Episode Transcript
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0:00
I enjoy a nice glass of wine, but I
0:02
don't pretend to be an expert in wine. I
0:05
usually just want a wine that's high quality, delicious,
0:07
and not too expensive. And to me, that's Bogle
0:09
Family Vineyards. And here's the thing about Bogle. This
0:11
is a third generation family owned winery from California
0:13
that makes exceptional wines for about 10 bucks a
0:16
bottle. Bogle wines consistently earn best buy designations and
0:18
high ratings from wine enthusiasts. And let me tell
0:20
you something, the folks at Wine Enthusiast, they drink
0:22
a lot of wine. They drink a lot of
0:25
fancy expensive wine, and yet they still keep giving
0:27
great ratings to Bogle. And Bogle Vineyards has so
0:29
many different kinds of wine. Whatever your mood, whatever
0:31
you're eating, there's a wine for you. They got
0:34
this great Pinot Grigio that's crisp and fruity, goes
0:36
well with spicy foods, with fish. They have a
0:38
classic Chardonnay that's balanced, amazing, with a pork tenderloin
0:40
or butter chicken. I like to take
0:42
that Chardonnay and do what Jacques Pépin taught me, a
0:45
couple of ice cubes in your glass of Bogle. If
0:47
Jacques Pépin says it's okay, then it's okay. And there's
0:49
the Bogle Pinot Noir, refined and elegant with bright fruit
0:51
and about as food friendly as red wine can be.
0:53
You're not gonna believe it's only $10. Neither
0:56
will your friends, if you tell them. So pick up
0:58
a few bottles of Bogle, wherever you buy your favorite
1:00
wines. Please drink responsibly. Hey
1:05
everyone, Dan here. This week's reheat is
1:07
called Searching for Rosa Parks Pancakes. We're
1:09
reheating it because of a request from
1:11
a listener. Hello Dan in
1:13
the sporkful, this is Caroline in Atlanta. I'd
1:15
love to hear in search of Rosa Parks
1:18
pancake recipe as a sporkful reheat. My
1:20
partner and I love peanut butter and I
1:23
made these pancakes the other Saturday for brunch.
1:25
They were even fluffier than I remembered. I'd
1:27
love to share this episode with my partner,
1:29
maybe over another batch of these pancakes. Thank
1:31
you. Well Caroline, I'm happy
1:34
to give you and your partner the chance to listen
1:36
to this one again. I love this episode and I
1:38
made these pancakes too. They are delicious. And I think
1:40
once you hear the story behind them, they taste even
1:42
better. For all you out there, if
1:44
you have an episode you'd like us to reheat,
1:46
send me a message at hello at sporkful.com. We
1:48
may feature you and your pick soon. And hey,
1:50
one more quick note, my friend Nicole Taylor, who's
1:52
featured in this episode, has a more recent cookbook
1:54
that you can check out called Watermelon and Red
1:56
Birds. Okay, let's get to the show.
2:05
In 2016, the Library of Congress posted
2:07
a bunch of the personal documents of
2:09
Rosa Parks online for the first time.
2:11
There are postcards from Martin Luther King,
2:14
lists of volunteers for the Montgomery bus
2:16
boycott, and pages and pages of journals.
2:19
In one entry, Mrs. Parks writes about
2:21
what she learned from her grandparents, who
2:23
had both been enslaved. Curator Adrienne Cannon
2:25
reads an excerpt. I learned
2:27
to cook by observing my grandmother and
2:29
could prepare a simple meal almost as
2:31
soon as I was tall enough to
2:33
reach the stovetop. Buried in
2:36
this trove of papers is another document
2:38
that doesn't have as much historical significance
2:40
but got my attention. Sift
2:43
together one cup
2:45
flour, two tablespoons baking powder.
2:48
It's a pancake recipe for feather-light pancakes
2:50
written on the back of an envelope.
