Building Houses out of Chicken Legs or Verdura

Building Houses out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food, and Power

Author: Psyche A Williams Forson

Williams-Forson examines the complexity of black women's legacies with food as a form of cultural work. While acknowledging the negative interpretations of black culture associated with chicken imagery, Williams-Forson focuses her analysis on the ways black women have forged their own self-definitions and relationships to "the gospel bird."

From personal interviews to the comedy of Chris Rock, from commercial advertisements to the art of Kara Walker, and from cookbooks to literature, Williams-Forson considers how black women defy conventional representations of blackness in relationship to these foods and exercise influence through food preparation and distribution.

Publishers Weekly

The humble chicken has possessed complicated associations for African-Americans from earliest slavery times, especially for women, who traditionally had to cook the bird for white kitchens. Moreover, hawking chicken by "waiter carriers" became a key source of income for poor disenfranchised blacks, while stealing chickens reflected a kinship with African-American "trickster heroism," according to Williams-Forson, an American studies professor at the University of Maryland. In her valuable though dense and scholarly study, Williams-Forson explores how the power of food images advanced the rhetoric of black stereotypes in lore and literature, for example, as portrayed in "coon" songs like Paul Laurence Dunbar's popular "Who Dat Say Chicken in Dis Crowd" and characterizations of mammies in advertisements in upscale magazines. With the Great Migration, blacks took their cultural practices with them, literally, in shoe boxes containing fried chicken, and their route became known as the "chicken bone express." The author discusses chicken as "the gospel bird" in African-American churches (the strength of one's cooking skills elevated one's status with the preacher), and how eating chicken (or eschewing it) provides a way for blacks to "signify" class and status. Following her hard-going study is a staggeringly thorough bibliography. (June) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Table of Contents:

1	We called ourselves waiter carriers	13
2	"Who dat say chicken is dis crowd" : black men, visual imagery, and the ideology of fear	38
3	Gnawing on a chicken bone in my own house : cultural contestation, black women's work, and class	80
4	Traveling the chicken bone express	114
5	Say Jesus and come to me : signifying and church food	135
6	Taking the big piece of chicken	165
7	Still dying for some soul food?	186
8	Flying the coop with Kara Walker	199
	Epilogue : from train depots to country buffets	219

See also: Computer Forensics or Rick Steves Austria and the Alps DVD 2000 2007

Verdura: Vegetables Italian Style

Author: Viana La Plac

An inspired collection of nearly three hundred classic and original recipes, Verdura translates the Italian passion for food into an endless celebration of vegetables.

"A good salad tomato should be firm, plucked from the vine just before it is fully ripened, and heavy with the spicy scent of its foliage." With exquisite attention to the pleasures of cooking fresh food, Viana La Place introduces the basic Italian principle of cooking with herbs and vegetables. Many of these recipes pair simple vegetables with unusual preparations, transforming classic dishes into new masterpieces. Here you will discover revelatory antipasti, like Baby Artichokes Marinated in Lemon and Herbs (Carciofini al Limone e alle Erbe); innovative salads like Romaine and Gorgonzola Salad with Whole Wheat Crostini (Lattuga Romano e Gorgonzola con Crostini al Pone Integrate); and such tantalizing pastas as Butterfly Pasta with Fennel and Balsamic Vinegar (Forfalle ai Finocchi) and Tiny Pasta with Ten Herbs (Tripolini alle Dieci Erbe)—dishes characterized by their earthy, intense fragrance. Viana La Place's brilliant and original recipes will make Verdura a permanent guide to cooking vegetables the Italian way in your kitchen.

Los Angeles Times

[La Place's] uncomplicated recipes are filled with really innovative ideas. She thinks carefully about the way things taste and comes up withsuggestions you have probably never considered.

Food & Wine

Verdura extols the glories of fresh produce in recipes for antipastos, salads, sandwiches, soups, pasta, risottos, pizzas, fritattas, and more.

Vegetarian Times

The simple elegance of La Place's recipes is inspirational. All in all, Verdura is an exceptional cookbook.

Publishers Weekly

`` Verdura means vegetables,'' writes cooking teacher and food columnist La Place ( Cucina Fresca ). It ``represents a style of cooking directly related to nature.'' By scouring the homes and restaurants of Italy, here she proves her case with 250 recipes and 50 menus featuring ``vegetables in all their remarkable variety''--antipasti, salads, sandwiches, soups, pastas, risotti, tarts and stews. As in her previous books, ingredients fall into unexpected combinations--carrots with porcini mushrooms, fried yellow peppers with mint. Whimsy is also revealed in recipes for ``olive oil from hell'' and ``angry rice.'' Mainly, however, common sense and creativity combine forces. The roster of Italian vegetables is well represented, from olives to peppers to artichokes, and now-familiar foods like pasta are given new life (e.g., tubetti with diced tomato and avocado sauce). La Place tells us that ``it is through vegetables that I have found my greatest expression.'' Verdura is the proof. Illustrations not seen by PW. Author tour. (May)

Library Journal

La Place is the coauthor of Cucina Rustica ( LJ 3/15/90), Pasta Fresca ( LJ 11/15/88), and Cucina Fresca (Harper, 1985). Like her previous books, this offers a collection of bright, vibrant dishes, this time with the emphasis solely on vegetables--as antipasti, in salads and soups, as main dishes, with pasta, rice, or polenta. Mint Frittata with Tomato Garnish, Inflamed Green Olives, and Pasta with Fennel, Tomato, and Red Onion are just some of La Place's fresh, unpretentious, and unusual creations; an excellent ingredients guide and a sampling of fruit desserts round out the book. Highly recommended.