More Black History Month reading

I could easily write about more children's books, but I thought it might be better to catch up on some of the grown-up books I have been reading. There are overlaps.

I had mentioned Marley Dias with her #1000BlackGirlBooks drive and the book she wrote. I came to that through A Centennial Celebration of The Brownies' Book.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2026/02/more-literature-centered-on-black.html 

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson 

This is one of the books Dias mentions. In fact, I had read it in April.

It had a huge impact on Dias, but not the first time she read it. She thought maybe she had grown into it when she picked it up again. 

I suspect it may be that you need to read it twice. There is a lot of atmosphere and mood with it; maybe you need to go through one time to get the feel of it and then you can absorb it.

But, Dias also did age between readings, which can affect readiness and perception.

The Enduring Legacy of Portland's Black Panthers: The Roots of Free Healthcare, Free Breakfast, and Neighborhood Control in Oregon by Joe Biel

The Black Panther Party: A Graphic Novel History by David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson

It had been about ten years since my last round of reading on the Black Panther party. 

I had purchased Biel's book when it first came out, but not gotten around to reading it. Then I saw a movie about Kent Ford, who gives Portland tours, and is featured in the book. There was also a library summer reading challenge where one of the categories was a book set in Oregon. I figured it was time to read it. Enduring Legacy was okay, and led me directly to the graphic novel, which was excellent.

Biel's sub-title is really long, but free healthcare and breakfast are only going to get more important. The Black Panthers did some great things and we should think about what we can do through similar efforts.

Watch Me Fly: What I Learned on the Way to Becoming the Woman I Was Meant to Be by Myrlie Evers-Williams

That is an amazing life right there. Evers-Williams tells her story with a lot of insight, some of it about functioning in the business world, and probably considerably more realistically than Lean In.

Balthazar: A Black African King in Medieval and Renaissance Art edited by Kristen Collins and Bryan C. Keene 

I don't remember what searches led to this one coming up in my results, but I had to read it because I still miss when medievalpoc was active.

Obviously the subject was Balthazar of the three kings. While the idea is interesting, the various essays strung together repeat. Maybe that is on the editors. I don't regret reading it, but there is unfulfilled potential.

There was a worse book yet.

Acting White: The Curious History of a Racial Slur by Ron Christie 

Christie's problem is that he is a Black Republican who keeps getting offended when that gets criticized, connecting it to how he used to be mocked (and told he was "acting white") for doing well in school.

I don't doubt that there would have been some mocking; that can happen to nerds. It is also common to hear of academically inclined Black youth being supported in their communities and steered away from trouble. Maybe no one liked him. That would be hard, especially if it wasn't his fault. 

He does not come off as particularly likable. 

However, after writing this book in 2010 and then Blackwards: How Black Leadership Is Returning America to the Days of Separate but Equal in 2012 (maybe he meant Michael Steele, because he was critical of him around that time) I wonder if he has started to find any issues in white supremacy. 

Decanting the olives

That day's food discourse started with a report showing that spending on food from food service had increased as sales of food purchased from stores had decreased, and people trying to explain that.

https://x.com/SPnoir/status/2018456699313734091 

Just looking at the data, it's not as dramatic a difference as you might expect; I can't help wondering how much of it is delivery fees. The lines cross right around 2020 when a lot of people started ordering in more and that has remained popular.

Regardless, people start replying about the wasting of money. On Mike Bird's post, someone with username "TheWealthCoach" admonishes that people learn to cook, and a rjurney below him replies "You can read his class within his response. He’s got time to be thrifty. He’s affluent."

(Because of how the replies are threaded, there is not a good link for that.)

Then, what really started the discussion I saw was this response from SPnoir:

I wanted to make sesame noodles with cucumber last week. Had to buy sesame oil, chili oil, sesame seeds, rice vinegar... let me know if you have these handy in your cupboard. That's not even getting to the main ingredients.

There were replies from many people who had those in their cupboards, and also that those are all reusable. 

There were also some replies that there were swaps you could do, like that you could probably use any vinegar if you did not specifically have rice vinegar, and sesame seeds are more of a garnish, so you could probably skip them.

That brings us back to my earlier Worcestershire sauce example. The initial outlay can be expensive, but then the use per meal ends up being very inexpensive. If you bought a jar of nutmeg every time you were going to use it, that would add up (and is a good reason to check your cupboards first).

As you are getting into cooking, by all means take your time and build up gradually. You can look up recipes that use ingredients you already have.

Then BrieBrieJoy entered the chat.