2:54
And a third cup peanut
2:56
butter melted. This
2:58
recipe is more than just a charming footnote. It's
3:00
a window into a time and a place
3:03
and a person. I was telling
3:05
my husband this morning, I was like, yeah,
3:07
Dan Pashman is coming over. We're going to make
3:10
Rosa Parks pancakes. And he laughed. He was
3:12
like, oh yeah, Rosa Parks, the woman who
3:14
didn't get up from the bus and also she
3:16
sued Outcast. And I was like, oh right,
3:18
she did sue Outcast. And
3:21
I was like, that's why we're making the pancakes because
3:23
we have all these misconceptions about her. And
3:26
she's human. And the pancakes
3:28
is like the most human thing, right? This
3:45
is The Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's
3:47
for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on
3:49
our show, we obsess about food to learn
3:51
more about people. A quick
3:53
note, everything in this episode was recorded
3:55
before COVID. Rosa
3:58
Parks passed away in 2015. at
4:00
the age of 92. A
4:02
couple years ago, I went down to the
4:04
Library of Congress in Washington, DC and met
4:06
with Adrienne Cannon, curates the Rosa Parks papers.
4:09
Now, as I learned it in school, Rosa Parks
4:11
stand on the bus that day in 1955, led
4:14
to the Montgomery bus boycott, which led to
4:16
the buses being desegregated, which enshrined her as
4:19
a hero of the civil rights movement, The
4:21
End. But as Adrienne Cannon
4:23
explained to me, after Mrs.
4:25
Parks' refusal to give a proceed that day, life
4:28
in Montgomery for her and her husband was
4:30
pretty brutal. She
4:32
had lost her job for
4:35
taking the stand that she did. Both she
4:37
and her husband were receiving death threats. And
4:40
she was struggling to find gainful
4:42
employment again. Isn't
4:45
that in the end why they moved to Detroit?
4:47
This was why they moved to Detroit. This is
4:49
why they moved to Detroit in 1957. And
4:53
then can you tell me about this one? This
4:55
is the letter from her mother. This is the
4:57
letter from her mother. And she
5:00
begins it. "'Dear daughter,
5:03
received your telegram and letter. Was so
5:05
glad to know that you had gone
5:07
so far and safe. All right. I'm
5:10
doing fine now, but Parks is about as
5:12
usual when you are away. And
5:14
Parks is what Rosa Parks and the
5:16
family called her husband Raymond Parks.'" And
5:19
do we know in any more detail what
5:21
she's referring to when she says, basically
5:23
your husband gets a certain way when
5:26
you're not around? Well,
5:28
he would get depressed. The
5:31
stress of being unemployed and the death
5:33
threats took a particular toll on him
5:35
emotionally. And she served
5:38
not only as the
5:41
main source for the
5:43
family's income, but also
5:45
as a source of emotional
5:48
support for her husband. And
5:51
then we get to this last document here. And
5:53
this is the featherlight
5:56
pancake recipe. And
5:58
it's written. on
6:00
the back of a banking envelope,
6:03
First Independence National Bank of Detroit.
6:05
234 State Street. Street, Detroit.
6:09
Rosa Parks struggled financially almost
6:11
all of her life, and
6:14
she learned to be frugal. She
6:16
recycled paper, she recycled
6:20
aluminum foil and bags. And
6:22
this particular recipe, you can see that
6:24
it's written in red ink, and
6:28
the ingredients for the
6:30
Featherlight Pancaser interspersed with
6:33
directions. Sift together
6:35
one cup flour, two tablespoons. Okay, you
6:37
don't need to hear the whole recipe.
6:39
We'll post it at sporkful.com, but
6:42
there is one part that's really key. A
6:45
third cup peanut butter melted.
6:48
We'll get back to that in a minute. What
6:50
did you think when you first saw this recipe?
6:53
The recipe piques your curiosity, and
6:56
you have the sense of being
6:58
able to connect directly with her.
7:01
We are accustomed
7:04
to viewing her as a civil
7:06
rights icon. And
7:08
what we find in
7:11
both the recipe and the notes
7:13
that I read about her reflections
7:15
on the bus boycott, we
7:18
find certainly this love
7:20
and the skill that she had with
7:22
cooking, the emotional pain
7:25
that she felt, the toll that
7:28
her decision to rebel took on her personally. The
7:33
collection gives you
7:35
a fuller appreciation for
7:37
Rosa Parks as a complex
7:40
and fascinating woman. Can
7:45
I take out the recipe and hold it for a second? Sure.
7:49
So cool. Rosa Parks
7:51
actually held this piece of paper. She
7:54
held it and she wrote on it. And she
7:56
probably at one time had money in
7:58
it. And
8:02
I see one of the things that struck me when I first
8:04
saw the recipe, so it
8:06
has, there's one line that says one third cup
8:08
peanut butter. And on the next
8:11
line it says one tablespoon shortening or oil.
