TANYA HOLLAND & NINA WILLIAMS-MBENGUE TRANSCRIPT
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe. I'm your host, Kerry Diamond, coming to you from Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City. I'm the founder and editor of Cherry Bombe Magazine. Each week, I talk to the most interesting culinary personalities around. Today's episode is a conversation about the late, great chef and culinary trailblazer, Edna Lewis, recorded live at our second annual Cooks and Books Festival at Ace Hotel Brooklyn. Chef, author, and TV personality, Tanya Holland, interviewed Edna's niece Nina Williams-Mbengue about Edna's life and legacy.
Nina, who retired a few years ago from a long career in child welfare, is a board member of the Edna Lewis Foundation. Amazingly, when she was just 12 years old, Nina typed up the manuscript for Edna's 1976 Cookbook, The Taste of Country Cooking. That book is widely considered one of the most important American cookbooks around. Stay tuned for Tanya and Nina.
Today's show is presented by Yes! Apples. If you love apples, you need to know about Yes! Apples, a company that celebrates apples from New York State. You might not know this, but New York is famous for its amazing apples. Yes! Apples are grown on more than 50 different family-owned farms across New York. And Yes! Apples is also woman-owned, which you know we love here at Cherry Bombe. You can find Yes! Apples at grocery stores around the country, but you can also order Yes! Apples direct to your door. They make it super simple. You pick the variety you want to try and that's in season, such as the classic Honeycrisps or newcomers like EverCrisp and SnapDragon.
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Here's some fun news, we are launching a brand new podcast. It's called She's My Cherry Pie and it's all about baking. Maybe you caught the miniseries we ran last year, now it's going to be its own thing. Each week, host Jessie Sheehan will talk to the best bakers around and do a deep dive into their signature bake goods. New episodes start dropping Saturday, January 21st, put that in your calendars. Sign up for the She's My Cherry Pie newsletter to learn about the guests and to get a recipe so you can bake along. You can sign up for the newsletter at cherrybombe.com and be sure to tune in. Now, let's check in with today's guest.
Tanya Holland:
Nina, reading about you, it's like we have so much in common. I discovered we both went to the University of Virginia, we both studied languages. You mentioned Spanish. Me, Russian. We both didn't do anything with those degrees directly. I did. When I went to Kazakhstan, I was finally like, "Dad, the degree is finally paying off." We were both latchkey kids in New York. I was up in Rochester, you in the Bronx. I want to circle back to that down the road, but what are the chances? Also, your aunt greatly influenced me.
I moved to New York City in 1988 when I start really getting to restaurants. 1991, I heard about Edna Lewis. Now, when you said Brooklyn back then, you may as well have said North Dakota. I was like, "Nobody was really..." And I didn't have any money. But knowing that she existed really inspired me and made me believe that I could do what I do. Representation really matters. I want to talk to you a little bit about your time in Virginia. Your ancestor's from Freetown, which is in Unionville. And you write in Orange County. So what's the nearest major city that we all might know? Where's that?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Sure. It is about an hour and a half south of D.C., 45 miles east of Charlottesville. Near Fredericksburg, Virginia. Central Virginia, Rolling Hills. Still two hours northwest of Richmond and Norfolk and those places you've heard of, so very rural.
Tanya Holland:
Beautiful area though. How did you get there back then? How did you travel? By train, by bus, by car?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Oh, Lord. We took Trailways bus down there or the train. There really was a midnight train to Georgia that we took. There really was. Because we took it at night because I lived up in the Bronx and Aunt Edna did with us... 1970 South Bronx burning, where you didn't want people to know that you were leaving your house, your apartment. You went late at night if you could so nobody could see you. So yeah, either the bus or the train.
Tanya Holland:Wow. That's amazing. I took a bus ride once from Rochester to Charlottesville, it was not fun. Then how did you end up at UVA? Was it because of the Virginia Summers? Was it due to cold here?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Probably. Yeah. Because I love Virginia and I was applying to different colleges. Me and my mom, I went to visit my Aunt Jen. Aunt Jen is the older sister that really did the cooking, that Aunt Edna really learned from and work with. We went to UVA and went to check it out. I fell in love with it and applied and got in. So that's how I ended up going there.
