Gravy
Episodes
Bread by Fire
25 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In “Bread by Fire,” the second episode in her five-part season for Gravy, producer Irina Zhorov takes listeners to the little house in Marshall, N...
Genealogy of a Bakery
18 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In “Genealogy of a Bakery,” Gravy producer Irina Zhorov takes listeners up into the mountains of western North Carolina, to a town called Marshall...
Even After Those Roses Bloom
13 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Lucien Darjeun Meadows is an English, German, and Cherokee writer born and raised in the Appalachian Mountains. His debut poetry collection, In the H...
Can Co-Ops Fix a Broken Food Delivery Model?
16 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Can Co-Ops Fix a Broken Food Delivery Model? Gravy producer Sarah Holtz introduces listeners to food industry veterans in Lexington, Kentucky, who lau...
The Bare Minimum
09 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
“The Bare Minimum,” producer Sarah Holtz follows Florida’s Fight for 15, a labor campaign aimed at raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour. Tho...
The Bitter and the Sweet of Craft Chocolate in the Global South
02 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In “The Bitter and the Sweet of Craft Chocolate in the Global South” episode of Gravy, producer Sarah Holtz engages important voices in the comple...
Memphis Restaurant Workers Unite!
23 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In "Memphis Restaurant Workers Unite," Gravy follows a group of restaurant workers that’s slated to become the first formal union of food and bevera...
What's in the Fridge?
16 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What’s in the fridge? In New Orleans, solidarity means a stocked fridge. In this episode of Gravy, producer Sarah Holtz takes listeners inside a mut...
"Married," by Jo McDougall
09 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"Married," by Jo McDougall. Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018. Learn more about...
Thresh & Hold
26 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Marlanda Dekine is a poet and author obsessed with ancestry, memory, and the process of staying within one’s own body. This poem appears in their co...
"Carlo Flunks the Seventh Grade," by Greg Brownderville
05 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
"Carlo Flunk the Seventh Grade," by Greg Brownderville. Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia P...
Filipino Balikbayan is Homecoming in a Box
15 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In "Filipino Balikbayan is Homecoming in a Box," Gravy explores the histories underlying the balikbayan box—a large box filled with everything from ...
New Orleans Street Vendors, Then and Now
08 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In "New Orleans Street Vendors, Old and New," Gravy explores the history of street food vendors in New Orleans, from Mr. Okra to the pralinière, or p...
The Skinny on the South Beach Diet
01 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In "The Skinny on the South Beach Diet" producer Katie Jane Fernelius speaks with Adrienne Bitar, author of Diet and the Disease of Civilization, all ...
The Kitchen Electric: Selling Power to Rural America
24 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of Gravy, "The Kitchen Electric: Selling Power to Rural America," producer Katie Jane Fernelius looks at the role of women in campaign...
Pulp Fact: How Orange Juice Created the Sunshine State
17 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of the Gravy podcast, “Orange Juice and the Making of the Sunshine State,” producer Katie Jane Fernelius examines how, for decades...
"Easy," by Ed Madden
13 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"Easy," by Ed Madden. Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018. Learn more about your ...
Take the Woods Ballistic! Black Belt Nightlife
22 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"Take the Woods Ballistic! Black Belt Nightlife" disrupts the sleepy picture of rural life by taking you into its nightlife. In Alabama’s Black Belt...
Migration: Making Meals and Homes in Alabama
15 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Alabama’s Black Belt has always been a place of migration: the site of both forced and elective movement. Today, our reasons for leaving and coming ...
Alabama Hunters: Pretty Don't Tree No Coon
08 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For generations, rural families in the Alabama Black Belt grew and hunted what they needed to sustain themselves. Wild game was a major and critical p...
Cooking Up a Living in Alabama
01 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
As "Cooking Up a Living in Alabama" reveals, culinary entrepreneurship, whether running barbecue stands, holding neighborhood fish fries, or selling s...
New Stewards on Old Homesteads in Alabama
25 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Alabama’s Black Belt stretches in a strip 25 miles wide across the center of the state. Named for the rich soil that enabled cotton to flourish, the...
"Pesach in Blacksburg," by Erika Meitner
04 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"Pesach in Blacksburg," by Erika Meitner. Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018. Le...
"Grace," by Jake Adam York
14 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"Grace," by Jake Adam York. Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018. Learn more about...
The Mithai Life of North Carolina
23 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
You’d be hard-pressed to find a major city in the United States that doesn’t have Indian food. Despite some of the nation’s limited ideas about ...