8:13
And then in between those two lines sort of added
8:16
after the fact is the word melted. And
8:19
when you read the recipe you added melted
8:21
into peanut butter, the line above. But
8:24
I wasn't sure if melted. Melted
8:27
is the short. Well,
8:29
you have a point. You think
8:32
about the consistency of the peanut butter
8:34
and that being stiff, heating
8:36
it, perhaps softening it, melting it would have
8:39
made it easier to mix it. That makes
8:41
sense. But you also
8:43
think about the significance that
8:46
peanuts had to Alabama
8:48
and particularly to Tuskegee,
8:51
Alabama, where Rosa Parks
8:53
was born. Because
8:55
at Tuskegee Institute we have George
8:57
Washington Carver. George Washington Carver,
8:59
of course, is synonymous with peanuts. Now
9:02
he did not in fact invent peanut butter.
9:04
That's a misconception. But he is more responsible
9:07
than any other American in history for
9:09
popularizing peanuts. He also, by the
9:11
way, needs to get his own sporkful episode because, I
9:13
mean, born into slavery, he was
9:15
freed after the Civil War and he managed
9:17
to become a renowned expert on agriculture and
9:19
botany despite the fact that almost no school
9:21
in the country would let him in. He
9:24
was the first black student and first
9:26
black faculty member at Iowa State University.
9:29
Then he spent 47 years at Tuskegee
9:31
Institute. By the 1920s, George
9:33
Washington Carver was a household name, especially in
9:35
the South. He shared his
9:37
research in bulletins. His goal was to help
9:40
black farmers plant cash crops other than cotton
9:42
so they could support themselves better. Enter
9:45
the peanut. The title of
9:47
this bullet in the George Washington Carver publishes
9:49
in 1916 is How to Grow Peanut and
9:54
105 Ways of Preparing Peanuts
9:56
for Human. consumption.
10:01
And by 1940, peanuts
10:04
are second only to
10:06
cotton in terms
10:08
of their production in the South. And
10:11
what year was Rosa Parks born? And Rosa
10:13
Parks was born in 1913. Now in 1920,
10:15
it's interesting, George Washington Carver addresses
10:22
the National Peanut Association in
10:24
Montgomery, Alabama, which is where
10:27
Rosa Parks had family. I mean,
10:29
that to me is, it's the
10:32
peanut connection. Right, but I had
10:34
never, the thought of putting peanut butter in pancakes
10:36
had never occurred to me until I saw this
10:38
recipe. Before you saw this recipe, had you ever
10:40
heard of putting peanut butter in pancakes? I
10:43
hadn't heard of putting peanut butter
10:45
in pancakes, but I think that
10:47
in terms of African- American cuisine,
10:49
peanuts have all, you
10:51
know, have a strong history. Even
10:54
before George Washington Carver. Peanuts
10:56
are actually indigenous to South America. They made
10:58
their way to the Caribbean and later to
11:00
Africa, where they were infused into African cuisines.
11:03
Peanuts came to the American South via the
11:05
slave trade. They were
11:07
cultivated by African slaves to
11:10
supplement their diets. They
11:12
were also fed to hawks, but
11:14
it wasn't really until Carver's
11:17
publications in the
11:20
early 20th century, it
11:22
becomes a kind of loved
11:24
by-product by not just African- Americans,
11:26
but by the rest of the
11:28
populace, particularly in the South. So
11:31
even though you had not seen peanut butter in
11:33
pancakes, it seems like if there was
11:35
any logical place for
11:37
the idea of peanut butter in pancakes to
11:39
come from, it would be from Southern
11:42
African-American food traditions. I think
11:45
so. I think so. It seems
11:47
to me that perhaps this recipe
11:49
is quintessentially African-American. Coming
12:00
up, I take a copy of the recipe to Rosa
12:03
Parks' nieces in Detroit to see what they can tell
12:05
me about it. They'll cook up some
12:07
of Auntie Rosa's specialties and share memories of her
12:09
in the kitchen. She would be
12:11
in that kitchen and you were not
12:13
invited in. You would just hear, potch,
12:15
pans. But eventually when it
12:17
came out it was the best thing ever. After
12:20
that, I'll meet up with food writer
12:23
Nicole Taylor to cook and eat Rosa
12:25
Parks pancakes. Stick around. I
12:40
love a great margarita. But great margaritas are
12:42
hard to find, okay? Oftentimes they're too sweet,
12:44
maybe they're too sour, too much salt. You
12:47
got to have a well-balanced margarita. You know
12:49
something else that I love? Cracking
12:51
open a beverage in a cold can
12:53
on a hot summer day. And that
12:55
is why I get so much pleasure
12:57
from Caiman Jack. Legendary margarita flavored cans,
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the satisfaction of cracking open a can
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13:29
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Beverage Company, Chicago, Illinois. Welcome
13:53
back to another Sporkful Reheat. I'm Dan Pashman. A lot of
13:55
times people want to ask me like, oh what are you
13:57
