just say “hi”👋🏻? Send us an email at [email protected]

Review As We Eat on Podchaser or Apple Podcast. We would like to know what you think.

As a member of affiliate programs, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. This helps us to continue to bring you stories, history, and personal musings about food, cuisines, traditions, and recipes

2022 was an eventful year for Leigh and Kim, and we laid everything on the table for As We Eat this year. Across 20 episodes, we ladled out many stories about how the ways we cook, eat, and share meals make food such a key component of our homes, our communities, and our culture.

In this final episode for 2022, Leigh and Kim discuss our favorite episodes of the year and what we’ve learned. We especially enjoyed unpacking the intersection of feminism and food studies with a special focus on community cookbooks and American Suffragist movement. We also loved learning about and sharing stories of the cultural commonalities of many fundamental foods, like dumplings, stew, and rice. As We Eat also loved answering questions from our listeners about Black & White cookies and the differences between jams & jellies.

One episode in particular though has inspired how As We Eat is planning to approach our third season in 2023. Leigh and Kim agree that cookbooks have much to offer us - whether we’re kitchen novices or seasoned foodies - and so we’ll be devoting our time, curiosity, and research into unpacking how cookbooks, both ancient and modern, have impacted how we think about, talk about, and interact with the foods that we eat. Stay tuned for interviews with authors, discussion about cookbooks as literature, insight into how cookbooks define (and exclude) communities, and more.

Don’t miss these stellar episodes:

Episode 45: Cookbooks: The Guardians of Cuisine and Culture

Feminism, Food Studies, and Women’s Suffrage

• EP 36: Feminism at the Kitchen Counter From Betty Crocker to Julia Child
• Ep 37: From the Kitchen to the Voting Booth: Suffrage for Women and Community Cookbooks

The Dumpling Trilogy

• EP 48: Dumplings Around the World: Pan Asian Dumplings from Chinese Medicine to Dim Sum
• EP 49: Dumplings Around the World: European Dumplings from Saints to Holy Justice in Just One Bite
• EP 50: Dumplings Around the World: The Great American Dumplings Showdown

Episodes Inspired by Our Listeners 

• EP 39: Fisherman's Stew - A Savory Representation of Region, Culture, and Flavors
• EP 40: Sailing the Umami Seas - Fishy Origins of an Ancient Recipe, Proper Pronunciation of a Pantry Staple, and our favorite Bloody Marys
• EP 44: Look to the Cookie! Black & White Cookies, Racial Harmony, and the Impact of Food In Media
• EP 46: By Jam. Jelly, or Conserve: the True Stories of Fruit Spreads
• EP 51: From Temple to Table: How Rice Built Communities Around the World

Thanks for sharing this wonderful season with us; see you in 2023!Episode Transcript

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Pies have claimed their stake at the feast table long before there was a national celebration of Thanksgiving. Largely originating in England, pies both small and large served royals and peasants alike with fillings of meat, fruits, and spices from faraway lands. Immigrants from Great Britain brought pie traditions over the Atlantic and expanded their repertoire with new fruits, nuts, and game. 

Pecan pie - an American South classic pie - is one such newcomer. As Leigh explains it, the sweet meat inside the hardy nutshell was previously known only to the Native American people inhabiting the pecan’s peak growth areas along the Mississippi River and its tributaries north to Illinois and Iowa and south to the Gulf Coast. Pecans didn’t turn into the pie darling that we love today - the first recipes for pecan pie in the early 19th Century more closely resembled a meringue pie. A certain corn syrup merchant is credited for changing around our conceptualization of what we now consider a classic pecan pie. 

Curiosity, and a misplaced sense of nostalgia, drew Kim towards a thorough examination of the mincemeat pie. Mincemeat once graced royal coronation tables and has since become synonymous with a well-provisioned Christmas table, so much so that the pastries were once banned by Puritan governments in England and the United States in the 17th Century for being too decadent! These early pies earned their name from the process and product of their creation - minced meats mixed with fruits and spices served up in trencher or coffin pies (named for their shape!) - but have since gone largely vegetarian. 

