Where Food Is More Than Only Something to Eat

[Note: This post, prepared originally for the NC Folklife Institute's NCFood blog, is hosted on the institute’s website, with excerpts and a link to the website posted here.]

Food is more than simply sustenance. Kitchens are more than places to prepare and eat meals. No place is better for demonstrating the value in society of food and kitchens than The King’s Kitchen in Charlotte, NC. As its customers enjoy the menu of the day, the unemployed, underemployed, difficult to employ, and recently released prison inmates learn culinary and food service skills.

Chef-in-training Horace Pressley spreads
a big smile when someone raves about
his mac and cheese.

Customers enter because the food is excellent and the service is top-notch. The Southern meat and three sides (with bread) seems the most popular order. The entrees of braised pot roast, fried or baked chicken, fried catfish, and grilled meatloaf rival any superior Southern restaurant. Customers may also be satisfied because the restaurant has a huge heart and social conscience. When I ate recently at The King’s Kitchen, the food was so good and the service so professional, I couldn’t image that the staff could include someone once homeless, a former drug addict, or convicted felon.

Continue reading at the NCFood blog ...

Sweet Potatoes: Providing Fresh Food for the Needy

[Note: This post, prepared originally for the NC Folklife Institute's NCFood blog, is hosted on the institute’s website, with excerpts and a link to the website posted here.] 

North Carolina produces about half of all the sweet potatoes grown in the United States, and it has consistently ranked as the top producing state for more than 30 years. More than half of the state’s sweet potatoes are grown in only three counties – Sampson, Nash, and Johnston. These counties in eastern N.C. are prime growing locations with their rich, fertile soil and their hot, moist climate.

Sweet potatoes can be delivered
by  unusual means.

Although the typical movement from farm to table involves a grocery store or chain, sometimes a food bank and its network of volunteers spring into action to provide sweet potatoes to families in need. Sweet potatoes are an excellent choice of fresh nutrition for these families that need to stretch their food budgets with healthy produce and supplement foods provided in other programs.

Continue reading at the NCFood blog ...