Juneteenth with Edna Lewis

I for one am pretty excited to start celebrating Juneteenth, a holiday I’d known little about until finally a critical mass of citizens rattled our collective malaise around systemic racism in America. One thing I know: I’ll be making something from The Taste of Country Cooking by Edna Lewis (1919-2006) whose gracious prose and evocative descriptions of life and food almost 100 years ago among the rural African-American community of Freetown, Virginia has been a kind of balm to me in the midst of pandemic craziness.

I live not far from Ms. Lewis’s home place, founded by her grandfather, who had been born into slavery and lived to build the thriving community that Lewis depicts with such a light and loving touch. So what she recounts about living with the seasons and the pleasures of eating what they’d grown or discovered in their very local spot inevitably makes me want to leap up and plant pattypan squash, which she calls “cymlings,” or look for puffball mushrooms. The joy Ms. Lewis takes in both labor and rest, the play of a day’s light and the smell of coffee in the morning make me appreciate the simple stuff of my own days just a little more.  I’ve been re-reading her The Taste of Country Cooking like some people have been reading poetry, daily meditations, or multi-page recipes for making sourdough bread.

It may not mention Juneteenth exactly, but I’ll cook from it nonetheless. We may not have Grand Rapids lettuce or squab, for that matter, but any cookbook that includes “There were no special rules on the serving of salads” has got me. So I’ll make something like Ms. Lewis’s “Salad of Lettuce and Scallions” with what I can find, just as she suggests. A bit of a rogue oakleaf, new red Russian kale, the pale green straight-leaf of indeterminate origins growing in a row in one of my garden beds, and tender greens on the Chinese broccoli I need to pull soon. With a good white wine vinegar mixed with a bit of sugar and salt, according to her recollections, it sounds like a late spring celebration to me. Maybe we’ll have “skillet spring chicken,” maybe slices of baked Virginia ham with “fresh-grated white bread crumbs” stirred into the fat, as Ms. Lewis recounts. I’ve already got sweet local strawberries and fresh whipping cream for dessert. Oh, and for my Juneteenth red drink, I’ll be sipping good old fashioned iced Red Zinger featuring signature hibiscus. So delish!

As we celebrate a historic rejection of slavery and lurch our way, awkwardly and bumbling toward what I hope will be a more equitable future, I urge you to learn a bit more for yourself about this most remarkable and accomplished American chef. And whatever your experience or investment in cooking, give some recipes a try! I’d love to hear what you discover and wish you well today and always ~