The Southern Genius of the Cuban Sandwich
16 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Cuban sandwich. If it’s made with ingredients someone else doesn’t like, you might find yourself in an hours-long argument in the middle of Li...
Syrian-ish: Damascus Meets Little Rock at Layla's Restaurant
09 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Arab American and Middle Eastern immigrants have had a unique experience in the U.S. With a history that dates back more than 100 years, Arab American...
Ethiopian Atlanta: A Tale of Three Restaurants
02 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The home of Civil Rights leaders like John Lewis and Martin Luther King, Jr., Atlanta has a remarkably storied Black history. It’s birthed the music...
Tempeh Brings Indonesia to Houston
26 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The largest city in Texas doesn’t disappoint when it comes to food. Houston is one of the most diverse cities in the United States. There is a bust...
"Drill," by Atsuro Riley
05 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"Drill," by Atsuro Riley. Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018. Learn more about y...
"Because Men Do What They Want to Do," by TJ Jarrett
14 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"Because Men Do What They Want To Do," by TJ Jarrett. Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Pre...
The Holy Trinity: From the Bayou to the Bay
24 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Nearly every cuisine has its own flavor base. In Louisiana, this technique has become doctrine. The Holy Trinity, a base of finely chopped and sautée...
Puerto Rican Pasteles: Unwrapping the Diaspora
17 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Pasteles mean Christmas to many Puerto Ricans, both on and off the island. Why is this beloved, labor-intensive dish popping up at plate sales in subu...
Horchata: An Ancient Drink that Crossed the Globe
10 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Horchata, a refreshing drink originally made from tiger nuts, made its way to present-day Texas and Mexico via the Islamic conquest of Spain and the S...
A Pea for the Past, A Pea for the Future
03 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The black-eyed pea is not your average bean. Like many staple foods of the African Diaspora, it’s become a powerful symbol of food sovereignty and s...
The Deli Diaspora
24 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Order a hot pastrami on rye at any delicatessen and you’ll taste the briny terroir of the Jewish Diaspora. Pastrami is an iconic cured meat that mig...
Eating a Muffaletta in Des Moines, by Brian Spears
10 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"Eating a Muffaletta in Des Moines," by Brian Spears. Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Pre...
It is Simple, by Jon Pineda
20 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"It is Simple," by Jon Pineda. Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018. Learn more ab...
Scrap That: Charlotte's attempt to compost food waste
30 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 2018, Beverlee Sanders launched a novel pilot project in Charlotte, North Carolina: collecting food scraps from a small number of homes and sending...
Christians Take Up Climate Change
23 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Anna Shine is an Episcopal parish priest in Boone, North Carolina. Her focus, both during her education and now in her work, has been 'creation care,'...
Take it Easement: Save a farm to save the future?
16 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The U.S. is losing agricultural land to commercial, industrial, and residential development. Every state is converting ag acres to other uses, but the...
Low-Carbon Dining: How much can restaurants do?
09 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Restaurants—and not just those working with Zero Foodprint—are starting to wake up to the issues around climate change, food, and the role chefs c...
A Peach for a Warming South
02 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Lawton Pearson grows more than 30 peach varieties in his Georgia orchard. Among them is a special new cultivar, the Crimson Joy peach, designed to thr...
Goat is the Future: An Interview with Tom Rankin
29 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Goat Light provides focused reflections by Tom Rankin and Jill McCorkle upon their home and farm northwest of Hillsborough in rural Orange County, No...
Praising Fireflies with Aimee Nezhukumatathil
22 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Gravy host John T Edge talks with poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil about her book, World of Wonders. The poetry collection integrates everyday life, family ...
Pondering the Fate of Food: An Interview with Amanda Little
15 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In her book The Fate Of Food: What We'll Eat In A Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World, Amanda Little considers the sustainable food revolution in light of g...
Mapping the Green Book: An Interview with Candacy Taylor
08 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Author, photographer, and cultural documentarian Candacy Taylor's most recent project is Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black T...
Such As, by Wo Chan
17 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
"Such As," by Wo Chan. Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018. Learn more about your...
Visible Yam
03 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The SFA mourns the passing of Randall Kenan, a long-time member and frequent presenter at SFA events. This Gravy episode is a re-broadcast of Randall ...
We the People are Larger Than We Used to Be
27 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
What are the legacies of our pasts? How does the past shape our today? How do the lives our parents and grandparents led affect the lives we lead toda...