Tanya Holland:
Wonderful. I know for me, my aunties have been very influential for me. Even before, and I don't know how much of you all know this, but Nina typed her aunt's manuscript for the cookbook, which is amazing, at 12 years old. Besides that, significantly, how did your auntie influenced you? Did you gravitate towards her? From the beginning, was she a favorite aunt or... What was the relationship like?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Yeah, definitely. Sure. My mother was the baby sister. Their father had died when my mom was about six months old, and their mother died when my mom was 12. Aunt Edna was already here in New York. She took my mom from Virginia to live with her here. She put her in high school, Julia Richmond High School, I think that's somewhere in Manhattan. And she put her in the New York School, the Art Students League of New York at that time, 1945, 1947. She raised my mom really, so they were very close. Then when I was born, my mom was a single parent up in the Bronx, I became like her other daughter. Because she didn't have any kids that survived. In 1970, we ended up moving in together. My mom became very ill, had to go to Philadelphia in hospital with the other sister.
And Aunt Edna and her husband moved from Harlem and moved to us to an apartment across the street. The other apartment had black smoke from the incinerator that triggered tuberculosis in my mom. First thing I think about Aunt Edna and all those moments and her African-ness, her love of Africa, she was a teaching assistant at the American Museum of Natural History in the African Hall. I used to come every day after school at high school and hang out with her for a few hours and we'd go on the subway up to the Bronx. So that was very influential... She met a lot of African people, African students. She started wearing this beautiful African dresses and reading history of Africa and that influenced me quite a bit.
Tanya Holland:
Wow. Just before we leave Charlottesville, I want to say, was your aunt aware of the story of James Hemmings? Did she talk about that at all? Thomas Jefferson's chef. Everybody knows.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
I think they talked about it because I remember her talking about it a bit when it was in the news. I don't remember that much. They were more talking about Freetown because they had grown up there. My mom had not. She was too young, but they talked about it. For them, it was like yesterday. Talking about the old folks and everything they did. As Aunt Edna was doing the book, she was double-checking all the recipes with her sister, Jenny, and brother, Lou, that were still in Virginia to make sure she got the recipes right and the memories right. I'd say they talked to them about Freetown that I remember. But I was 12, 13 or 14, but they did.
Tanya Holland:
By the way, she has the same birthday as Thomas Jefferson.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Yes. April 13th.
Tanya Holland:
Okay. You're in Virginia and you're eating all this great food that your aunt's cooking and then you said being latchkey. You go home and you're eating SpaghettiOs. What was that like? I did some of the same things with my grandparents in Virginia. But did you feel it in your body? Did it feel different? Did you miss it or...
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
I was torn. My mom sent me to Virginia every summer until I was about 13. Then I was like, "I don't want to go to the farm." So I was torn. I was a real shy kid. I would miss my mom but then I'd love Virginia, and then I wouldn't want to leave Virginia, and I'd run down the hill trying to hide from going to get on the bus at the end of the summer. I was just real shy. I had a hard time coming back into New York and meeting with my friends. I was really shy. I won't say it anymore.
Tanya Holland:
Do you think that maybe that influenced your work? Like being latchkey, you have that unintentional independence and responsibility and you don't have constant adult supervision. Is that what took you into child welfare or...
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
I think so. Definitely, I think that. Growing up in that community in the Bronx, I knew that I wanted to do something to help people because it was neglected and there was so much poverty. I do remember standing in the middle of 138th street at one point and there were fires everywhere. I said, "God, if you get me out of here, I will do something to serve people." My first few jobs, I worked for a cruise line or something. But after that, I tried to dedicate myself to doing something to help people in some way with whatever skills I had.
