Broccoli Rising and Juneteenth for All
Crystal Wilkinson is Kentucky’s 2021-2023 poet laureate, novelist and the author of Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks. She grew up in the mountains of Appalachia. I’m a Miami flatlander, a nervous white city girl with a strangely old country soul. We’ve never met in person, let alone cooked together in the kitchen, and yet every time I open Praisesong, which I love as much for the stories as the recipes, I wanna grab Wilkinson, hug her, and say, We have so much in common!
Your grandma believed birthdays must be celebrated? Mine too!
Soup beans and hoecakes and mess o’meatless greens (recipe below) says love to you? Me too!
You feel the ghosts of women who came generations ago guiding you in the kitchen? Me too!
You believe in the power of food and narrative to nourish? Me too!
As Wilkinson writes, “We cook.We share food. We heal.”
Juneteenth, which falls on Wednesday this week, is all about cooking, sharing food and healing. Also known as Emancipation Day, it commemorates the day two years after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, when U.S. forces came to Galveston, Texas, to enforce the liberation of enslaved Black people. Juneteenth is a day of resilience, reclamation, celebration with red drinks like hibiscus tea and red foods like red velvet cake.
Soup beans and hoecakes and a mess o’meatless greens (recipe below) would be right at home here. So would:
Chef Tanya Holland’s blackeyed pea dip and benne crackers
mac and cheese, introduced to America by James Hemings, Thomas Jefferson’s Black enslaved French-trained chef
Chrissy Tracey’s blackberry basil cobbler
sweet potato pie or cazuela in a crust
What’s on your Juneteenth menu? And how do you celebrate? And why do I? Because I believe in freedom for all, in righting wrongs past or present, in justice, even though it often takes a long time to arrive. And I want to honor Black foodways as a vital part of America’s culture and cuisine. The foods of the African diaspora nourish me, and you too, even if you don’t realize it. As James Beard Award-winning food historian Michael Twitty writes in Koshersoul, we are “a rainbow of people.” We are more than Black or white, straight or LGTBQ, Democrat or Republican. We are “American and human, living beyond the boxes and bubbles we’re assigned to.” Let Juneteenth be a day of celebration and liberation. For all of us.
Juneteenth is for everyone. Please enjoy this recipe for Crystal Wilkinson’s Mess O’Meatless Greens. For exclusive recipes, stories and more, consider becoming a paid subscriber.
Delicious Juneteenth reading and recipes:
Forage & Feast, Chrissy Tracey
The Jubilee Cookbook, Toni Tipton-Martin
The Juneteenth Cookbook, Aliah L. Agostini and Chef Taffy Elrod
Koshersoul, Michael Twitty
Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks, Crystal Wilkinson
Vibration Cooking, Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor
More Juneteenth reading and recipes from
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