Gravy

Southern Foodways Alliance
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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.

  1. hace 5 días

    Making Groceries in Louisiana

    In “Making Groceries,” New Orleans-based Gravy journalist Katie Jane Fernelius travels to the frontlines of food insecurity in Louisiana—from the bustling warehouse floor of Second Harvest Food Bank in south Louisiana to a grocery aisle in rural Evangeline Parish—to examine the place of food stamps in fighting hunger. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, is a federal food-assistance program that helps low-income households buy groceries. It has consistently been shown to reduce food insecurity and poverty, especially among children. But SNAP has also been at the center of policy fights for decades, as legislators at both the state and federal level debate not only who should be eligible to receive benefits, but what they can spend those benefits on. While some legislators may emphasize the impact of SNAP on state and federal budgets, moms like Dafnee Chatman experience the importance of SNAP in their personal budgets, knowing the crucial role that food stamps can play in feeding her family of five. In this episode of Gravy, Fernelius follows Chatman through a grocery store as she does the math of a weekly shop on SNAP benefits. She also speaks with John Sillers and Lindsay Hendrix of the Second Harvest Food Bank of Greater New Orleans and Acadiana about how families struggling with food insecurity fill their pantries. Fernelius looks at hunger in Louisiana from a wider angle: not as a single crisis, but as a system of support, strain, and political choices that shapes how everyday families eat. *** Acknowledgements: Thank you to scholars Tracy Roof and Laurie Green for their illuminating conversations about the history of food stamps. Thank you to Second Harvest Food Bank in New Orleans and Dafnee Chatman, for their helpful, impassioned participation in this episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  2. 8 jul

    Spilling the Tea in the Mississippi Pine Belt

    In “Spilling the Tea in the Mississippi Pine Belt” Gravy reporter Georgia Sparling explores the tea farms popping up in Mississippi’s Pine Belt, where the tannic soil is perfect for growing tea. While many think of strong, syrupy sweet, ice-cold tea as quintessentially Southern, the only thing truly Southern about this ubiquitous beverage is how we drink it. Almost every tea leaf we consume in the United States comes from somewhere else.   Tea has been cultivated for more than 5,000 years, first in China and now in India, Nepal, Kenya, and even Argentina. Mississippi, though, seemed unlikely. The tea plant, Chinese camellia, tends to thrive in inhospitable places, such as mountains and hillsides. While the Pine Belt can certainly be inhospitable with its three-digit-degree summers, tornadoes, and dry spells, it’s a wildly different climate than where most tea is grown. The soil, however, was just right for the acid-loving plants, which are known to adapt to their circumstances.   Still, much was unknown when The Great Mississippi Tea Company in Brookhaven and the Longleaf Tea Company in Laurel planted their first crops in 2011 and 2018, respectively. Tea is a long-term investment. It takes three to five years for the plants to become established and ready for harvest. After that, they can live for a century or more—that is, if they survive. Both farms experienced heavy losses during their first seasons of planting. Great Mississippi lost all four acres of their initial crop, while Longleaf lost 300 of their first 1,000 saplings.   But they replanted, and today these small but mighty farms have not only taken root but they are thriving. Great Mississippi and Longleaf are finding that not only do tea plants have a taste for Mississippi soil, but Mississippians (and beyond) have a taste for the delicate and complex flavors of Southern grown tea. Georgia Sparling visits these farms and learns what it takes to grow a perfect cup of tea. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  3. 24 jun