Tanya Holland:
What were causing the fires at that time?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
I don't know. I think it's something to do with insurance and burning the buildings down and collecting the insurance. That's what they said. You look back in the history of New York City, but it was a thing.
Tanya Holland:
At what point did you realize that your Aunt Edna was someone special?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Wow. Let's see. She did a cookbook, The Edna Lewis cookbook in 1972. Then we started just looking... She had the same photographer, John Hill. But the second one, The Taste Of Country Cooking, it was just amazing. People started calling her, she was in newspapers, she was in the New York City newspapers. I think with the publication of that, we really knew that this was something special and being in all these different magazines.
Aunt Edna was very quiet, very shy, very self-effacing, not ego-driven at all. So this was amazing to her. We joked about it at first and didn't know where it was going. I think she would have no idea of all this. She'd just be amazed by all of you. She really would. So thankful and grateful that you are paying attention to her. And the people of Freetown would just be they would not imagine that people are listening to their story and to their lifestyle and their life ways and being fascinated by it and studying it.
Tanya Holland:
She's quite a legacy, for sure. The Taste Of Country Cooking is one of the most important American cookbooks. She was shy at home. Did she have a persona when she was out in the world? Or do you think she ever turned on or she was consistently herself?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
She was consistently herself. She was very tall, regal looking. She looked that way but inside, she was really shy. I remember hanging out with her. The woman who worked with her on the first book, Evangeline Peterson, I tagged along a lot with Aunt Edna when I was young because my mom was working three jobs. I remember I go with her to her house. She was cooking for her and with her and they would start drinking wine and they were talking about stuff. They were giggling and their voices got higher and higher, they were giggling. I was 8, 9 10 and I'm like, I don't know what they're talking about but...
Tanya Holland:
They were having a good time.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
They were having a good time. She was very funny. She had a great sense of humor and she was just really interesting. Pretty cool.
Tanya Holland:
Did you ever visit her when she was at Gage & Tollner or any of her other restaurants?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Yes, definitely. I did spend a lot of time at Gage & Tollner. Coming over here with her and I'd wait with her. We were all living together on 47th Street in Manhattan by that time, I think. Stay with her, we would go home together on the subway. I think I didn't go to the restaurant in North Carolina, in Fearrington House. I did not go there, my mother did. But I did go to Middleton Place, which was a really great place. I spent a week there with her. It was just beautiful. I did try and do a lot of things with her and definitely visited her at Gage & Tollner in Brooklyn.
Tanya Holland:
She wrote cookbooks and then worked in restaurant?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Yeah.
Tanya Holland:
She didn't do... she didn't work in some restaurants before?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
She worked in restaurants. She started in Cafe Nicholson in the 1940s, which was in Manhattan way before I was born. She had a restaurant in Harlem on the 25th Street in the 70s also. For about a year-and-a-half, two years, I'd spent a lot of time there. Then Pheasant Farm in New Jersey with her husband. Then once she wrote The Taste Of Country Cooking... Then she did different catering job, she was cooking for people and then she went to the restaurants in South Carolina and North Carolina.
Tanya Holland:
Awesome. Do you cook or entertain at home?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
I'm not a great cook. I blame it on Aunt Edna. She tested the recipes for the both books in our apartment up in the Bronx and she chased me out of the kitchen. That's what I say anyway. No. I do garden, I do try and do that.
Tanya Holland:
Tell us a little bit more about your garden. Because you're in Denver or outside Denver.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
I'm outside of Denver. In Aurora, Colorado. It's hard gardening there. It's much different in Virginia because it's much drier. We only get 15 inches of rain a year so it's really tough. This past summer was really hot, so a lot of things didn't grow. So it's hard, the soil's clay. But it's great. It was always very nurturing and calming to me, especially after getting off work. I remember my aunts and uncles farming in Virginia and I try and grow some of the same things. It's been great, very healing. I became a master gardener, tried to learn how to garden better. I do enjoy that.
Tanya Holland:
A little return to the roots.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Yes, definitely.
