Giveway! | Asheville Grown Collection + The Potlikker Papers!
A giveaway you say? Yep. We're giving away a copy of The Potlikker Papers by John T. Edge AND a 12 piece box of our Asheville Grown Collection. Read on for details...
Called "The One Food Book You Must Read This Year." by Southern Living Magazine and profiled here by NPR and here by the New York Times, The Potlikker Papers is a people’s history that reveals how Southerners shaped American culinary identity and how race relations impacted Southern food culture over six revolutionary decades. The book uses food as a lens that helps us connect the dots between food and culture and social justice, from the the Montgomery Bus Boycott to the "New Southern" cuisine that cities like our hometown of Asheville have become famous for.
Edge, director of the Southern Foodways Alliance of the University of Mississippi in Oxford, writes about the South with love and hope, paired with a firm belief that Southern eaters have a "responsibility to pay down the debts of pleasure owed to the enslaved African cooks and farmers who came before".
We at French Broad Chocolates consider ourselves incredibly lucky to call Asheville our home, and to be a part of the aforementioned "New Southern" food movement. We take our commitment to social and environmental and economic justice seriously and work hard to source all of our ingredients with intention. We feel truly blessed to live in a region that allows to source much of what we use locally, and develop and maintain close relationships with our farmers and organizations like the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project who advocate for them.
We created The Asheville Grown Collection as both a love letter to our mountain town and a celebration of the farmers and producers that comprise our bountiful foodshed. From raspberries to sorghum to lavender to honey, each of these handcrafted truffles and caramels features locally sourced ingredients combined with our bean-to-bar chocolate, grass-fed dairy and organic sugar.
We're over the moon to be partnering with Penguin Books on a seriously awesome (and simple) giveaway. Just leave a comment below telling us what "Southern Food" means to you. It could be a memory, a hope, a dream, a poem, a song... use your biscuit ;)
Contest closes on Wednesday, June 21. Winner will be announced on Thursday, June 22!
sounds like a great summer read
Comfort, love, deliciousness, creative resourcefulness, and local traditions whipped together and served on a wooden table with a smile.
Southern food to me, means heritage, traditional and having a love for the land and the people who take care of it! As a Northern girl married to a Southern guy, I’ve re-shaped a lot of my views of around Southern food". One of my favorite eye opening experiences was watching the Chef Sean Brock season Mind of a Chef. His love for the food and the culture was so infectious, it even prompted my husband to purchase his first cookbook!
Southern food means made-at-home-in-the-crowded-kitchen with enough to accommodate that person or family that happened to stop by an hour before mealtime and is absolutely expected to stay.
Southern food means there’s always room for one more chair at the table.
Southern food means gathering. It means open doors and open hearts.
It’s often just the excuse people use to be with others—whether in joy or sadness.
No one really cares about the fried chicken and banana pudding after the funeral, but they bring it—banana pudding by the vat—because delivering it is an excuse for sitting on the couch beside the mourners, or leaning against the porch rail discussing anything but the grief until the time when it is possible to face it.
Southern Food means love.
Southern food to me means family, tradition & love. My fondest memories are of my grandma cooking especially every Sunday. My grandpa was a preacher at a small church and my grandma cooked for the whole congregation every Sunday. Sometimes it was something simple like ham & cheese sandwiches toasted in the oven. Other Sundays were a big shebang! Chicken & dumplings, pinto beans (my grandma served pintos 7 days a week for some reason), fresh corn, Brunswick stew & a beautiful chocolate cake. I loved helping her poke wholes in her yellow round cake and then pouring the hot chocolate sauce on top. The sugared icing would melt down between the layers. I got in trouble for scraping all the droppings on the side of the cake plate. I wasn’t very smooth. I literally left my fingerprints. My grandma, like all good southern grandmas, loved her family with food. She canned and froze enough vegetables to get us through the Apocalypse & she made each of us feel special. Every morning I’d wait for the school bus at her house. She would fry me two eggs and was somehow able to flip them with a fork. Never a busted yolk in sight. What I wouldn’t give for one of those eggs right this minute.