Briahna Joy Gray was the press secretary for Bernie Sanders and now hosts the Bad Faith podcast. It's not the first time she has made anyone roll her eyes. 

https://x.com/briebriejoy/status/2019074357125853529 

She agreed with SPnoir, because people don't have these ingredients and they are overwhelmed. If you want to help people cook, you should focus on single ingredients that taste good with salt, pepper, butter, and olive oil, because everybody has those.

There is a lot you can do with those four ingredients, I am not going to lie. I am also currently out of butter (which I regularly restock) and olive oil, which I have gotten out of using.

Things start to fall apart in Gray's replies to ashley_quan, who points out that the sesame noodle ingredients are Asian staples and that if you are going to make the dish even once a month having them is not unreasonable.

This would have been a really easy time to acknowledge that different pantries have different ingredients, and that every culture has simpler and easier recipes, even if you personally are not familiar with them.

This is someone who worked for Sanders; she was never going to be able to admit she was wrong.

It devolves and then there are different threads, where I can't capture them all. 

Gray uses executive function as a reason that it is just too hard to make Asian or Mexican food, where it is much easier to do French cooking instead.

While that is questionable, familiarity is a real factor. If she is used to French cooking, then something a little more complicated might still seem more manageable than a simple stir fry.

However, when you say that sauteing vegetables doesn't sound very Chinese, that just makes you seem ignorant.   

What you will see in the link is Gray suggesting adobo as being easier, except that it could easily fit within the Asian cooking that she was decrying. It's traditionally Filipino but I got my adobo recipe out of a Hawaiian cookbook, which also had a strong Japanese influence so bring back the rice vinegar!

Also, to ashley_quan's reply that chicken adobo has eight ingredients, Gray replied with a photo of a seasoning mix from famous Trump supporters Goya.

Yes, I have bought jars of sauce and shakers and packets of seasonings, but willingness to do that is one of those things that puts cooking different types of food within reach. 

My favorite part came when she tried to explain how Mexican food is too complicated, like decanting the olives for making tacos: 

https://x.com/briebriejoy/status/2019200627641884919 

I was not the only one who got hung up on that. There were so many replies and new threads that I am surprised that no one has written it up, for clickbait if nothing else. I couldn't find anything, so I guess it's me.

Decanting is a process for removing sediment. It happens most often with wine, and sometimes with olive oil. I  did some searching for olives themselves, and there was one person asking about it because when they open olives and don't eat them all within two weeks they start to see mold. 

At the risk of sounding like a snob, don't let opened olives sit around for two weeks. If you do and they start molding, let them go.

I believe there is racism here, and that is not surprising. This post is really more reveling in the ridiculousness of it, so I guess I will get more serious next week. 

For now, every time I open a can of olives and hold the detached lid on while I turn the can upside down over the sink to drain the liquid...

I'm decanting them y'all! 

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2015/01/asian-food.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2015/01/baby-corn.html 

Ableism in cooking discourse

Just to preview, the conversation that inspired this series of posts touched on ableism, classism, and racism... pretty normal.

Ableism is probably the -ism that comes up the most in cooking discourse, with some very legitimate points and some points that stretch credibility more.

Still sadly normal.

A big part of why it all happens is that aspect of dominator culture where there are always people who are eager to demonstrate their superiority and look down on others.

This frequently comes up with convenience items; someone will deride the laziness or incompetence of something like a tool for cracking eggs or packages of fruit that is already cut up.

The inspiration often comes because there are people who do not have the full use of their hands, or there is limited mobility in some other way. Someone will imagine people with unhampered physical abilities using it and question "How lazy do you have to be?"

One of the things I loved about the latest Knives Out movie, Wake Up Dead Man, is when Simone stands up and Martha exclaims about the miracle but Simone stops her: "I can walk; it just hurts."

It's not just that it is easy to not think about disability, but that when we do we often think of it very narrowly, getting mad if it inconveniences other or if it doesn't inconvenience the person with the disability enough.

(Or enjoying it when the disability works to enforce racism. Lots of ways to be wrong.)

The truth is, for there to be a profit, it often requires that lots of people who don't need the convenience will still want it. Maybe there is some "laziness" there. I do worry about packaging waste, but I worry more about us getting these ideas that people don't deserve food or that they need to suffer to eat well... I don't think that should be true.

When you realize that things you take for granted can be very difficult for others, appropriate responses are gratitude for those abilities, humility in knowing that having those abilities is generally independent of merit, and empathy for those who do not have those same options, ideally without any condescension.

The other way ability tends to come up relates to executive function.

This is not so much about having the motor skills and knowledge to be able to cook, but about being able to make a decision about what to eat based on what you have in the house, then follow through. That can also include regularly bringing in supplies of ingredients that you can use.