Tanya Holland:
Speaking of which, you mentioned that when your Aunt Edna farmed in garden, she felt really connected to ancestors and that was really important to her.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
She talked to me a lot about that. I remember when she was in South Carolina at Middleton Place, it was just a beautiful place, it was a former rice plantation, and had these beautiful twin lakes. And she'd often go walk in the morning, and she always said that she felt the presence of her ancestors along with her, behind her, beside her. She talked so much about Freetown and the way that people lived and how they cared for each other, that she always carried that with her in her... That's why she pressed on wanting to pass their memory on. And she really felt the food was special, the people were special, the way they treated each other and raised the food and the animals was so special that she wanted to pass that legacy on.
Tanya Holland:
That's amazing. The first plantation I visit was a rice plantation as well, and I had that similar feeling of just feeling like the ghost of my ancestors. Just a little interjection. It was a taped piece for the Food Network, and this was in 2020. No. What year? 2000, 2-0-0-0. My first year on Melting Pot. There was a man from Sierra Leone who was there to show African Americans their positive contribution to the foodways in America. I said to the producer, "This should be a special. And they're like crickets. It's essentially the High on the Hog story. But it's so empowering to know your legacy and the story of your ancestors. Speaking of which, tell us about the Edna Lewis Foundation, what it means, what your goals are. Then you have some winners of some scholarships, I believe.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
I'm so excited. I'm on the board of trustees of the Edna Lewis Foundation, the second iteration of the foundation. It's headquartered in Savannah, Georgia. Mashama Bailey is the chair right now of the foundation. And there's other fabulous people there. There's a website, so you can go and see all that. The mission is to promote Edna Lewis, but also sustainable agriculture, Black community, and food culture, and foodways. We do give out three scholarships yearly. They're $5,000 each, and we're trying to fundraise to build that up. There are three different categories, storytelling, culinary, and agriculture and farming.
We've got several years of scholars. They're just absolutely incredible young people. They have to be at least 21 years old and of course, involved in the food industry in some way. We hope to do this, promote them, and to get their careers going. We just have our three winners. We had lots of folks apply and we're encouraging the others to apply again next year. We'd love to be able to help them develop their goals and objectives and things. But we've got three winners and I'm hoping I can pull them up.
For the culinary, a young person, Devin Charles Hamilton is the winner. He's from Los Angeles, California, and he is working primarily on barbecue and doing some other things. With the winning money, he is going to continue his community work about the historical and cultural practices of barbecue in the Black community. He's going to take a culinary trip to Cameroon in West Africa to connect African culinary traditions to Black pit masters and he'll use the remaining funds for equipment for his business. This is the second year that he's applied so we're really excited about that.
In the area of storytelling, we've chosen a young woman named Sydney Lawson. I think this is really interesting. She's got a project that centers historical research and current interviews on the nexus of Black women, food, and cooking, and romance. I don't quite know what that means, but that's really exciting. In the last category of agriculture and farming, a young woman named Quasondria Price who lives in Mississippi. She's really interesting. She's on a working farm, a Black farm in Mississippi. She's going to use the money to travel to other farms to learn from more experienced farmers.
She's going to purchase agricultural equipment for her farm that she really needs, and she's going to visit Truelove Seeds Farm in Pennsylvania. They focus on growing ancestral crops and seeds and connecting to people's heritage. Ultimately, she wants to develop a CSA [community supported agriculture], community agriculture project geared towards Black community, specifically in Mississippi. We're very excited that we're giving them $5,000 each to help them forward in their careers.
Tanya Holland:
Wonderful. What do you think your Aunt Edna would think of the culinary landscape today?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
Tanya Holland:
If you can imagine.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Yeah, sure. She'd be really proud, she'd be astounded. The last things talking to her that she wanted to do was she wanted to write the tome, the book on African American cooking, the history of African American culinary history here in the United States, its African roots, its Native American roots, its European roots. I realized that her dream has come true through you and all of your interest in her, and all the people that are getting degrees in studying all of this. I think she would be amazed. I try and engage my daughters. My daughter Amina is here with me, my younger daughter. I have an older daughter, Salima, who went with me to something in Savannah. I wanted them to see what their heritage is and to be proud of my aunt and in some way, pass that on in their generation.
