From Garden To Table: Longing For Grandma Ella’s Southern Dishes

By Tracey Graham-Beaty

Today, we rarely know or consider where our food comes from. It goes from the shelves to our carts to our homes. My Grandma Ella’s garden – more about her in a moment – is being replaced with 3D-printed food and lab-grown food. In November 2022, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved billionaire Bill Gates to create lab-grown farms in America. What are lab-grown farms and foods? Certified Plant-Based Nutritionist, Bobby Price, has explained that lab-grown foods are genetically modified meats and vegetables, altered from their natural chemical structure. Once genetically modified foods are digested into our bodies, over time, they can cause cancer or even damage our DNA.

In losing awareness of the origins of what we eat every day, we have forfeited a legacy of survival, resilience, and transculturation in the pursuit of prioritizing convenience. There are better ways to eat and enjoy food safely.

I can still smell the aroma of my Grandma Ella’s homemade strawberry jam and mouthwatering buttermilk biscuits on a Saturday morning in Bucksport, South Carolina. Grandma was known as a good ole southern cook whose foremothers taught her how to make everything from scratch. Her grocery store was in her backyard, where she would walk outside to her chicken coop and vegetable garden. Peeking out the window, I saw her picking ripe fruits, veggies, and eggs while the roosters stood around crowing in the early morning dew. When Grandma returned to the kitchen, her cracked hands kneaded flour and mashed strawberries to make the childhood breakfast I remember so well. My taste buds long for the homemade dishes that took her hours to prepare without a written recipe. The recipes came from Grandma’s keen memory while watching elderly women in her bloodline use their bare hands to create southern cuisines from their family gardens.

Past and present foremothers continue to practice their culinary traditions. Low-country cuisines are part of African American cultural heritage passed down from one generation to the next. We eat Hoppin’ John at our New Year’s family gatherings because we learned from our ancestors that black-eyed peas bring good luck, peace, and prosperity for our families as we bring in the New Year.

Learning about my Southern roots inspired me to explore the history of African American foodways. As an Anthropology Professor, I assigned students to trace the origins of their favorite foods. Their research led them to well-renowned Anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits, who explains in his research how enslaved West Africans transported crops from their homelands onto slave ships during the 15th century. Inspired by this knowledge, my students chose to create a campus heritage garden where they grew watermelons, okras, sugar canes, collards, cotton, and peas—many of the same crops that were grown in my Grandma’s garden.

My students–even those who had grown up in the American South–were surprised to note that many of the foods grown and consumed in the South can be traced to the continent of Africa. Watermelons, yams, okras, and rice are foods that reflect African carryovers to the Southern coast, now known in modern times as the Gullah Geechee corridor.

The students also learned from the book Black Rice by Judith Carney that the rice culture in the American South began with the involuntary migrations of skilled enslaved African laborers who specialized in growing rice in West Africa. Students were shocked because they believed that rice originated from other areas of the Old World, such as the Middle East. Others thought that rice simply came from local grocery stores, never considering the work that goes into growing and harvesting rice before it is prepared and served on our dinner tables.

The global changes in the food industry have allowed me to look more deeply into the local and global cultural trends and the power dynamics driving lab-grown foodways, and how these changes have impacted communities over time.

Where are the gardens that are similar to my Grandma Ella’s?   Grandma Ella’s rich legacy of her southern cooking will always have a special place in my heart! Let’s work together with local farmers to go back to producing family gardens that promote whole foods that are rich in nutrients – not genetically modified foods.