Just as mobility issues can fluctuate -- sometimes being more or less difficult -- executive function can as well. 

I have had days where the thought of trying to come up with dinner made me want to cry. That's not common for me, but when you have enough other things going on, one additional thing can put you over the edge.

I think the important thing to remember (before we get to someone whom I am going to be judging pretty hard) is that there can be lots of differences and nuances. 

Yes, absolutely there are times when people are capable of doing more than they do. 

People can also be capable most of the time but not sometimes. 

People can be capable, but not want to.

People might have the ability, but not the knowledge or the motivation to get the knowledge. They might not seem to need it, like if they have someone else who cooks or they have a budget that allows frequent ordering out.

Because people need to regularly eat and things like the availability of that budget for ordering out or that other person who does the cooking might change, there can be really good reasons for having some supplies and some knowledge on how to use them (I am still very interested in preparedness and planning), but not everything needs to be a contest or a moral judgment.

If we care about each other, we should want there to be lots of options available, and be willing to help as we can.  

That's not too much to ask. 

Reading and writing

I was going to title this post "But is it ableism?"

Sadly, that would imply a completely different meaning after the BAFTAs. (Though I have some thoughts on those as well.)

Anyway, ableism does come up a lot in cooking discourse. Another type of discourse that comes up a lot is things that are wrong with students.

This started with a teacher and author posting that he talks to students who want to be novelists but don't read novels:

https://x.com/AmericanGwyn/status/2023820821182247127

You can try reading about it from that thread, but there were so many replies that it is hard to follow.

He later adds that the students are generally taking their inspiration from video games or manga. That makes the reasonable follow-up question why they want to write novels instead of manga or video games; maybe they don't think they can, but that process would involve collaboration with artists or programmers or something; Only being able to create the story is not the end of the world.

Not enjoying novels does seem like a pity, and there is plenty we could say about the benefits of reading fiction and the influences that are causing that to become less common. 

Right now, there are two different paths I want to follow. You can find both of them in the next link:

https://x.com/iproposethis/status/2024542646342209690 

I had thought about Ana Mardoll before someone posted that infamous thread in the replies, but first the person offended by that: Joanna Schroeder, parenting writer who lists her excuses for not reading but still writing, and feels that Gwyn's take is privileged, if not ableist.

What she soon admits is that she does read 40 - 60 books a year, related to her work. 

I don't think anyone was implying that you need to read novel to write non-fiction. With that level of reading, she should be getting pretty well-versed in the style of writing that she is doing. That makes sense.

There may be a little resentment about not having time to read for pleasure, and maybe some implication that she doesn't enjoy her work, but I don't think anything there is invalidating her ability to do her job.

On to Ana!

The first time I saw any posts by Mardoll, they seemed fairly reasonable. There was context missing and then weirder tweets until eventually I think they left the site and later got back on with a protected account. 

This post -- which you can see in the second link -- is one that a lot of people were merciless about.

There's a thread going around mocking writers "who don't read very much" and I'm trying not to haul out my soapbox but... this is ableist? Not everyone can read for pleasure (or indeed at all) and some of those people are writers.

I spent some time thinking about it, wanting to give the benefit of the doubt. 

At the time, the most likely scenario in my head -- focused on disability -- was someone who had once read a lot and started writing, but had suffered something debilitating that made doing so harder. I've known people who have lost a lot of their ability to function where they have to choose what they are going to do with the limited time they have.

Laura Hillenbrand might be a good example, though I don't know how much ME affected her ability to read. I know she had to make other choices for how to do things. 

Regardless, if writing is your profession, you might have to prioritize that over reading, but you would probably have still read a fair amount before.

More recently it occurred to me that someone from an oral storytelling tradition might have words to put down, without having done a lot of reading. However, there are conventions like dividing into chapters and things where it is really helpful to have experience with how other people do it. That could also mean collaborating with someone rather than starting to read a lot in preparation. 

Of course, back when Mardoll that, AI wasn't really a thing, whereas NANOWRIMO allows it now. I have always had an attitude about that anyway, so my first reaction is a hearty "Whatever!", but if you're going to write, write.

And also, yes, if you want to write, read. But if you want to write and have not read, why do you want to write? Maybe you actually want something different, and figuring that out will help you.

While I do think Gwyn is a bit condescending about his students (and possibly other people too), I agree that reading a lot of what you want to write is a good idea. Maybe that should be combined with reading about the field as well. 

Celebrities often get opportunities to write children's books. They often show that they do not know much about what makes a children's book good.

