Taste of the South -- January 6-9: SFA Benefit at Blackberry Farm

Savor the best the culinary world has to offer when seven chefs converge at Blackberry Farm in Walland, Tennessee for a Taste of the South event, benefiting the Southern Foodways Alliance.

Packed with incredible food and wine happenings, the weekend promises to stimulate the palate and relax the mind. Guests can pick up culinary tips and techniques at Blackberry's Cooking School while enjoying all the merriments of the weekend, or just savor the gala dinner on Saturday night.

Taste the bounty of the South from chefs Michelle Bernstein of Azul, Miami, FL; John Currence of City Grocery, Oxford MS; John Fleer of the Inn at Blackberry Farm, Walland, TN; Jim Gerhardt of Limestone, Louisville, KY; Chris Hastings of Hot and Hot Fish Club, Birmingham, AL; Michael Laiskonis of Le Bernadin, New York, NY; and Ken Vedrinski of Sienna, Charleston, SC.

And we haven't forgotten the wine. Sam Beall of Blackberry Farm has gathered some of California's most talented winemakers. In keeping with our theme, all have Southern roots -- including Knoxville native Eric Grigsby and Mary Fran Rocca of Rocca Family Vineyards in Napa, Memphis natives Dr. Michael Dragutsky and Dr. David Sloas from Cornerstone Cellars in Napa, and Virginians Jeffery Fink and Bill Cates of Tantara in Santa Barbara.

VIP Package guests will enjoy all events including the "Jack Daniel's Chef's Night Out" dinner, cooking demonstration, lunch at the Maple Cottage and preferred seating during the Auction and Gala Dinner. Sponsors of this event include Lexus, the preferred vehicle of Blackberry Farm, and Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey.

To register please call (800) 557-8864. To learn more about the Blackberry Farm, log on to www.blackberryfarm.com.

SFA at SHA

The Southern Foodways Alliance hosted a booth at the annual Southern Historical Association in Memphis this past weekend. Our booth showcased bobbleheads and skillets, Gravy newsletters and books by members, and our newest edition of Cornbread Nation, Cornbread Nation 2: The United States of Barbecue. We were very excited to see the interest generated as Peggy Galis and Mary Beth Lasseter lured members to our booth with moonpies, and then Fred Sauceman and Ronni Lundy wowed them with great tales about SFA's work. We look forward to welcoming many new members in the coming days, supporting new oral history initiatives across the South, and discussing sugar all next year. Since our visitors were lured by moonpies, we already know that they each have a sweet tooth for our upcoming discussions!

Will Campbell's Symposium Remarks Online

At the 2004 Symposium, the Southern Foodways Alliance and the University of Mississippi honored Will Campbell, a noted civil rights leader, preacher, author, and activist. To see his remarks at the symposium, click on the title link for this posting. To read more about the event, go to http://www.olemiss.edu/cgi-bin/news2000/display.pl?id=4084&mode=full. The video presentation does require a media player for viewing, which should launch automatically when you click the link.

SFA in the News!

Want to recap the symposium weekend? Take a look at some recent press!
And, if you know of other articles out there, please send the links to Mary Beth at sfamail@olemiss.edu so that we may share those with you, too!


Chapel Hill News (10/23 article)
The News and Observer, Raleigh NC (10/22 article)
The Commercial Appeal (10/20 article)
The Charlotte Observer (10/20 article)
The Denver Post (10/20 -- 1 of 2)
The Denver Post (10/20 -- 2 of 2)
The Bainbridge Post-Searchlight (10/19 article)
The Courier-Journal (10/15 article)
The Tennessean (10/14 article)
Florida Today (10/14 article)

Get Southern Foodways Gear!

Everybody needs another t-shirt. And why don't you think about replacing your coffee mug in the morning? Support the SFA by buying some gear, and be on the cutting edge of food fashion! SFA has teamed up with Cafe Press to offer SFA merchandise via the web. It's easy -- logon, browse, buy, and have everything mailed to you at home. All proceeds benefit the SFA Oral History Initiative. You can find the site at www.cafepress.com/southernfood Bookmark it, and think about doing a little Christmas shopping...

SFA - eGullet Update

SFA members with an e-mail address on file should have received user names and passwords to eGullet.org a day or two before the Southern Foodways Symposium. Many of you have already registered and made a post or two on the boards. That’s great. The whole reason for the recent association between eGullet and The Southern Foodways Alliance is to enable members to have a forum where they can discuss a broad range of topics relating to Southern Food and related subjects. And to that end we would like to encourage all of you to take a look at the Southern Food Culture Forum (http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showforum=184). This forum, unlike any other place on the internet, gives all of us the opportunity to discuss (in excrutiating detail in some cases) the issues that surround Southern food and the culture that interest all of us. Sign on, won't you?

SFA Symposium pictures are online!

SFA thanks Larry Smith, our official event photographer, for all the wonderful pictures he took at last weekend's Southern Foodways Symposium. Photos have been uploaded to Snapfish, a website that allows users to share and order photographs online. Simply click the title of this post (there's a link there) to be redirected to the Snapfish website. You'll need to sign up for a free account to view the photos. Once signed on, you may view and order pictures to remember the fun we had!

Rick Ellis, Deviled Egg King

Congratulations to Rick Ellis, who was named the Deviled Egg King at last weekend's Southern Foodways Symposium. Cayenne and butter are the secrets to this delicious recipe, which you may read in our online recipe book. From the SFA home page, scroll over projects and then choose the option for the deviled egg recipe contest. Rick's recipe is included in the chapter entitled "The Basics."

Deviled Egg Recipes are Online

Curious about deviled eggs? Need a good recipe to impress the in-laws? Hungry and ready to try something new? Entries from the 2004 SFA Deviled Egg recipe contest are now online. It's egg-citing! Check them out, and decide for yourself which eggs are best.