Please don’t miss our other episodes devoted to pie:

Pie: Crazy Labels, Cockney Rhyming Slang, and Greek Melons (Episode 2)

Revisiting Pies: Desperation, Thrift, and Brand Campaigns (Episode 32)

And an unique take on mincemeat from our 2021 Alimentary Advent Calendar

Alimentary Advent Calendar: Door Number 9 - Mincemeat

Sources We Found Helpful for this Episode 

The History of Mince Pies - Historic UK

The History of Mincemeat Pies, from the Crusades to Christmas - Smithsonian Magazine

What The Heck Is Mincemeat? - Farmers' Almanac

Books We Think You’ll Enjoy ReadingOxford Companion to Food by Alan Davidson

Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink by Andrew Smith Art of the Pie: A Practical Guide to Homemade Crusts, Fillings, and Life by Kate McDermott

Pie Camp: The Skills You Need to Make Any Pie You Want by Kate McDermott

Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management: The 1861 Classic with Advice on Cooking, Cleaning, Childrearing, Entertaining, and More by Isabella Beeton (contains a recipe for mincemeat)

Recipes You Really Need to Try

Pumpkin Pecan Pie from Family Spice

Gluten-Free Pecan Pie from Fearless Dining

Modern Mincemeat Pie | Saveur

A Pie Calendar

Leigh's 2023 Pie Calendar can be purchased here

Transcript

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Today marks the first of two festive days collectively known as Días de los Muertos, a Hispanic folk holiday to remember the souls of those departed and to temporarily welcome them home with a vibrant celebration of color, food, and music. Leigh and Kim go beyond the veil to reveal the origins of two iconic food traditions: Pan de Muerto and Calaveres du Azucar.

During Días de los Muertos, millions of Hispanic families celebrate their ancestors and deceased loved ones with special traditions and foods that acknowledge the circle of life. The air fills with sweet scents of marigolds, orange blossom, and anise to guide the family spirits home, and everywhere you turn you find pillowy sweet breads decorated with skulls & bones or brightly decorated sugar skulls. Behind these paradoxical images - macabre yet cheerful - lie the stories of ancient Mesoamerica rites transformed by European colonialism into more palatable traditions.

Sources We Found Helpful for this Episode 

Pan de Muerto by Mexican Food Kitchen

Oaxaca welcomes spirits home with ’bread of the dead’ | National Geographic

Books We Think You’ll  Enjoy Reading

Skulls to the Living, Bread to the Dead: The Day of the Dead in Mexico and Beyond by Stanley Brandes

Llewellyn's Little Book of the Day of the Dead by Jaime Gironés

This Guera's Guide to Dia de los Muertos: An Introduction to the Holiday and Assistance on Setting up the Altar by Lauren Alaniz

Recipes You Really Need to Try

Pan de Muerto by Good Housekeeping

We would love to connect with you

AsWeEat.com, on Instagram @asweeat, join our new As We Eat community on Facebook, or subscribe to the As We Eat Journal.

Do you have a great idea 💡 for a show topic, a recipe 🥘 that you want to share, or just say “hi”👋🏻?  Send us an email at [email protected]

Review As We Eat on Podchaser or Apple Podcast. We would like to know what you think.

As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programs, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. This helps us to continue to bring you stories, history, and personal musings about food, cuisines, traditions, and recipes

Of the three cereal grains consumed around the world, rice is a versatile foodstuff with an interesting history. As a food staple, it nourishes more than half of the 7.75 billion people on our planet, but it means so much more to us than merely grains in a bowl - this is the stuff upon which empires are built. For this episode, As We Eat follows the story of rice from temple to terroir to table.

Confucian proverbs run the gamut from profane to profound, and about rice it is believed that he said: “With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and my bent arm for a pillow; I have still joy in the midst of all these things.”

Luckily for modern eaters, we can still experience joy in the midst of our eating without having to resort to coarse rice. In fact, we have four kinds of rice to enjoy from all over the world - indica, japonica, aromatic, and glutinous rice all have found roles in our kitchens, our diets, and even our spiritual practices.

Sources We Found Helpful for this Episode 

Domestication: The birth of rice

Ingrained: Sharing the Untold Stories of California Rice, hosted by Jim Morris

The "7 GODS" in a Single Rice Grain! Why Farmers are Considered Gods in Japan

Books We Think You’ll Enjoy ReadingRice: A Global History by Renee Marton

Rice: A Savor the South Cookbook by Michael Twitty

The Rice Bible by Christia Teubner

Recipes You Really Need to Try

Chicken Curry & Calrose Rice Stuffed Acorn Squash

Butternut Squash Risotto

One-Pot Chicken Biryani

Pork and Shiitake Mushroom Congee

Grandma’s Rice Pudding

Episode Transcript

🎧 Click here for the full, interactive transcript of this episode 🎧

We would love to connect with you

AsWeEat.com, on Instagram @asweeat, join our new As We Eat community on Facebook, or subscribe to the As We Eat Journal.