cooking? What restaurants are you going to? They ask Emma and
13:59
Andrei and the host work will team the same questions. Well, it
14:01
turns out we provide a listener service
14:03
to you that includes that information. It's
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our newsletter. We don't send it out all the
14:08
time. We're not gonna spam you. We're just gonna
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send you useful information, recipes, restaurant information,
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links to articles that we're reading, shows that we're
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watching, and guess what else? You'll be automatically
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entered into giveaways for cookbooks featured on the show
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as long as you live in the US or
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Canada. That's also where I'll email you to tell
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you about special sales happening on
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this Foligni website by discounts on pasta and
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stuff. So there are a lot of
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benefits and you can sign up
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right now while you're listening. Head
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on over to sporkful.com/newsletter to sign
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up today. Again, that's sporkful.com/newsletter. Thanks.
14:40
Now back to this week's reheat. Rosa
14:44
Parks and her husband never had kids of their
14:46
own, but it's clear she loved children. She had
14:48
11 nieces and nephews who she cared for and
14:50
cooked for all the time. In
14:52
fact, last year, her niece Sheila McCauley Keyes
14:55
published a book entitled, Our Auntie Rosa, The
14:57
Family of Rosa Parks Remembers Her Life and
14:59
Lessons. The book includes many of Mrs.
15:01
Parks' recipes. I went to
15:03
Detroit to meet Sheila and her sister, Deborah Ann
15:05
Ross. As I walked in
15:08
the door, I heard pots and pans
15:10
rattling. They were making some Avanti Rosa
15:12
specialties, chicken and dumplings, cornbread griddle cakes,
15:14
cabbage and bacon, and lemonade.
15:18
Our aunt had a special way of making lemonade.
15:21
She would boil the
15:23
whole lemon. She would cut it four
15:26
pieces and boil it down for half an
15:28
hour till it virtually
15:30
just comes apart. And
15:33
then after she does that, she strains
15:35
it and she'll add sugar to the
15:38
heated liquid and whole
15:40
house will smell good just from you making
15:42
the Auntie Rosa's lemonade. So I really like
15:45
that and it's really tasty. I want you
15:47
guys to try that. Let's do that. Yep. So
15:53
cheers. Cheers to you. Mm-mm.
15:58
Ah, it's so good. It's good. It's
16:01
very good. All
16:03
the food was fantastic. My personal favorite was
16:05
the cabbage and bacon. The cabbage was just
16:07
the right level of firm and crunchy while
16:09
still being tender. And then the smoky salt
16:12
from the bacon, especially with the lemonade alongside
16:14
it. So good. So
16:18
I wanted to show you guys, I
16:21
have the printout from the Library of Congress of
16:26
Auntie Rose's pancake recipe. Deb
16:29
took one look at the recipe and had the same
16:31
reaction I had. Peanut butter. Wow.
16:35
Why you put peanut butter in some pancakes? Okay.
16:40
I've never had this. Man, I've
16:42
never had any of her pancakes.
16:45
She did like peanut butter. She liked it. Probably
16:47
what made her write this down. I
16:50
think it's worth noting that this recipe, which
16:52
is so connected to Rosa Parks birthplace in
16:54
Alabama, is written on an envelope
16:56
from a bank in Detroit. This
16:58
piece of paper is Southern food
17:01
culture migrating North. Rosa
17:03
Parks actually spent more than half her life in
17:05
Detroit. The bus where she staged her
17:07
protest is in a Henry Ford museum there. And
17:10
as I drove to see Sheila and Deb outside the
17:12
city, I took the Rosa Parks highway. But
17:15
they say growing up, their parents didn't tell them their
17:17
aunt was famous. And Auntie Rosa, she wasn't
17:19
one to toot her own horn. They were well
17:21
into grade school before they made the discovery. Sheila
17:23
says with her own kids and grandkids, she's
17:26
taken a different approach. When my
17:28
children were born, I wanted to make
17:30
sure that they knew who this
17:32
woman was and her contribution to the United
17:34
States of America and around the world. I
17:37
wanted them to know. That's something
17:39
to be very proud of. My grandchildren,
17:41
they do ask a lot of questions about
17:43
her. They do ask, why did they make
17:45
her get off the bus? I took my
17:48
grandsons to the Henry Ford
17:50
where the bus is. And that
17:52
was the first thing my oldest grandson asked.