Extra, Extra -- Read All About It!

When you take a stroll to your corner newsstand this morning, check out the article on the Southern Foodways Alliance that's featured on the cover of the New York Times food section, page D1. You can read all about this weekend's symposium, which will explore race through the lens of foodways.

Deviled Egg Recipe Finalists Announced

The SFA is egg-cited to announce the five finalists in this year's deviled egg/stuffed egg recipe contest: Robert Croft, Kansas City, MO; Rick Ellis, New York, NY; Elizabeth Howard, New Orleans, LA; Margaret Ann Mitchell, Jackson, MS; and Elizabeth Williams, New Orleans, LA. Egg lovers will surely enjoy stuffing themselves with these prize eggs at the SFA symposium's Deviled Egg Degustation on October 8. Stay tuned to see who SFA will crown the King/Queen of Deviled Eggs, and check our website in early October to view the online cookbook featuring all of the recipes from this year's contest. Congratulations to our finalists!

Share a ride to the Symposium!

Registrants who submitted travel plans for carpooling to the symposium should all have received an e-mail Monday afternoon with travel itineraries for other registrants. If you are interested in carpooling but did not receive this message, please e-mail sfamail@olemiss.edu to have a copy sent your way. Happy carpooling!

Southern Foodways Symposium Sold Out!

SFA is pleased to announce that our conference is sold out again this year! If you missed registration and would still like to attend, e-mail sfamail@olemiss.edu for your name to be added to our wait list. In the event of cancellations, we'll use this list to invite more guests.

News from the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation

The CGRF supports sustainable heirloom grain repatriation research and education and provides a resource center for the study of historic heirloom grain culture and foodways. And this coming August -- that's August 2005 -- they will host a conference on Carolina rice culture. Log on to http://www.carolinagoldricefoundation.org/ for details.

Glory Foods Announces Symposium Scholarships

Glory Foods will host three guests at the seventh annual Southern Foodways Symposium, to be held October 7-10, 2004 on the campus of the University of Mississippi in Oxford. Three scholarships will be awarded to African American students pursuing a college degree in the food arts, hospitality management, folk arts, or related field.

Winners will receive a complimentary pass to the conference ($380 value) and a travel and accommodations stipend of $400. Winners will also receive one-on-one consultations with African American foodways scholar Adrian Miller, former Special Assistant to President Clinton and Deputy Director of the President’s Initiative for One America. Scholarships will be awarded to the three best responses to these questions. Essays should total 250 cumulative words: How are our dining rituals imprinted by race? Why was the integration of lunch counters an early and important initiative of the Civil Rights Movement? What will you gain from a three-day conference that focuses upon food and race relations?

Send your 250-word essay along with your name, phone number, and e-mail address to the Southern Foodways Alliance by way of sfamail@olemiss.edu. Questions? Call 662.915.5993. The e-mail postmark deadline for all entries is September 10. Winners will be notified by phone on September 15.

Symposium Almost Sold Out - Register Now

The seventh annual Southern Foodways Symposium is almost sold out, and the Delta Divertissement is already sold out with a wait list stacking up. If have the inclination to join us in Oxford for Southern Foodways in Black & White (and you should), register now! You may download a form from the web and fax it to the SFA, care of Mary Beth.

Calling all deviled egg recipes!

SFA seeks deviled egg recipes and recollections. Let the world know about how your family reunions revolve around eating deviled yard eggs. Tell us about how your aunt piped her filling with a pastry bag. Tell us a story of 100 or so words about what deviled eggs have meant to you and your people. Include a recipe and please detail the recipe's provenance. Email submissions to deviledeggs@olemiss.edu are highly preferred. Deadline for entries is August 31. Three finalists will be announced on September 15. The winner will receive a free pass to the Southern Foodways Symposium, to be held October 7-10 in Oxford, Mississippi. That Friday, the King or Queen of Deviled Eggs will be crowned at a tasting of deviled eggs and champagne, staged on the Oxford square.

Tomato Art Show Debuts in Nashville Aug. 14

On August 14th, the Art and Invention Gallery in Nashville opens an all tomato art show. Join them for a party and heirloom tomato tasting. Their theory is: It is August, it is really hot, everyone is extremely grumpy, and the only thing that sees us through to September are all those fabulous homegrown tomatoes. Ronni Lundy will be there to sign copies of In Praise of Tomatoes. A recipe contest is also planned. Contest judges are Kay West, local food critic; Meg Guiffrieda, owner of the Red Wagon restaurant in East Nashville; and Ann & John Egerton, authors of Southern Food. For more information, call 615-226-2070.

Grazefest in Montgomery AL -- Sept. 11-12 2004

The SFA is serving as curator of pitmasters for Pasture to the Pit, an exposition and barbecue feed to be held September 11 - 12 at Garrett Coliseum in Montgomery. Take a look at www.eatingfresh.com for details. On that Sunday, five Deep South pitmasters -- including Van Sykes of Bob Sykes Bar-B-Q (Bessemer, AL) Chris Lilly of Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q (Decatur, AL) and Leatha Jackson of Leatha's Bar-B-Que Inn (Hattiesburg, MS) -- will smoke heirloom varieties of pasture-raised pork. Lucky eaters will judge whether the resulting barbecue is better.

Birmingham Field Trip Makes Economic Impact

For this year's SFA Field Trip, held June 4-6 in and around Birmingham, the SFA pledged to make donations to Alabama organizations that further the cause of racial justice. With the support of members and attendees -- not to mention some speakers who waived remuneration -- we are proud to announce the following donations: $2,450 to bluesman Willie King's Rural Members Foundation, $750 to Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, and $250 to West End Camp Fire USA (a division of the Birmingham Second Harvest/United Way).