Magic City Poetry
20 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of Gravy, Ashley M. Jones and Lee Bains III share verses about food labor. Jones is an award-winning poet from Birmingham, Alabama. S...
Punchin' the Dough: Singing about Food Labor
13 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
From Punchin' the Dough to Peach Pickin' Time in Georgia, music has long included songs about labor. Scott Barretta, who once served as editor of Livi...
Food Festival Financials
06 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Festivals are terrific ways to celebrate place and food, to showcase community and culture. At their best, festivals are gathering spots for people wh...
Shucking, by Elton Glaser
16 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
"Shucking" by Elton Glaser Featured in Vinegar & Char: Verses from the Southern Foodways Alliance. University of Georgia Press, 2018. Learn more abou...
Cajun Kibbe: Eating Lebanese in Louisiana
18 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In 1983, a Lafayette housewife named Bootsie John Landry self-published a cookbook called The Best of South Louisiana Cooking. Sprinkled among the ...
Two Tales of Donaldsonville: True Friends & The Chance Café
11 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This is a story about a briefcase and a cracker box. It’s a story about finding extraordinary things in ordinary places. In the South Louisiana town...
Nueva Acadiana
28 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When Wanda Lugo opened her Venezuelan restaurant, Patacon Latin Cuisine, in 2015, she wasn’t sure how the city of Lafayette would react. Many Lafay...
The Miracle of Slaw and Fishes: Louisiana’s Lenten Fish Fries
21 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Order a catfish po-boy or a few pounds of crawfish in Acadiana any Friday between Mardi Gras and Easter, and you may be surprised to learn that your d...
Ten Gallons and a Bag of Cracklins: Filling Up in Cajun Country
14 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Along the highways and rural byways of South Louisiana, there’s great boudin, cracklins, and plenty more to be found. Many of these food destination...
Eat 'Em Till You Beat 'Em: Florida’s Lionfish Problem
19 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Poisonous, spiky, bug-eyed and edible: Lionfish are a prolific invasive species off the coast of Florida. Their voracious appetites are destroying...
Grape Expectations for Virginia Wine
12 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Virginia is often heralded as the birthplace of American wine. But from colonial times through efforts made by Thomas Jefferson, those efforts were...
Sorghum: Planting Possibilities
05 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For many people in the American South, sorghum is a condiment to be spread, like maple syrup, on top of warm, pillowy biscuits, pancakes, and cornbrea...
The Rise and Fall and Rise of Pitmaster Ed Mitchell
27 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Ed Mitchell’s name has come to be synonymous with Eastern North Carolina wood-smoked whole-hog barbecue. From Wilson, North Carolina, he grew up smo...
Greetings from Ham & Bacon High School
20 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How much is too much for bacon? $10 a pound? $20? What about $500 a pound? In New Martinsville, West Virginia someone actually paid $500 a pound at a...
Harassment and the Service Economy
18 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In restaurants, economics and sexual harassment are intimately entwined. Restaurants, along with hotels, have the highest rates of sexual harassment o...
Spinning Carolina Gold Rice into Sake
11 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
For much of the 19th Century, Carolina Gold rice was a favorite of American rice growers, before disappearing in the early 20th Century. Brought bac...
Are prison diets punitive? A report from behind bars
04 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Is prison food causing problems for public health? Gravy investigates. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Access Denied: Cooperative Extension and Tribal Lands
27 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Cooperative extension is a century-old government program that places agricultural agents in counties to educate and work with farmers. But for ye...
Preserving Community Canneries
20 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Community canneries–facilities, often subsidized by local government, where people can in bulk–are closing. With groceries easily available even i...
Mahalia Jackson's Glori-Fried Chicken
05 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In addition to her work as an international recording artist and civil rights activist, the Queen of Gospel entered the restaurant business in the lat...
Where Mexico Meets Arkansas
29 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Menudo, sopes, gorditas, tortas, gringas, huaraches, mangonadas, and alambres are just some of the specialty dishes of De Queen, Arkansas, population ...
A Taste of Dollywood
22 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Dollywood, Dolly Parton’s Appalachian-themed amusement park, draws millions of country fans and thrill seekers to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, every yea...
Electric Tofu
15 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 1970s, two hundred hippies from San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury neighborhood resettled in rural Tennessee. They founded a vegetarian com...
Biscuit Blues
08 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Delta blues found its voice and audience on the airwaves of KFFA’s King Biscuit Time, a daily broadcast out of Helena, Arkansas. Bluesmen like Sonny...