17:54
He's only seven. He said,
17:56
why did they make Auntie Rosa? He
17:58
said, look at all these seats. because in
18:00
his mind he does not, he
18:03
can't comprehend, he can't understand, there's plenty
18:05
of seeds. I said, I know,
18:07
you know, and so I had to explain
18:09
to him, and that's hard to do
18:12
to explain to a little child why people
18:15
would do such a
18:17
thing. So how did you explain it to him?
18:20
At the end before, they have like a little
18:22
video where you could watch and you could see
18:24
some of the things that were going on during
18:26
that era, and I did explain to him
18:28
and I told him some people
18:31
were really mean, and
18:33
I explained to him like that, you
18:35
know, that they were mean people and they were
18:37
good people. It's interesting, there's
18:40
so many misconceptions about that day on the
18:42
bus. One of the first parts of
18:44
the story that people always
18:46
hear is, well, she sat down in the seats that were for
18:48
the white passengers, but technically she didn't,
18:50
right? She said she sat in the first row that were
18:53
marked for colored, right? Right,
18:55
she did not sit in the wrong
18:58
place, but this was
19:00
something I didn't know either. The
19:03
rule was, this segregation, Jim Crow
19:05
law, there had
19:07
to be a row of seats separating
19:10
as if the color of somebody's skin
19:12
was gonna rub off on you, a
19:14
seat in front of you, so you
19:16
gotta get up and move. So they're gonna come up
19:18
to her and say, you know, you
19:21
have to go, you have to get up and move. Right, she
19:23
was in the first row, the first colored
19:25
row. Some white guy
19:27
came and sat down in the last white
19:29
row to make them have to get up
19:31
and move. That was the game. He was
19:33
just agitating and testing
19:36
and she said she tried to tell what
19:39
really happened, the press liked that
19:41
story about the bus being full.
19:43
They liked that story, so they ran with
19:45
it. So she said, well, let
19:48
that go, but I know
19:50
what happened. And another one of the misconceptions is,
19:52
she was, there's this sort of idea of, she
19:56
had had a long day, I mean, I'm sure she was working
19:58
hard, but like, there's this idea that she was just kind of
20:00
too. tired to get up or this
20:02
idea that somehow she sort of stumbled
20:04
into being this seminal
20:06
figure. But she was actually, I
20:09
mean, she knew exactly what she was doing.
20:11
Like she, you know, she, she was ready
20:13
to make a principled stand at that point
20:15
in her life. She was already active in
20:17
the NAACP. Yeah, she was an activist. Yes.
20:19
She, she was already on board
20:22
with trying to make some changes,
20:25
make something happen. That's something she used to
20:27
say too. You want, you
20:29
know, something different to happen.
20:31
You have to do something. She
20:34
was a great organizer. Her
20:36
house was crazy looking, but she was a great organizer.
20:38
If you ever went to her house, you'd be like,
20:40
Oh my Lord. She
20:42
had stacks and stacks of stuff
20:44
everywhere. But that's how she was.
20:47
Tell me about how she organized the kitchen. Like what
20:50
was, what was the scene in the kitchen when Auntie
20:52
Rosa was cooking? They pretty
20:54
neat. The kitchen was neat. The
20:56
kitchen was neat. No dirty dishes,
20:58
no everything in this place. They
21:00
had a little pantry. And did
21:03
you guys ever cook with her? Later on,
21:05
I do recall that I did help
21:08
her cook in her kitchen and she
21:10
cooked very slow. Like with
21:12
the lemonade, for goodness sakes, I'm
21:14
thirsty. No, she's going to take
21:17
this lemonade, boil those lemons. That's
21:19
going to take a good 30 minutes plus 15 more.
21:22
You'd be like dropping
21:24
from thirst. I just want
21:26
some lemonade. So you know,
21:29
you want a cool drink? Yes, but okay.
