In addition to a history rife with heroes, from Frederick Douglass to Martin Luther King, Jr., to Jackie Robinson, Black Americans also bring to the table a delectable cuisine, borne from the days when slaves prepared meals for their families with little food and limited supplies and resources.   Staples such as black eyed peas and sweet potatoes, corn, and greens were used to make tasty concoctions that could be cooked in a cast iron skillet over an open fire.  Recipes and cooking techniques were passed along orally to later generations, and although meals have evolved to embrace a healthier lifestyle, the essence of the dishes remains the same.

Grits, or chitterlings, are simply coarsely ground dried corn.  There’s no wrong way to prepare grits, they take on the flavor of whatever you use to enhance the dish.  Butter, pork fat, herbs and spices, all enhance the corn in unique yet tasty ways.

Basic Grits Recipe

1 cup liquid (stock, water, milk)

¼ cup grits (coarse ground)

Bring liquid to a boil and add grits.  Reduce heat to low and cook about 30 minutes, stirring often, until grits have are thickened and creamy.  Season with salt and pepper to taste, add a pat of butter if you want, or maybe even some bacon fat or herbs.

Black eyed peas were thought to bring good luck when eaten at the New Year, although they were a staple all the year through.  Flavorful and full of nutrients, black eyed peas are as easy to make as grits!

Black Eyed Peas

1 pound black-eyed peas, soaked overnight

1-2 large ham hocks

¼ cup diced onion

Pepper, garlic powder, salt, crushed red pepper, or other herbs as desired

5 cups water or stock

Simmer all ingredients for about two hours, until peas are tender.  Add more liquid as needed (liquid should always be about 1” over beans in the pot.)  When peas are tender, remove the ham hock and pull any meat from the bone and drop into the peas.  Serve over rice if desired.

Greens are an essential part of the “soul food” menu, and they are as easy to make as they are delicious to eat. Our friend the ham hock shows up again, and adds an unmatched salty-smoky flavor to the greens.

Mess o’ Greens

1 large ham hock

2-3 cloves garlic, minced

Bacon drippings

1 onion, finely chopped

1-2 tablespoons vinegar (cider is best)

3 bunches collard greens, trimmed

Sugar to taste

Crushed red pepper to taste

Salt and pepper to taste

Boil the ham hock in 2 cups of water for several hours, or cook in a pressure cooker for about 45 minutes.

Saute the onion and garlic in bacon drippings, then add sugar, crushed red pepper, and ½ cup water.  Add the collards and simmer on low until wilted.  Pull the meat from the ham hock and add to the greens with the liquid used to cook the hock.

Sweet potatoes thrived in the soil common to the south, stored well over the winter months, and were rich in nutrients, thus making them a prevalent element of slave diet.  Just two large potatoes made a decadent pie, and the result was a treat that was naturally sweeter than its pumpkin counterpart.

Sweet Potato Pie

2 cups mashed sweet potatoes

1 1/3 cups of sugar (brown, white, or any combination of the two)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon nutmeg

3 eggs

½ cup milk

6 tablespoons butter

Mix all ingredients until smooth and pour into an uncooked pie shell.  Bake at 350 for about an hour (pie should be firm when touched in the center.)  Top with whipped cream if desired.

The post In Honor of Black History Month appeared first on Houston's Blog.

We began to see the early signs of our current wing shortage as early as January 2014, when the cost of chicken feed began to drop, but the price of chicken stayed high due to a lack of production. Over the following spring and summer, chicken prices continued to climb despite feed costs remaining low. While chicken production in the forth quarter of 2014 was up, many industry analysts predict chicken prices won’t begin to decline until March 2015; this of course being less than ideal timing as we approach Super Bowl weekend, less than two weeks away.

Over the course of the last year, restaurants across the nation have been testing ways of working around the increased prices of wings. Restaurant owners are responding in one of three ways: increase the price of the wings and continue selling specific quantities, sell wings by the pound rather than a specific count, or present customers with alternative menu offerings. Andy Weiderhorn, Buffalo’s Café CEO, points out that this decision should be based on the surrounding market, since some customers order specific quantities with the notion of splitting the meal, while others aren’t concerned whether they order by quantity or by the pound.

Selling wings by the pound may offer the restaurant more peace of mind. Buffalo Wild Wings tested this tactic in their markets, and it proved to smooth out the volatility in their quarterly earnings. Rather than providing additional profit, this strategy may provide more consistency. Selling wings in specific quantities will result in some quarters with a fewer wings per pound, while selling by the pound means consistency in that the restaurant is selling the wings in the same manner in which they were bought.

Another added expense to keep in mind is transportation and delivery costs. Chicken wings will cost more on the coastlines because the majority of the chicken farming is done inland, in the mid-west for example, and shipping the chickens out to the coast lines takes time, money and resources; though the recent decrease in fuel prices should help to ease transportation costs.

Many restaurants are looking to other options and limiting the impact of the chicken wing shortage on their establishment(s). While Americans consumed over 1.2 million wing portions during the Super Bowl in 2014, there are a host of other popular snack offering available to restaurants as well:

Super Bowl Sunday is the busiest day of the year for pizza restaurants who, on average, will sell twice as many pizzas as they would on any other day of the year, according to the National Restaurant Association.

• Super Bowl weekend is the most popular grilling weekend of the year, second to only Forth of the July, when approximately 14 billion hamburgers will be made.

• More than 11 million pounds of potato chips, 4 million pounds of pretzels, and 2 million pounds of nuts will be consumed on this one day. Anyone care to guess how much salt is consumed?

• For those who like a little avocado on their burger, or guacamole with their chips, nearly 70 million pounds of the super food are consumed during the Super Bowl alone.

• For a lighter, possibly healthier option, get to popping – the popcorn that is. Americans will east more than 3.5 million pounds of popcorn during the game, and for those who skip the butter, this is one of the healthiest snacks of the day.

• Obviously nothing pairs better with football than beer, and that could be indicated by the almost 50 million cases sold on the day of the Super Bowl alone.

Other obvious menu selections will include offerings such as nachos, meatballs, macaroni salad, potato salad, hot dogs and brats. No wonder antacid sales typically increase 20% the day after the Super Bowl.

What’s on your Super Bowl menu? Are you going with traditional finger foods (like chicken wings), or experimenting with something different this year?

The post A Super Bowl without Chicken Wings? Say it isn’t so! appeared first on Houston's Blog.