I think she would be completely astounded. I think she would be very proud because this is something she always dreamed of doing and exploring and writing about and educating people about. She would just be very proud of the young people's involvement in all of this and their seriousness in dedicating their studies to this work. I think she would be most proud that the people of Freetown are being honored and remembered. And there are thousands of Freetowns in the South, which are towns that were formed right after slavery, of people that were formerly enslaved. They were either granted land by their former slave owners in the area or they bought the land outright and set up their own communities.
They didn't look back, they look forward. Fearlessly, regardless of the Ku Klux Klan activity, they set up communities. There's a church that's opening back up after COVID in Virginia that's 190 years old that we went to, that I went to, that was formed right after slavery. There's thousands of churches like that. But they had little stores, they had businesses, they built homes, they built orchards and farms. There's nothing much standing. There's one farm there that's a distant relative of ours that's old, but it's in our hearts, I think, and in our memory. Hopefully, we're passing it on to our nation at large because we really need that memory of making something out of nothing.
Tanya Holland:
Absolutely. Did she ever talk about not having peers? Like real peers, other Black women at that level? I mean, her peers were James Beard, Julia Child. But not having anyone who looked like her and maybe what her thoughts were of what the future could be.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
I don't think she expressed it to me so much. Again, I was very young. We did laugh and joke about when was the money coming with all the fame. She focused on Freetown.
Tanya Holland:
Still looking for that.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
She focused on Freetown and her family and her love of them, her love of Africa, and learning African history. She talked about that. She was very adamant about... There's some interviews, I think, online where she talked about the Southern cooking. It was really Black men and women who did this cooking. They couldn't write, they couldn't... The other whites, the white women and other men were writing this down and getting the credit for what they had created and what they did and this whole way of life. And how it was so much beyond fried chicken and greens, as I hope that you could see from her book, The Taste Of Country Cooking. We did talk about that quite a bit. She was very passionate about getting that story out there. Getting the story out there of the food sellers who would be at the train stations in the south, especially in Orange, which was our little train station, selling to passengers passing through that part of the country.
Tanya Holland:
Shoebox lunches and...
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
The shoebox lunches, definitely. She was very proud of those folks. The folks who work in the kitchen, who still do, and who struggled and suffered. We don't know their names, but contributed to all that we know and love and benefit from today.
Tanya Holland:
Wow. But this heritage and that nameless but just wanting to feed each other and take care of people is really obviously important to her. Anyone have a question to Nina?
Audience Attendee 1:
So happy to be here today with you two and with everyone in the room to share it. Could you tell us a little bit about the whole publication experience once she had the manuscript and how she got it out there? Also, I was introduced to both, Cherry Bombe and during COVID, I'm a documentary filmmaker, and turned from being out in the world stories to my kitchen and Zoom and meeting and learning about Edna. I happened to be up at my family homestead out outside of Charlottesville from the 1700s, 1800s.
You inspired me and Edna inspired me to get in my car. I drove to Orange, to Unionville, and I went to Bethel Church, and I saw your family name that you helped establish that. Then I went to Freedom Town. I learned that there were more than one in that area, I found two. It was just so enriching to know where she came from, what she accomplished and in that environment. I would just like to know how she finally got her work out there and how you all have made sure that it continues.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Thank you.
Tanya Holland:
That was my question. I wanted you to talk about typing up the manuscript. You were talking about her punctuation that you had to correct. Let's make that movie. Okay?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Well, that would be great. Well, now I was 12, 13, and 14. This is probably not from my knowledge, but from what I've read and talked to other folks. Sarah Franklin is working on the papers of her publisher, who is the publisher of Julia Child.
