Soul Food Research Paper

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As a child I remember my mom preparing Sunday dinner Saturday afternoon. I was told it took time to prepare everything. Then come Sunday dinner after church we had some of the biggest meal placed before us. Mac and cheese, collard greens, cornbread that looked like pound cake, pork chops, fried chicken, etc. As I got older I asked for some of those recipes and she could never answer what all I needed to do she showed me. Her main concern was I loved what I was cooking and to cook to please others. I guess that explained all the salt, pepper, and other heavy ingredients. I choose to write about soul food because I believe it’s a part of my heritage and its a meal I enjoy from time to time. African American Registry states that in order to understand …show more content…

Many blacks added their skimpy diets by gardening small plots given to them for growing their own vegetables. Many involved in survival fishing and hunting, which produced wild game for the table. Foods such as raccoon, squirrel, opossum, turtle, and rabbit were hunted by the slaves, until the 1950s, very common charge among them still largely rural and Southern African-American population. Native Americans of the U.S. South also supplemented their diets with meat like deer, derived from the hunting of native game. Venison was a very important meat staple due to the richness of white-tailed deer. They to also hunted rabbits, squirrels and opossums. Cattle, adopted from Europeans, in the form of hogs and sheep, were kept. When game or livestock was killed, the entire animal was used. Besides the meat, it was not unusual for them to eat meats such as liver, brains and intestines. This tradition remains today in trademark dishes like chitterlings (commonly called chit'lins) which are fried small intestines of hogs. livermush (a common dish in the Carolinas made from hog liver), and pork brains. The fat of the animals, particularly hogs and pigs, was reduced and used for cooking, frying and baking. Many of the European settlers in the South learned a lot of different Native American cooking methods. Cultural dispersion was set in motion for the Southern dish. Poor blacks in the South made many of the same dishes coming from the soul tradition, but styles of preparation sometimes varied. A lot of similar techniques popular in soul and Southern cuisines are shared with early cultures all over the world, including Rome, Egypt, and China. Southern food has developed from over 1000 years of exchange, origination, and

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