EP 63 Time to Eat: Food Traditions, Summer Celebrations, and Rethinking Red

<p><em>Summer is full of reasons to celebrate - either for our personal victories of graduation or fatherhood but also on a more profound scale with federal holidays like Independence Day. In this new episode of As We Eat, Kim and Leigh explore how one author is not only bringing attention to the food traditions of Black celebrations like Juneteenth, but also challenging readers to look again at tradition.</em></p><h2><strong>Food &amp; Celebration</strong></h2><p>For the month of June, we decided to focus on food and celebration, and to us there was no better choice than a relatively new title - &#34;<a href="https://bookshop.org/a/84555/9781982176211" rel="nofollow"><em>Watermelon &amp; Red Birds: A Cookbook for Juneteenth and Black Celebrations</em></a>” by James Beard-nominated food writer Nicole A. Taylor. It was the premise of this book that really caught Kim’s interest as it is the first broadly published cookbook to focus on the foods of Juneteenth. What we found is not only a collection of recipes, but a sincere effort to explore culinary traditions that connect food-centric celebrations to a rich heritage while also making room for those traditions to bend and accommodate change.</p><h2>A Bridge Between Tradition and Culinary Evolution</h2><p>In this space, Taylor aims to bridge the gap between traditional African American dishes and the evolving culinary landscape of the twenty-first century, encouraging readers to engage in conversations about Black American contributions to the country while celebrating their own cultural heritage.</p><p>While Taylor&#39;s own culinary journey began at a young age, she came into her celebration of Juneteenth as a young adult and it fueled her interest in documenting the DIY and urban food scene around her home in New York. Her debut book, &#34;The Up South Cookbook,&#34; aimed to help home cooks recreate Southern cuisine in the North.</p><p>A critical element in Taylor’s approach is her theory that food belongs to everyone, not just professionals, and by capturing th