Do you have a great idea 💡 for a show topic, a recipe 🥘 that you want to share, or just say “hi”👋🏻? Send us an email at [email protected]

Review As We Eat on Podchaser or Apple Podcast. We would like to know what you think.

Whether served fried, steamed, or boiled, dumplings can tell the story of a geography by how it's cooked and eaten . As We Eat concludes its three-part series exploring the global cuisine of dumplings with our third installment examining the twin stories of the “dumpling” darling of a classic American comfort food. Are you Team Fluffy or Team Slick?

As we’ve discovered in our three-part series, dumplings reign as a perpetual favorite in cuisines all over the world, and North America is no different. Here in the States, two different formulations of dumplings form the backbone to an All-American classic dish: Chicken & Dumplings. In many ways, the popularity of that dish is no real mystery - people have been enjoying meat stewed with vegetables for centuries - but it definitely gains an advantage from a fluffy soft or slick chewy dumplings.

Sources We Found Helpful for this Episode Don't Call Chicken and Dumplings Depression-Era Cheap Eats

Oxford Companion to Food by Alan Davidson

Books We Think You’ll  Enjoy Reading

The Virginia Housewife by Mary Randolph

The Kentucky Housewife by Lettice Brian

Carolina Housewife by Sarah Rutledge

Housekeeping in Old Virginia by Marion Kabel Tyre

Recipes You Really Need to Try

Pennsylvania Dutch Chicken Pot Pie from a Coal Cracker in the Kitchen

Southern Chicken and Dumplings from Pastry Chef Online

Nothing says comfort like homemade chicken and dumplings - Chesterfield Observer

Chicken Soup with Butter Dumplings from Chez Us

Episode Transcript

🎧 Click here for the full, interactive transcript of this episode 🎧

As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programs, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. This helps us to continue to bring you stories, history, and personal musings about food, cuisines, traditions, and recipes

Whether served fried, steamed, or boiled, a dumpling filled with local ingredients feeds the mind with a taste of its history. As We Eat is embarking in a three-part series exploring the global cuisine of dumplings, and our second episode takes us over Silk Road trade routes into Europe where we explore the culinary impact of such European delights as ravioli, pierogi, Matzo balls, kreplach, and floaters.

One dumpling tells many stories - its ingredients tell stories about the people that it nurtures and the techniques of its making helps recall special times and places. Each dumpling itself is a sort of “perfect bite” showcasing a world of flavor encapsulated within a pillowy cloud of dough. 

As we continue our three-part journey into the global culinary phenomenon of dumplings, Leigh and Kim share the history and culture behind some of the world’s favorite dumplings to unveil some of the rhyme and reason behind their popularity and prominent place on our plates.

Sources We Found Helpful for this Episode 

Dauphiné ravioli

Raviole du Dauphiné from Isère, France

How St. Hyacinth miraculously fed a crowd of starving people with pierogi

Giant Perogy – Glendon, Alberta - Gastro Obscura

Great Pittsburgh Pierogy Race

Teddy Roosevelt tackled by Pierogi 

Books We Think You’ll  Enjoy Reading

Dumplings for Beginners: 50 Recipes and Simple Step-by-Step Lessons to Make Your Favorite Dumplings by Terri Dien

The Dumpling Galaxy Cookbook by Helen You and Max Falkowitz

Matzo: 35 Recipes for Passover and All Year Long: A Cookbook

The Matzo Ball Boy (Picture Puffin Books)

Recipes You Really Need to Try

Learn How to Make Raviole from France

Raviole Gratin Recipe

Ravioles (Cypriot ravioli) - Kopiaste..to Greek Hospitality

Matzo Ball Soup

Kreplach

Suet Dumplings

Episode Transcript

🎧 Click here for the full, interactive transcript of this episode 🎧

We would love to connect with you

AsWeEat.com, on Instagram @asweeat, join our new As We Eat community on Facebook, or subscribe to the As We Eat Journal.

Do you have a great idea 💡 for a show topic, a recipe 🥘 that you want to share, or just say “hi”👋🏻?  Send us an email at [email protected]

Review As We Eat on Podchaser or Apple Podcast. We would like to know what you think.

As an Amazon Associate and member of other affiliate programs, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. This helps us to continue to bring you stories, history, and personal musings about food, cuisines, traditions, and recipes

Whether served fried, steamed, or boiled, a well-shaped dumpling offers a tasty perfect bite along with a well-intentioned wish for luck, prosperity, and good health. As We Eat is embarking in a three-part series exploring the global cuisine of dumplings, and our first episode starts with a survey of the intersection of food and medicine with a deeper exploration of two immensely popular Pan Asian dumplings - gyoza and siu mai.