Tanya Holland:
Knopf.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Yes, Knopf. Judith Jones. Thank you. Judith Jones. My understanding is that she was introduced to Judith Jones through Evangeline Peterson, who's the woman that she worked with on the first book, The Edna Lewis cookbook. Evangeline Peterson was married to the person who owned Rugoff Theater theater chain. She cooks for these folks. She was a domestic cook for people. I know they say that she catered but she was the help, she was cook. They were helping her. I don't know all the details other than I think Evangeline went to Judith Jones and talked about, "What about a book that talks about Edna's life growing up in Freetown, Virginia?" It's something like that.
But I was so young, I don't know those details. I just typed the manuscript and I met with her a couple of times with Judith and listen in on their conversations. I think it was really Judith Jones who just had this art for recognizing what she thought would really impact Americans as she did with Judith Jones. Judith just recognized what people here would relate to just in our human experience. That's really what I think that happened. It didn't have any publicists or anybody other than Judith helping her, guiding her to try and do this.
There was nothing like that and she didn't have anybody like that. She didn't have any lawyers or attorneys or anything like that. I think it was just her quiet personality that probably endeared Judith to her, to help her and keep going. But that's what she did. I know it's a very different world now with Instagram and social media, and I cannot imagine what that would be like. She was so shy, she would've had difficulty a bit, I think, with some of this.
Tanya Holland:
Awesome.
Abena Anim-Somuah (audience attendee):
Thanks again for sharing your story and celebrating your aunt's legacy. How are you hoping the foundation helps set a greater legacy for Edna and what are tangible things that us as consumers of food can do to support the growing legacy for the foundation?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Sure. Please visit our website, the Edna Lewis Foundation. If you Google that, you'll pull it up. You'll see all the members on the Board of Trustees. We do have a network of mentors. So if anybody's interested in being a mentor to the young people that are scholars, that would be great. We certainly could use help fundraising and everything from fundraising... We do not have paid staff, we don't have administrative staff, we don't have an executive director. So we've all got to do this ourselves. I'm trying to do more of it because I retired where Mashama Bailey, and Paul Fehribach, and Elle Simone, and all these folks are chefs and writers and busy, busy, busy.
Please get on our website, donate if you can, reach out, and contact us. We're trying to brainstorm, come up with ways to raise more money so we can fund more of these young people so that we can get an executive director to actually execute some of the stuff to help us brainstorm where we go next. How do we grow our money? How can we really engage? We need to develop a business plan, a five-year plan, a marketing strategy, and we need help. That would be fantastic.
Audience Attendee 2:
Thank you so much. This has been really interesting and intriguing to know. Especially how we can commit ourselves to the foundation. Is the foundation also working on archiving her tremendous backlog of the restaurants' menus, even writing that she did that hasn't been published? Are there any plans to archive so that other researchers and writers can use the information and credit her and cite her appropriately?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
I think that's a fantastic idea. The foundation did film and record her sister, her last remaining sibling who's 98-and-a-half, who's still alive. She's had some health issues the last few weeks, but I'm so glad they recorded. I've not seen those recordings but they recorded her over a whole week, two or three years ago, just about growing up and being with Edna. Another thing that's happening, the University of Maryland Department of Anthropology contacted us to do an archeological and architectural survey of Freetown, Virginia. A multi-year project that would start with interviewing the descendants of Freetown and then they would actually do an actual onsite survey.
That is slowly getting underway. There's a professor of archeology who's doing, who's also teaching at the same time. We're really thrilled and excited about that. That's when I learned that there are probably hundreds of Freetowns or similar communities throughout Virginia and throughout the south. That is in the works and we hope something like that would be published.