21:32
But I thought you meant today, but
21:34
see, you can't say that you had thought you
21:37
went today. No, you can't say that to
21:39
her, but she would be
21:41
in that kitchen and you were not invited
21:43
in. You would just hear like rattling.
21:46
You hear pots, pans, something's
21:49
going on in there and be like, come
21:51
on with the lemonade. But eventually when
21:53
it came out, it was the best thing ever.
21:57
How does it feel now just like sitting here eating these
21:59
foods, having and these memories and it brings those memories
22:01
back. Oh, it's an emotional
22:05
experience and it's happy. It's
22:07
a happiness, because I know, I
22:10
know that she's watching, she's probably watching us
22:12
cook this food and saying, rolling
22:14
her eyes, oh Lord, they cooking again.
22:17
They cooking again. But I like
22:19
to think about the good things. I
22:21
think she was a really good
22:23
aunt. She was the one
22:26
that was with us and that
22:28
helped to raise us because our parents had been there
22:30
for 20 years. She walked
22:32
my sister down the aisle. She
22:34
gave my sister Deb away. She
22:37
did all those things that a
22:39
parent, mother and father
22:41
would do all rolled into one. So
22:43
she was a dynamic person. So
22:46
it was really hard
22:48
losing her, you know, she
22:51
was our parent. So
22:54
Sheila was very close with her aunt, but
22:57
when she went to the Library of Congress to see the
22:59
papers there herself, she realized
23:01
there was another side to Auntie Rosa. Oh,
23:04
her letters to my uncle, which
23:06
I thought were the greatest things ever,
23:08
love letters. I didn't think my aunt
23:11
had a love life, but she did write
23:14
in a letter to her darling husband.
23:17
My aunt was a stern person. She
23:19
was good, but I could
23:21
never imagine your loving wife
23:23
assigning off like that. Now
23:25
that made me cry. Yeah?
23:48
Good morning. Hey, Nicole, it's Dan.
23:50
Is he downstairs? Yeah I am, I wasn't sure
23:52
which buzz you were to press. Now of course
23:54
this journey would not be complete if we didn't
23:56
make and eat Rosa Parks featherlight pancakes. I
23:59
met up with my... Nicole Taylor. She's a food
24:01
writer who knows a lot about Southern food history
24:03
and culture. You may remember her from our series,
24:06
Other People's Food. Nicole grew up
24:08
in Athens, Georgia. She lives in Brooklyn now. I
24:10
asked her what her first reaction was when she
24:12
saw the pancake recipe. The handwriting,
24:14
that was the first thing was
24:16
like, Oh, look at the handwriting.
24:18
Nice cursive, Miss Parks.
24:21
And kind of the simplicity of the
24:23
recipe, but it wasn't simple because peanut
24:26
butter, adding peanut butter into
24:28
a pancake mix, you don't see that
24:30
a lot. But then the Tuskegee thing,
24:32
right? So when I think Tuskegee,
24:34
the first thing comes to my mind is obviously
24:37
Tuskegee University. And
24:39
Dr. George Washington Carver. When I first
24:41
saw the recipe, the first thing that jumped down at me
24:43
was peanut butter. And I'd say peanut butter, pancake butter. That
24:45
sounds genius. First of all, like I can't I need to
24:47
eat that. But it wasn't till I was
24:49
down at Library of Congress and talking to the historian there
24:51
that I, you know,
24:53
I feel stupid that I didn't make the connection that like,
24:56
the way she described it was this is
24:59
a quintessential African American recipe. Well,
25:01
I would say definitely having peanuts.
25:03
My entire life, peanuts have
25:06
always been around, you know, either
25:08
peanuts in the shell, roasted
25:10
peanuts, boiled peanuts, it
25:13
is a southern pantry staple. I grew up in
25:15
Athens, Georgia. And I would say, I
25:18
hate so many peanut butter sandwiches growing up.
25:20
I used to call them choke sandwiches. And
25:24
what are some foods that you grew up with that
25:26
have peanuts or peanut butter in them that maybe since
25:28
you since you've come up north, it
25:31
might strike folks not in the south as being
25:33
novel to have peanuts or peanut butter
25:35
in there. Well, I mean,
25:37
it's funny, I was this morning on the phone talking to
25:40
my friend, who was a chef and Charleston chef BJ Dennis,
25:42
he cooks a lot of Gullah Geechee food, which is
25:45
basically food directly from West Africa
25:47
that came over to coastal Georgia
25:50
and South Carolina. He
25:52
does like peanut butter and collard greens. And
25:55
I think people freak out over that
25:57
there was a big collard green gate. with
26:00
Whole Foods, because they posted a recipe with
26:03
peanut butter and collard greens, but it's a very
26:05
common thing. I mean, if you
26:07
go to West Africa. What was Collard Greengate?