Mainly, I hope when those students think that they want to be novelists, that it is not because they believe that is a path to being rich and famous.

I truly believe that there are many rewards to the writing process, but they aren't financial nearly as often as you'd hope. 

More literature centered on Black children!

This started with an article in Esquire about James Baldwin as remembered by his nephews:

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a61751831/james-baldwin-nephews/ 

That introduced me to the book Little Man, Little Man, Baldwin's 1976 children's novel, illustrated by Yoraz Cazac.

Of course I needed to read that, and I did. There was an introduction that mentioned other significant works, sending me to read more, but then it becomes more complicated, especially with chronology. 

To Be A Slave by Julius Lester (1968) 

The Big Box by Toni Morrison and Slade Morrison, illustrated by Giselle Potter (1999)

Those two are pretty straightforward, but you might wonder how much they are influencing each other spread so much apart.  

The Pasteboard Bandit by Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps (1997*) 

This was written in 1935, but it took a long time to get published.

Then, what puzzled me the most: The Brownies' Book.

I did not initially find a book called that. 

In fact, it was a children's magazine, spun off from the NAACP magazine, The Crisis.

It only lasted for two years, being well-received but not getting enough subscribers to self-fund (the Depression did not help). It did influence other magazines at the time, and contained early writing from Langston Hughes, including at least one recounting of a trip he took to Mexico like the one that inspired The Pasteboard Bandit.

As 100-year anniversaries for The Brownies' Book were reached, it inspired other efforts.

A Centennial Celebration of The Brownies' Book edited by Dianne Johnson-Feelings and Jonda C. McNair

The New Brownies' Book: A Love Letter to Black Families by Karida L. Brown and Charly Palmer

A Centennial Celebration starts with the first issue, includes several scholarly articles, then ends with the final issue. The Love Letter creates new art to recreate the effect. A lot of the visual art is quite good, but some of the writings are less so, especially the play about the early contributors.  

There is such a wide variety here that it is hard to make any comparisons, but the thing that may have been most important was being reminded of the necessity. When The Brownies' Book originally started, there were not many positive representations of Black children. Now there were not only stories, poems, and historical highlights, but children could send in letters and poetry of their own and pictures. 

Representation still matters. 

That makes it nice that one of the literary articles in A Centennial Celebration introduced me to a new book, Marley Dias Gets It Done: And So Can You! (2018),

In her own words, Marley Dias tells about getting inspired when she was 11 to do a #1000BlackGirlBooks drive after finding that all of the assigned reading focused on white boys and their dogs.

She is a kid, and the writing sounds like a kid talking, but she did something extraordinary, and something that was still necessary.

There is still plenty that needs to be done. 

Food heritage

I think I need to write two more background pieces before I get to the ridiculousness of decanting olives.

This is one of them.

I keep remembering this time in Modesto when an older couple was going to have us over for dinner. The wife asked about our likes. I didn't want to be demanding, so I responded that anything was fine, casseroles or what not.

She looked so puzzled.

She had never made a casserole; they were really meat and potatoes people.

I had a companion around then who was totally into that. I remember thinking that maybe these food preferences were regional. She was from Minnesota and while we were in California then, maybe the older couple were transplants. 

Of course, Modesto was also where I got a handout for the basic elements of casseroles, so I think the one woman would have encountered them before. 

Also, apparently casseroles are big in Minnesota, but they are more likely to be called "hot dish".

I'm not saying that the region doesn't play a role, but that there are many other factors, like family background or economic level or job.

My mother was Italian, but she was from the North where the sauce tends to be less meaty and spicy. Also she was the youngest and got married at seventeen, so she did not have as much Italian cooking knowledge as any of her sisters. The most complicated dish that she made from there was gnocchi, one that her father made, instead of her mother. I suspect his cooking process was more visible.

(That is gnocchi, and I learned that more from observing her than being actually taught as well.) 

My parents' cultures melded somewhat over cornmeal mush. It's kind of like polenta, popular in Northern Italy, but was also poor people food, except then you add milk and raisins. (I know it's a thing, but we never fried it.) 

A lot of Mom's recipes came from women she knew through church. If there was a fair amount of casseroles in her repertoire, I assume part of that was because of their convenience.

The growing popularity of the casserole in the '70s is associate by at least one food critic with "the beginning of the dark ages of American culinary culture."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casserole 

It's easy to look down on someone else's food. Don't do that.

I remember reading once that you should never eat anyone's meatloaf except for your Mom's. I think I have seen that about potato salad, too.

I am not really a big fan of either, but I get that there are things that can seem right or not, and memory and legacy is a big part of that.