Kerry Diamond:
Nina, I would love to know what your ultimate dream is. We've seen all the things that Julia Child has gotten, the documentaries, the HBO series, the movie. So many things. Are there dreams that you have for Edna along those lines?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
I haven't thought about a movie. I thought that would be interesting. Well, actually, I should say I would love to see someone write something on Freetown or Freetowns. I think it would be a great movie. But really, do the research and find out about how these communities formed, what's the results of the... What did it take? What kind of resiliency and resolve did these communities of people have where they went and set up towns in the deep south? Probably, some of them may still be in existence. Most of them probably are not. But I think researching that and putting that out there, I think would be of great service to our country.
That's one of my dreams about Freetown. Not so much Aunt Edna. But definitely, Aunt Edna, I want her to be on all the Black history things, I want her to be... She is in Wikipedia and Britannica, she was on Jeopardy. She was a Jeopardy question this past year. That was like, "Okay." When they see Black history icons, I want her name to be there. I think that's happening. I think she's recognized her role in influencing Alice Waters and the development of the farm to table movement.
Kerry Diamond:
Tanya was a Jeopardy question as well or a clue. You were the answer to the question. Whatever that is. Question?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Edna was a stamp. She had a stamp.
Tanya Holland:
Edna was a stamp.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
She was on a stamp. That's true. Aunt Edna's a postal stamp in 2014, 2015, I think. Along with James Beard, Julia Child, Joyce Chen. I'm going to forget the other folks' names.
Tanya Holland:
I think I have that.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
I should have wore my little pen. And then as a doctor. She received an honorary culinary doctorate from Johnson and Wales University. She's a doctor. She did not finish high school, but she's a doctor and I'm so proud of that.
Audience Attendee 3:
Hi. I'm wondering if you, speaking of the food in particular, have a favorite recipe or a memory of a favorite dish that she cooked or you had together?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
A whole lot of them. The Baptist church, we have revival meeting in the summers. The little church, Bethel Baptist Church, the second Sunday in August. I think they're going to have it this year. There's a big history behind it. It's not like what it was. It's by the woods and they'd have these long wooden tables with linen tablecloths and the families would compete and they'd have food. You'd have your morning service, you'd have lunch, then you'd have the service after, then you'd have the evening service, then you'd have church every night that week. I was on the line with the homemade ice cream and the blackberry cobbler. Oh my God. I was just eating and serving blackberry cobbler. Oh my God.
Because I would follow Aunt Edna and Aunt Jen in the fields. They would pick the blackberries, we'd get... It was hot. They'd rip your skin, purple hands. The thorns would rip your skin. And my uncle's cows were out in the fields. I was terrified of cows. Terrified of them. They would chase me. I was terrified of cows. The blackberry cobbler and peach cobbler, apple brown betty. You're going to get me going on. Caramel layer cake, fried chicken. String beans cooked all day because she said they had more fiber in them. There were different species of the string beans so they were tough. Greens. They would pick collards and mustard and mix them together and having that for dinner.
Oh boy, I can't even... A lot of the tomato dishes, baked tomatoes, sweet potato pie, sweet potato pie, sweet potato pie, sweet potato pie. It was this thick. It's supposed to be real thin and that's supposed to be like this. It was this thick. Egg white whipped into it. My aunt, they would put the sweet potatoes through a strainer, get all the good fiber out. But oh my God, I could eat a sweet potato or anything because it's sweet potato. Sweet potato pie, potato salad, hemp biscuits. Biscuits, any kind of jelly. Aunt Edna used to make coconut layer cakes for me for my birthday.
Tanya Holland:
Page 220.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. Thank you so much to Nina and Tanya. By the way, Tanya has a beautiful new cookbook out titled California Soul. Those of you who love cookbooks you can read and cook from will enjoy it. If you'd like to hear more from Nina, check out my Radio Cherry Bombe interview with her from 2021. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you to Yes! Apples for supporting our show. Radio Cherry Bombe is a production of Cherry Bombe Magazine. Our theme song is by the band Tralala. Thank you Eric Sheppard for the audio production at Cooks and books. And Joseph Hazan, studio engineer for Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center. Producer Catherine Baker and associate producer Jenna Sadhu. And thanks to you for listening. You're the Bombe.