26:09
It was that people thought that was a
26:11
strange combination. My grandma would be mad if
26:13
I put peanut butter in my collard greens.
26:15
Who had that reaction? Twitter, black Twitter. I
26:18
mean, there were a few like food scholars
26:20
or people who were really into food was
26:22
like, no, no, no backup weight. This is
26:24
a traditional African diaspora dish and
26:27
peanuts or groundnuts. Other people
26:29
call them groundnuts. Are
26:31
part of our culture and a part
26:33
of our food. We may not put a lot
26:35
of peanut butter in certain things, but I definitely
26:37
think the pairing of peanut butter and vegetables is
26:40
a big thing, but people don't understand it. All
26:46
right, so, we're gonna
26:48
get started here. Let's do it. The
26:50
instructions do say cook at 275 degrees. Ha,
26:54
yes, I saw that and I'm like, oh,
26:56
okay. My assumption there
26:59
as a cook that she means medium high. She
27:03
uses shortening. She
27:05
said shortening or oil. Yeah, I'm
27:07
gonna use butter because I can't
27:09
tell you the last time I used
27:11
shortening. Really? Which is very. That's old
27:13
school. Very old school. You
27:16
got your buttermilk there? I have buttermilk. I
27:18
was shocked that Miss Parks didn't use buttermilk,
27:21
but I'm gonna use buttermilk because I
27:23
keep buttermilk in my refrigerator and I
27:25
rarely have regular milk. I
27:27
like that you're not afraid to put your own spin on
27:30
this, Nicole. I mean, I think that's
27:32
what good cooks do. They don't follow
27:34
the recipes like, I'll
27:38
say this. Rosa Parks probably made these
27:40
pancakes a million, a zillion times. She
27:42
probably did not look at
27:44
this envelope. What do you think? Certainly
27:46
not after she'd done it a few times. Exactly.
27:49
In other words, Nicole may not be cooking
27:51
the recipe exactly as Rosa Parks wrote it,
27:53
but she feels she's cooking it in the
27:55
right spirit. The way most experienced home cooks,
27:57
especially back then, did it. Goodbye.
28:00
experience, feel, and whatever you
28:02
have on hand. So, this
28:05
flower here is, ha ha ha, I wonder if
28:07
Mrs. Parks used white
28:10
lily, because in my flower container
28:12
here, it's all white lily,
28:14
which is a southern brand that
28:16
southerners love. And
28:18
I'm gonna put our maple syrup on
28:21
the stove, so it will warm up because
28:24
it was in the fridge. Genius.
28:27
I appreciate that Nicole, because cold maple syrup
28:29
on hot pancakes is just, I mean. Terrible.
28:31
Right. Oh, I would never do that, always.
28:33
No, no, I know, that's why I'm here, Nicole. That's
28:35
why I'm not at someone else's house. All
28:38
right, here. I'm
28:40
glad you don't have me on camera, because
28:43
I have my morning attire on, my scarf.
28:45
I wonder if Mrs. Parks wore a headscarf
28:47
like this when she was
28:49
cooking, because she was always so put
28:52
together in public. Yes, and the impression that
28:54
I get from speaking to her nieces was
28:56
also that she's just like a formal
28:59
person. Really? I mean, yes,
29:01
like a person who. Well,
29:04
that means she would have had her lipstick on and
29:06
a really nice dress if you were coming to her
29:08
house to make a peanut butter. And
29:10
I'm gonna try the peanut butter unmelted.
29:14
Really? Yeah, I'm nervous about
29:16
melting the peanut butter. I'm
29:18
gonna defer to you, Nicole, because I've never cooked the
29:20
peanut butter in this way, so whatever you think. I
29:22
just think you can get a little putting a hot,
29:25
okay, for instance, we melt the peanut butter and
29:27
then we have egg. I
29:29
mean, like how. Or if it could cook
29:31
the egg. Yeah, that's it. Oh, yes. So
29:33
that's what I'm like, eh. And
29:35
then if you melt it, do you melt it
29:38
in a separate pan? Do you need a little
29:40
butter in a separate pan? So the peanut butter
29:42
doesn't stick to the pan, it just seems, as
29:44
I'm thinking about it, like, no. There
29:49
we go. A
29:52
third cup of peanut butter. This
29:54
is it, this is the moment of truth, Nicole. This is the moment of truth.
