Eat This, Don’t Eat That…

Until recently I had never even heard of a culinary concoction called ‘chicken and waffles’. Then my friend Dave posted a picture of himself eating this at a bar/restaurant in Memphis. He was on a road trip to see Iowa State play in the Liberty Bowl. That is ‘liberty’, as in ‘freedom’, a concept Google and Facebook and Gavin (no gas stoves or heaters, and vax or else) Newsom could take a few lessons in.

Dave posted a photo of his plate of fried chicken and waffles and syrup and butter. with a large craft beer to wash it down. Dave is a tall and rangy fellow, and how he stays so slim eating like this is a mystery. If I even look at a pizza or burrito I gain 5 lbs.

So I went to the internet, and apparently ‘chicken and waffles’ is a real thing. The story is that it originated in Harlem during the heyday of jazz. The musicians would play late into the night and afterwards wanted to get something to eat, but the restaurant kitchens were closed. Some enterprising and accommodating chef threw together left over pieces of fried chicken and whipped up some waffles to accompany them, and an instant culinary classic was born.

Of course this story, like every part of history, is being debunked, but whatever its birthplace, chicken and waffles is a well known dish in much of the southern U.S. Not on Brumby Road though, where our cultural cooking leans more toward pesto or home made salami or polenta with mushroom gravy. And yes, we call it ‘gravy’, not sauce.

But even food can get you in trouble these days…

A New York middle school is apologizing after serving students with a meal on the first day of Black History Month that was deemed to be culturally insensitive.
Administrators at Nyack Middle School say that the hot lunch menu was changed by the vendor without their knowledge on February 1st, the first day of Black History Month, to include chicken and waffles with a watermelon dessert which the school’s principal called an “unfortunate situation”, The Journal News reported.
“We are extremely disappointed by this regrettable situation and apologize to the entire Nyack community for the cultural insensitivity displayed by our food service provider,” Nyack Middle School Principal David Johnson said in a statement.

Now let me say that when I was in school, if the kitchen had served me fried chicken and waffles for lunch I would have been in heaven, no matter what day it was. But that was back when schools taught grammar and arithmetic and spelling and not gender awareness. We never considered how the food we ate and when we ate it could be culturally insensitive. Because it’s food, not a political statement.

Besides, it seems to me that serving chicken and waffles, if it is indeed a product of Black culinary tradition, is a TRIBUTE on the first day of Black History Month, not a demeaning culturally insensitive stereotype. If I go to a Cinco de Mayo celebration, I expect to consume tacos or burritos and drink a Negra Modelo. And gain the aforementioned 5 lbs. If a school serves tacos on Cinco de Mayo are they going to be reprimanded and forced into diversity training? On St. Patrick’s day the consumption of corned beef and cabbage and beer dyed green goes off the charts and nobody gets mad about it.

Since Stoker and I are retired, we barely know what day of the week it is, so it would be easy for us to slip up and order something ethnic on an insensitive date. But I doubt chicken and waffles are going to be a part of our diet, whatever day it is. So, for this one ‘trigger’, we are safe.