Sources We Found Helpful for this Episode The origins of siu mai: how an iconic dim sum staple came to be | South China Morning Post

What's a dim sim? How an oversized dumpling became an Australian food icon | CNN Travel

The Oxford Companion to Food, edited by Alan Davidson

Books We Think You’ll  Enjoy ReadingDumplings for Beginners: 50 Recipes and Simple Step-by-Step Lessons to Make Your Favorite Dumplings by Terri Dien

Dumplings All Day Wong: A Cookbook of Asian Delights From a Top Chef by Lee Ann Wong

Gyoza: The Ultimate Dumpling Cookbook: 50 Recipes from Tokyo's Gyoza King - Pot Stickers, Dumplings, Spring Rolls and More! by Paradise Yamamoto

The Dumpling Galaxy Cookbook by Helen You and Max Falkowitz

The Dumpling Sisters Cookbook: Over 100 Favourite Recipes From A Chinese Family Kitchen by The Dumpling Sisters (Author)

Recipes You Really Need to Try

Authentic Pork Shui Mai (Shumai) from Yum China

Episode Transcript

🎧 Click here for the full, interactive transcript of this episode 🎧

With as few as three ingredients, dough can transform into some of the world’s most seminal dishes - pizza, pasta, bread, and more. Join As We Eat as we rise to the occasion and dish up some fascinating history and cultural impacts of dough.

The Limitless Capacity of Dough

Dough has a nearly limitless capacity depending on its ingredients, leavening or fermenting process, or how the dough is shaped and cooked. Called “the spark that led to the development of state and large political units,” a humble bowl of dough represents not only all the potential of what it might become, but also as a reminder of how much humans relied upon basic foodstuffs to imagine, build, and sustain whole civilizations. In this episode of As We Eat, Leigh and Kim take you on a journey through the history of dough and its mainstay ingredients and techniques. We also discuss how dough has its place within nearly every cuisine across the globe, and still grows its impact every day.

A Culinary Building Block

Dough is a culinary building block that enriches our lives from basic nutrition to agricultural development to large-scale trade. 

As a mother to all manner of popular food mainstays, a ball of dough is inherently hopeful because it could turn into so many wonderful, cherished things. It's no wonder that in the midst of a global health concern, we found space on our counters for jars of dough starters that perhaps reminded us that we could nurture and care for ourselves even as time seemed to stand still.

For today’s episode, we travel back in time to review how the mixture of a few simple ingredients influenced and was influenced by the cultures and dynasties of the people who relied upon the foods that dough created. Leigh shows how the concept of mixing flour made from wheat, rye, barley, and other cereals with water not only contributed towards the development of some of our greatest ancient civilizations, but also how long-held beliefs about the rise of agriculture were shaken by discovery of 12,000-old-old breadcrumbs

Kim enthuses about how dough represents a common, shared foodway through unleavened flatbread as a natural container for roasted meats or vegetables. This simple food is found in all corners of the planet revealing a way in which we are all alike rather than different.

We conclude with memories of a recipe for friendship bread that produce a sweet dough meant to be shared with family and friends -  until it threatens to take over the house!

Sources We Found Helpful for this Episode 

14,000-Year-Old Piece Of Bread Rewrites The History Of Baking And Farming

Archaeobotanical evidence reveals the origins of bread 14,400 years ago in northeastern Jordan

Friendship Bread Kitchen Website

Books We Think You’ll  Enjoy Reading

You and I Eat the Same: On the Countless Ways, Food and Cooking, Connect Us to One Another edited by Chris Yang

Considered the Fork by Bee Wilson

Bread, A Global History by William Rubel

Recipes You Really Need to Try

Amish Friendship Bread Starter from Friendship Bread Kitchen

Apple Oatmeal Amish Friendship Bread from Friendship Bread Kitchen

Herman Friendship Cake from Cherished by Me

Episode Transcript

🎧 Click here for the full, interactive transcript of this episode 🎧

We would love to connect with you

AsWeEat.com, on Instagram @asweeat, join our new As We Eat community on Facebook, or subscribe to the As We Eat Journal.

Do you have a great idea 💡 for a show topic, a recipe 🥘 that you want to share, or just say “hi”👋🏻?  Send us an email at [email protected]

Review As We Eat on Podchaser or Apple Podcast. We would like to know what you think.