29:57
We're gonna see what happens here. No
32:00
syrup because I just want to taste pure pancake
32:02
and then and then we'll see how it does
32:04
with syrup. I Can
32:08
see the feather light thing They're not as dense
32:10
as I thought and you can taste the peanut
32:12
butter the peanut butter really hits the back quickly
32:14
Look, I've had two bites without syrup. This is a
32:16
lot Yeah,
32:19
I mean the in these pancakes are about I
32:21
would say what a half inch thick at least
32:23
I like a pancake with some real thickness that
32:25
has a real cake interior I
32:28
also like that they've maintained their
32:30
delicate edge crisp even
32:32
after sitting for a little while Would
32:35
you make these again Nicole for sure? And
32:37
I like the peanut butter in the inside I
32:40
feel like you could make these pancakes serve
32:42
them without syrup Make them kind of small
32:44
like silver dollar style and almost serve them
32:46
as like an afternoon snack Like
32:49
a tea cake Type of thing.
32:51
I can see that You
32:54
seem skeptical my head is going to the side but
32:56
I could see that it might
32:58
not be the traditional Well, I
33:00
see pancakes as pancakes and that's a
33:02
morning thing. Mm-hmm, but sure tea cake,
33:04
okay Hey,
33:07
you're the one that's putting buttermilk and Rosa Parks's recipe
33:09
here in the column Rosa Parks is
33:12
from Tuskegee I Bet
33:14
you Rosa Parks wanted buttermilk in these pancakes.
33:16
Maybe she can find buttermilk that day Well,
33:19
buttermilk is a staple southern staple.
33:21
So She wouldn't be
33:23
mad about the little milk But
33:26
she might be mad if I serve them with tea in the afternoon for
33:28
sure Definitely
33:34
Now that you've made these pancakes and eaten them
33:37
Does it change your perception of
33:39
Rosa Parks? It just makes
33:41
me more curious about her personal life Did
33:44
she make these every weekend? Was
33:46
it a special treat? It
33:49
makes me look at her it's more
33:51
of a I'm doing air quotes here
33:53
normal person Like she
33:55
had to eat She just
33:57
wasn't this person who was all about her
33:59
work and all about changing the Civil Rights
34:01
Movement, she cared about
34:04
nurturing and feeding her family. So
34:07
yeah, definitely the pancake recipe makes me
34:09
feel closer to her, for sure. I
34:15
boarded the bus downtown
34:18
Montgomery on Coats Square.
34:21
The bus I proceeded out to town- This is Rosa
34:23
Parks speaking in 1956, a
34:25
year after that day on the bus. It's
34:28
hard to find audio of her talking about anything
34:30
other than that day. But
34:32
even though she's telling a story I've heard
34:34
before, I feel like I hear
34:36
it differently now. The
34:38
other passengers there reluctantly gave
34:40
up their seats but I refused to do so.
34:44
The driver said that
34:46
if I refused to leave the seat he
34:48
would have to call the police
34:50
and I told him just call
34:53
the police. The time
34:56
had just come when
34:58
I had been pushed as
35:01
far as I could stand to be pushed,
35:04
I suppose. I
35:06
had decided that I
35:09
would have to know once and for all what rights
35:11
I had as a human being and
35:13
a citizen. Now
35:15
if you want to try Rosa Parks
35:17
pancakes yourself, you
35:25
posted the recipe online along with a link to
35:28
the entire archive at the Library of Congress. It's
35:30
in the post for this episode at sporkful.com. My
35:36
thanks to Nicole Taylor, who's clearly very good at
35:38
putting her own spin on Southern cooking. In fact,
35:40
so good she made a whole cookbook about it.
35:42
It's called Up South, Chasing Dixie in a Brooklyn
35:44
Kitchen. It's really great, check it out. Thanks
35:47
also to food historian Andrew Smith who helped
35:49
out on this show. He's the author of
35:52
Peanuts, the illustrious history of the Goober P.
35:54
This episode was originally produced by Anne
35:56
Sanne, Shoshana Gold and me with editing
35:58
help from Dan Charmin.
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