    Tasting Haiti in New Orleans

    In “Tasting Haiti in New Orleans,” Gravy reporter Eva Tesfaye gives listeners a taste of Haitian cuisine—and history—in New Orleans. For Haitians living in the Big Easy, many things remind them of home, from Second Line parades to the architecture to the food. Red beans and rice, boudin, jambalaya… all these iconic Louisiana dishes have connections to Haiti. That’s because Haitian migrants profoundly shaped New Orleans culture. At the turn of the nineteenth century, enslaved people on the island of St. Domingue broke free from their chains. Led by Toussaint L’Ouverture, they snatched their freedom from the French. They renamed the country Ayiti, the Indigenous Taino name for the land. This not only sparked the fire of freedom and Black liberation movements around the world, but also had huge consequences for other French territories. White people fleeing Haiti found familiarity in Louisiana’s French culture and the plantation economy. Large groups of Black people, enslaved and free, also arrived with them, boosting Louisiana’s sugarcane economy. New Orleans became one of the Blackest cities in the country.   “63% of Crescent City inhabitants were now Black. Among the nation's major cities, only Charleston, with the 53% majority, was comparable,” said Zella Palmer, a food historian at Dillard University.   The influx dramatically transformed New Orleans’ culture and especially its food, giving it a Haitian twist that you can still taste today.   “Haitian cuisine is the most underrated and unappreciated cuisine in the Western Hemisphere,” said Palmer.   In this episode, Tesfaye gives Haitian cuisine its flowers. She takes us through the history of how Haiti helped shaped New Orleans’ iconic cuisine and introduces us to the modern chefs in the city who are bringing Haitian food back to the forefront. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  4. 10 jun

    Object Permanence: An Essay

    Martin Padgett wrote the feature essay “Object Permanence” for the fall 2025 issue of Gravy Quarterly, our sister publication. In the piece, he catalogs the objects we live with actively, those we tolerate like inanimate roommates, and those we give away, sometimes to make room for the new. We liked it so much that we asked them to read it for Gravy podcast listeners. To read other engaging essays in Gravy, have it shipped to your mailbox by becoming an SFA member at southernfoodways.org, or sign up for a subscription at Hub City Book Shop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  5. 27 may

    American Barbecue’s European Adventure

    In “American Barbecue’s European Adventure,” Gravy reporter Eve Troeh takes us to meet restaurateurs in Prague, Czech Republic (Big Smokers) and Berlin, Germany (Big Stuff Smoked BBQ) who have gone to great lengths to import the techniques and equipment needed to bring American barbecue to their communities. Along with developing their own recipes, working closely with suppliers to select the right breeds and cuts of meat, and perfecting their overnight smoking process, they have also had to cultivate an understanding of and appreciation for BBQ among their customers. While “low and slow” smoked barbecue may seem ubiquitous in the United States, it takes some translating when it crosses the pond into an entirely different culinary context. Adrian Miller, author of the book Black Smoke, which chronicles Black contributions to American barbecue, helps explain what makes American barbecue unique—and even unexpected—in other parts of the world. And while Czech and German immigrants contributed to the early formation of barbecue in central Texas and other Southern enclaves, the reception of American barbecue abroad today shows that its history is not a straight line from the 1800s to now. Instead, it’s a conversation that has crossed oceans and generations in a longstanding back-and-forth that can be seen and tasted on modern-day trays of brisket, pulled pork, sausage, and more. At Big Smokers in Prague, chefs Sylvie Jackson and Tomas Oujezdsky show guests that burnt ends—though they may sound suspect—are actually delicious. And at Berlin’s Big Stuff Smoked BBQ, Tobias Bürger introduces customers to a hot sandwich. The popularity of Southern-style “low and slow” barbecue seems to know no bounds, and in this episode, Troeh follows the journey of that smoking tradition across the Atlantic Ocean. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  6. 13 may

    Sap's Rising in Highland County, Virginia

    In Highland County, Virginia, there are more trees than people. Specifically, the County is rich in sugar maples, the trees whose sap produces maple syrup. Better known as a “northern” sweetener, maple syrup is something that Highland County residents have been producing for decades—likely as early as the County was first settled in the mid-1700s. They learned the practice from local Indigenous tribes, who took part in tapping trees themselves. In “Sap's Rising in Highland County, Virginia,” Gravy reporter Sarah Jessee explores Highland County maple syrup production in the past and present, and discusses how the County’s syrup-making might change in the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  7. 15 abr