The Magical, Meandering Life of Eugene Walter
30 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Eugene Walter (1921–1998) of Mobile, Alabama was a novelist, a poet, a playwright, an actor, a costume designer, and a food writer, among myriad voc...
When Menus Talk
23 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What do restaurant menus have to say about the identity of a restaurant or the point of view of the chef? It turns out, menus are more nuanced and rev...
Cooking Up Social Change with Julia Turshen
16 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Can cookbooks be a vehicle for social change? What can or should cookbook writers offer readers beyond recipes? Writer and cookbook author Julia Tursh...
Catering: Behind the Pipe and Drape
09 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Have you ever been to a wedding and wondered, how do hundreds of plates of food arrive at the right destinations at the right time—often without an ...
JoAnn Clevenger: New Orleans’ Uptown Girl Scout
02 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
JoAnn Clevenger is a hospitality archetype. She lives to serve and breathes life into every service encounter. For the past thirty-six years, she’s ...
Spring Season Trailer
22 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The spring season of Gravy, featuring 5 episodes reported and produced by Sara Brooke Curtis, begins on May 2. With John T. Edge and Melissa Hall a...
A Table for All?
21 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
At the FARM Café in Boone, North Carolina, diners can pay $10 for meal—or they can pay nothing. The restaurant, one of dozens of its kind, follows ...
Pop-Up Identity
21 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Chefs stage pop-up dinners to tell stories, many of them focused on identity. Whether's it's to highlight African American chefs, develop a platform f...
Home-Cooked Expectations
21 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the United States, home cooked meals with the family are revered almost to the point of fetishization. Dinners are seen as moral imperatives for ha...
Bottled Myth
21 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Legal moonshine—funny as that sounds—has exploded in the South. Instead of on creek banks, it's now produced in gleaming distilleries. But it's th...
A New Recipe for Charlotte
21 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Charlotte, North Carolina, has long been a banking town. These days, its dining scene is booming as well. As the city works to rebrand itself as a des...
Y'all Have Chilaquiles?
20 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
With its vibrant take on Mexican breakfast, Con Huevos restaurant is bringing Louisville, Kentucky, brand-new answers to the question of what to eat f...
Smoking on the South Side
06 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Barbecue purists from the Carolinas to Texas might balk at the notion that Chicago, Illinois, has a barbecue tradition all its own. But owing to the G...
Vinegar & Char
15 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Vinegar & Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance, edited by poet Sandra Beasley, is SFA's latest book, available now from University of Georg...
Visible Yam
01 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
“For me, the hallmark of food in literature, raised to the level of art, is food interacting with character. Food as character. Food doing stuff. Fo...
The Swamp Witches
18 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Swamp Witches, as this group of friends call themselves, have been duck hunting together for nearly 20 years. Men are often surprised to stumble u...
Comfort Food
09 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we bring you Gravy's first foray into fiction. It's a story of macaroni and cheese and maternal love, set in the fictional Canard County, ...
Agave Diplomacy
26 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Bars mean different things to different people. For some, they are places to find community and discover new ingredients and flavors. They can serve a...
What Is Latino Enough?
12 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Mine is a slightly funky ancestry: a Colombian mother, a Cuban father, a combination that leads many Latinos to say, “¡Que mezcla tan rara!” But ...
Catfish Dream
28 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When he was shut out of the industry during the 1980s catfish boom, Scott turned 160 acres of arable farmland into catfish ponds and built a processin...
The Price of Cheap Milk
14 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When we pour a glass of milk, most of us don’t consider the economics that brought that milk from a cow to our kitchen. Reporter-producer Allison Sa...
Native Strangers of the South
31 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Writer Naben Ruthnum compares outsiders' expectations and assumptions about the South Asian diaspora to those about the American South. This week's...
Where Kentucky Meets Somalia
17 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Many Muslims in the United States feel the stings of xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment on a daily basis. For them, safe public spaces are essent...
A Message and a Verse
19 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Gravy listeners, we invite you to join us in Lexington, Kentucky, June 21–23, for our annual SFA Summer Symposium. Today, listen to Kentucky poet—...
Subterranean Chop Suey
22 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In the early 20th century, an Arkansan real estate developer named C.A. Linebarger had an idea. American was in the throes of the Great Depression, an...
Hungry in the Mississippi Delta
08 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
While civil rights activists worked in Mississippi in 1964, they encountered a poverty they could never have imagined. People were hungry, starving ...