The holidays are upon us. With this season comes a reminder to hold those we love close—near and far, those who are still with us in the present or who we carry on in our spirits, biological and chosen family alike.
Especially as daylight hours continue to shrink, food brings more than just nourishment to our tables. Perhaps even more so when times are dark, our meals present the daily opportunity to gather, to create a warm space to sit with our loves—and our losses—in good company. Food can be a catalyst. It is the synthesis of new and old traditions, an expression of our culture, and the manifestation of our histories.
And no one does it better than Southerners. From barbecue to pralines, hot links to funeral potatoes—to commemorate any reason, season, or lifetime—you can bet that the South is gonna eat, and eat good.
If family recipes are gifts from our ancestors and elders, this collection is our gift to you.
We hope these stories of food, family, joy, and sorrow will bring you comfort and inspiration. We hope they remind you that you are not alone—that you are part of a larger family spanning time, space, and geography. We hope they make you feel at home, no matter where you find yourself this season.
Come fix you a plate.
Scalawag's Favorite Southern Family Recipes:
"Many times as a college student I ate cornbread burned black on the bottom, scorched too long in the oven while I studied in my tiny apartment. As a starry-eyed young bride, I added too much cornmeal to the cornbread I made for my new husband in our second week of marriage."
A meditation on love, tradition, and cornbread by Samantha Willis—a welcome reminder that "If you're hungry, you'll eat the bread, no matter how it looks." You'll need one and a half sticks of butter for this one. Don't skimp.
"My grandmother cooked by feel: She didn't use a recipe book or write things down. When I'd ask her 'how much?' she'd cup her hand or pinch her fingers and say, 'oh, about this much,' and smile."
Nnenna Freelon, the voice behind the podcast Great Grief, graciously offered up these memories of her late grandmother alongside the ways she has found to cope with the grief that always seems more present around the holidays—through baking. Read for a meditation on the current season of change, and stay for Freelon's never-before-shared family recipe for sweet potato pie. Bonus: Between prep and bake time, you'll have just the right length to listen to two episodes of Season 2 of Great Grief. Suggested pairings: A shot to remember that grief-time isn't linear anyways, with a seasonally appropriate live holiday special chaser.
"My mother is known in our family as a masterful home cook with a diverse and tasty repertoire. […] There was a recent Thanksgiving mishap with that Southern abomination called ambrosia. But when I think of her cooking, it's the kielbasa and cabbage; cobblers and collards; shrimp fried rice; fried chicken that leaves a slight salty sting on your lips; Salisbury steak; steamed bok choy; beautiful fruit salads; banana pudding; and one of my sister's favorite dishes, macaroni and cheese."
James Beard Award winner Cynthia Greenlee is not a cook—but her momma sure is. Here, she walks us step-by-step through how Mrs. Betty Greenlee of Black Mountain crafts a mean mac 'n cheese that's not only comforting to eat, but comfortable to make.
"It was mid-October when we arrived at Leonoro's within 30 minutes of closing time. We'd just left the hospital, where my dad had been on life support for almost a week. He'd suffered a massive heart attack, and it looked like he might not make it. We felt guilty showing up so late to an otherwise empty dining room, but when greeted with, 'Howdy-do, folks. Sit wherever you like,' we felt at ease for the first time all day."
When big-city media types look to Mike Costello of Lost Creek Farm for the quintessential Appalachian restaurant, he recommends the kind of place where you'll find a slightly sweet red sauce, paper placemats, and little butter pats individually wrapped in foil. "But that's Italian food, not Appalachian," they'll say. Actually, it's both—and this sauce is damn close to the real thing when you need it.
Other Stories of Food and Family:
"When I make the goat curry I learned from my mother in my Southern, queer of color community, my mom's world (and therefore a world I'm part of too) touches the next chapter in our family's story. My mom's longing for something more than a life of laboring under obligation and patriarchy is activated through me—my hands. Her ability to offer compassion in the face of despair moves through me and fortifies my freedom dreams for something more for us than pure survival. Because she haunts me, I know the thread that connects us is integral to the soul work I came here to do."
Read the essay.
From 2017: Community educator Sumi Dutta reflects on what our hands inherit. When she's in the kitchen, pinching South Asian spices into hot oil, she can feel her actions following a code that the mind alone can't comprehend—tapping into the same power Audre Lorde once described as "ris[ing] from our deepest and nonrational knowledge."
"Most of the food I remember eating during my childhood seems, to me, unremarkable. We frequented Maria's, a Mexican restaurant just off the old highway, and Aldi, a German grocery chain that still has some of the cheapest produce in Northwest Arkansas. Some of our food was more locally-sourced: most hunting seasons, someone in the family would shoot a deer or two that we'd eat off of the rest of the year."
Read the story.
From the plantation economy to the rise of Walmart, Olivia Paschal delves into the politics of food in Northwest Arkansas with this dispatch from a 2019 Southern Foodways Alliance Field Trip. The result is a beautiful profile of place, exploring histories of displacement and migration to reveal a region with a food culture as diverse as the people who call the Mid-South home.
"As Malek Alarmash and his family hand off the last of their hummus and drop the last falafel in the fryer, he reflects on the relief he feels to be here, now. Alarmash was born and raised in the Syrian capital of Damascus. He was a college student when the revolution broke out."
Read the story.
The small town of Clarkston is touted as one of the world's most diverse square miles, home to tens of thousands of refugees from Vietnam, Sudan, Bhutan, Somalia, and more over the past four decades. When the opportunity presented itself in 2016, Alarmash, his sister Rouaa, and his mother Majeda Nakshbandi boarded a plane from Syria for the United States, resettling here, just outside of Atlanta. By 2018, through their food stand, Alamash and his family helped create a safe space for his mother and other Syrian women to work, cultivating both community and their own personal agency.