    Sniffing Out American Truffles

    In “Sniffing Out American Truffles,” Gravy reporter Irina Zhorov explores truffle production in the U.S.—and how the South is emerging as a hub.  Truffle production in the U.S. is a young industry. Commercial cultivation started in the 1980s. Truffles are a complicated business. When you’re farming truffles, what you’re really growing is trees. The truffles are fungi that grow on tree roots. The tree and the fungi work synergistically, the tree providing sugars to the fungi for nourishment and the fungi helping the roots reach further into the soil to absorb more nutrients. For this relationship to work well, and for truffles to flourish, the type of tree and fungi must be a good match, the soil ought to be of sufficiently high pH, and weather and moisture need to be suitable. Europeans, particularly in Italy and France, figured out the formula to make this complex system function. Truffle orchards once abounded on the continent. World Wars I and II, as well as changing land use, destroyed many of those operations, but the industry there is still established. When American farmers began to seed their truffle orchards, most of them imported European truffle varieties on European trees. European truffles are big and delicious, and want-to be growers knew that system worked. But European trees have struggled in North America; they lack defenses for local pests, and many of the early orchards have died out.   An operation in North Carolina, Burwell Farms, tried something different. They inoculated native loblolly pines with the European bianchetto truffle variety. They're now the most productive truffle orchard in the United States, but they still can't keep up with growing demand.   As the industry matures, there are also attempts to cultivate native truffle varieties, like the Appalachian truffle, the Blue Ridge truffle, and other newly discovered species. And there's growing interest in foraging for native truffles, too. The industry is becoming increasingly attuned to local varieties and possibilities to make this luxurious product our own.   In this episode of Gravy, Zhorov visits Burwell Farms and follows their dogs at work harvesting truffles. We hear from Burwell Farms' Jeffrey Coker; Margaret Townsend, president of the North American Truffle Growers Association and owner of NewTown Truffiere; chef Joe Kindred on what excites him about local truffles; and North Carolina extension agents Katie Learn and Jeanine Davis on local varieties. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  8. 1 abr

    Virginia Has the Blue Catfish Blues

    In “Virginia Has the Blue Catfish Blues,”Gravy reporter Anya Groner takes listeners to the Chesapeake Bay, where, over the past decade, invasive blue catfish have derailed the ecosystem in the East Coast’s largest fish nursery. Native to the Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio River basins, blue catfish were first stocked in the bay’s tributary rivers in the 1970s to provide a new trophy fish for recreational anglers. At the time, no one predicted that a freshwater catfish could make its way into the brackish waters of the Chesapeake Bay, much less outcompete native crabs, oysters, and fish. The impact has been devastating for the environment and for the seafood industry. Generational watermen are going out of business, and most of the fishmongers who buy and process their catch have shut their doors. Yet, Dr. Michael Schwarz, associate director of Virginia Tech's Seafood and Agricultural Research & Extension Center, says there’s a lucrative way to manage the population of this expanding apex predator and reinvigorate the seafood industry.  Blue catfish happen to be delicious. Studies show that managed correctly, a blue catfish fishery could have an economic impact of $1.1 billion and create 7,000 new jobs. “ The easiest solution for anything is to eat it,” says Kyle Rowley, the chief operating officer of Skrimp Shack, a fourteen-restaurant franchise in Virginia and North Carolina. As a topwater predator, blue catfish don’t have the muddy flavor sometimes associated with farmed catfish. And Rowley says, they fry beautifully. Three years ago, he added blue catfish to Skrimp Shack’s menu. “We're doing something right that is actually helping our fellow Virginians, and we enjoy that.” But building a market for an invasive species is an inherent conflict of interest, says Dr. Mary Fabrizio, a biologist at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. “Basically you're starting the fishery to put itself out of business,” she says. If the fishery is as lucrative as some predict it can be, the goal could switch from shrinking the population to maintaining it. Fabrizio’s computer models show that unless a very high number of catfish are pulled from the bay, culling catfish won’t rejuvenate native fish. Join Groner as she travels from the docks of the Chesapeake Bay to marine labs and restaurants, asking watermen, fishmongers, scientists, and restaurateurs to ask what it will take to build a blue catfish market and whether it’s possible to balance the needs of the seafood industry and the ecosystem. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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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.

Información

  • Creador
    Southern Foodways Alliance
  • Años de actividad
    2014 - 2026
  • Episodios
    292
  • Clasificación
    Apto
  • Mostrar sitio web
    Gravy

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