Wednesday, November 13th

5:30-7 PM
Lewis, Edna. 1976. Taste of Country Cooking. 1st Edition edition. New York: Knopf.

Edna Lewis is considered by many the most important voice in regional American food history. A black woman born into a utopian agrarian community settled by formerly enslaved people, Lewis came to prominence as both a professional chef and a writer. Taste, her classic work, is both an elegy to Freetown and a disappearing way of life, and a subversive historical and political corrective about the Black culture of the American south.

The story of the Great Migration, which brought Edna Lewis to New York City, also drew thousands of African-American migrants to settle in Kingston. This session explores the culinary experiences and contributions of these migrants, many of whom lived and worked in the Rondout neighborhood prior to Urban Renewal and (we know from oral histories) shopped at Reher’s Bakery. REGISTER HERE