The message yesterday was that you do not have to cook, but if you want to and don't know how, that can be changed.

Part of that freedom is the flexibility. There are lots of different types of foods with different ingredients and different cooking methods. If there is something easy to cook, but you don't like it, or something that you love but not enough for it to be worth the effort, those points and various others can all be valid.

There is more to it than equipment and recipes.

I'd like to teach the world to cook

This will seem like a tangent, but I promise it will relate.

There was another outbreak of cooking discourse on Twitter. This one got a little weirder. There was also some racism involved, but that part is pretty normal.

Regardless, there is some groundwork I want to lay down before getting too specific.

Let me clarify that I don't really like to cook. I don't hate it, and I get some satisfaction from being able to do it, but a lot of my motivation for cooking is really just that you can eat better and more economically that way. It can also be more convenient, though that's not a given.

My first tangent here should be that there will be people who swear it is more expensive to cook at home than to eat out. 

Usually they make this case by listing every ingredient in the purchasing quantity. If you needed to buy a new bottle of Worcestershire sauce every time you made Sloppy Joes, and you bought the fancy Lea & Perrins, that would add about $7 per dinner. However, it is a shelf-stable ingredient (it does need to be refrigerated after opening) where a small amount will last a long time, it can be used in multiple dishes, and you can get the store brand for much cheaper. 

It's like when Republicans try and show prices are out of control by pricing a Thanksgiving dinner where they include a sack of flour because they will need a few tablespoons and also the turkey is organic and fresh, or Dr. Oz being outraged about the price of crudites... lots of people are spending a lot less and getting more bang for their buck.

The next area that I want to address (though it feels too germane to be a tangent) is that cooking is not some arcane lore that requires years of studying and expertise, even as it does become easier with practice.

I think sitcoms play a part in this. (Okay, this part may be a tangent.)

Once upon a time, sitcom families like the Cleavers had wise fathers and mothers who were perfect housekeepers. As things got more modern, writers and producers wanted to change that up. The first thing that happened was that many sitcom fathers became buffoons, though generally well-meaning ones.

I have seen many men express displeasure with this because it's disrespectful. Maybe, but very few fathers for my generation were as wise and caring as Ward Cleaver; biased and volatile doesn't always work for humor. 

Maybe for Titus.

The other thing that happened, though, was that television mothers became notoriously bad cooks. 

I don't remember seeing many women offended by this. If you could cook, it wasn't insulting you; just that one particular woman, for laughs. If you couldn't cook, maybe you sympathized, especially if you had a Marie Barone mother-in-law who was a great cook and pretty insulting. 

Maybe there was also a rebellious part that was thinking it was unfair that the husband never had to cook. Regardless, I suspect that the growing depictions of women who could not cook helped make a lack of cooking skills seem practically inevitable. Besides, who has the time?

This is where it was important that I mentioned that I don't particularly enjoy cooking; there are a lot of possible shortcuts.

Sloppy Joes? I have made them from scratch, but now if I am going to do it, I use a canned sauce. (I do add Johnny's seasoning when I am browning the ground beef, and add brown sugar when I pour the sauce on.)

There are a lot of things that I know I can make from scratch -- because I have -- but I simply don't find it a good use of my time. For other foods that does matter.

My point is that cooking can be as easy or as complicated or as quick or as laborious as you want it to be.

The caveat is that you can't always choose what to simplify. 

I tried making tiropita once, which I like but I only ever find at Greek Fest. I am sure there are people with different skills for whom it would be easier, but it is not going to be easy enough for me to justify making it again. 

I once looked at taking an Indian cooking class and I had a cookbook. Looking through it, I realized that I was happier going out for Indian food. However, I do buy jars of sauces that are meant for using with chicken. I used them with sliced potatoes, and sometimes I will put in some apples or green beans or whatever is around. That's easy.

I did take a Chinese cooking class. I learned some good techniques from it, but the only thing I regularly make is fried rice, which is easy. I don't want to spend the time on some of the other things. 

Keeping soy sauce or teriyaki sauce around isn't a problem, and sometimes I will go wild and buy some hoisin sauce or something, and that's fine too. (The stir frying I do is more like teppanyaki, so I guess more Japanese-style, and probably not really Mongolian.)

It can be a completely reasonable decision to not cook some things, but there may be other things that you could totally cook. Maybe that would take some practice or watching a video or taking a class at the rec center. 

It can also be completely reasonable to not pursue cooking if it doesn't interest you. It may be worth considering whether you are getting good nutrition or spending too much, but if ordering in or going out works for you, fine. 

There may be options that you have not thought about yet that would work for you. 

Stay open to that.