By Hannah Hayes, Southern Living

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We use the terms Cajun, Creole, Soul, Lowcountry and overlook the origins. These derive from variety of cultures and nations, from French, Spanish, African, Caribbean, Italian, Native American and others, all shaping a new culture. With certain fruits, vegetables, and herbs originating in a various regions like sweet potatoes in Central America, Yams in West Africa, or Muscadine Grapes in what is now the Southeastern U.S. Slaves took what was found, what they knew, and made something new. These quickly became traditions and now after generation to generation we still benefit from this creative process of food that fills our bellies and our souls.

Of course just about everyone is aware the health complications that come about with a diet filled with fried catfish, chicken livers, collard, turnip, and mustard greens, butter and lima beans, black-eyed peas, cornbread, grits, chitterlings, ham hocks, okra, gumbo, beans and rice, crawfish, shrimp, and hushpuppies. Read that sentence again. There is a great variety of vegetables present. So I pose the question, “What’s the deal?” I would say it’s the bacon fat, the ham hock, the fact many things are fried in lard or some kind of animal fat. But I would not be fully correct. I was having a conversation with Mr. Terry Rhodes, a cross country and track and field coach at Jackson State University, and he stated, “That [soul] food was good for the slaves, it fulfilled their nutritional needs for laboring in the fields from sunrise to sunset in the blistering hot South. We have come long and far from that lifestyle, being now so sedimentary, that diet does not fit us.” So the next question is, how can adjust our diets but still enjoy the over 400 year old cuisine? 

Over the span of this school year at Brown Elementary, I have been finding ways to cook Soul food with the students but with a healthier twist. Sweet potatoes are a staple in Mississippi. The students and I harvested sweet potatoes from the school garden and with those we made sweet potato chips. Thinly sliced sweet potato with a little sunflower or coconut oil on parchment paper baked at about 325° F for about 20 minutes until crisp and lightly added cinnamon and sea salt. It was a huge success, the students still ask about making it again. Later, we made fried green tomatoes. Yes, I said fried. I was able to teach the students about the culture of frying in the South. Here’s the twist though: a pan instead of a pot. We pan-fried green tomatoes with green tomatoes, of course, battered in fry cornmeal in a very little bit sunflower oil. Another huge success.

We can create Soul food that’s good for the soul and body with today’s lifestyle. Although it seems impossible or that flavor must be compromised, with learning the skill of recrafting our cooking processes, we can truly find successes in healthy culturally relevant food in our Black and African American communities. I salute all of my ancestors, the ones who took what they knew, what they found, and made something deliciously new, our world has been forever changed.

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As a native Mississippian and University of Mississippi alum, I am well aware of the slow pace of change in our state, especially in terms of education and health policies. It can be difficult to stay motivated in the face of these seemingly unsurmountable obstacles, while the rest of the country is always just a little more ahead of the curve than we are. It can feel like that whole “growing and learning” thing pauses, statewide. Yet, for some reason, I keep pushing. I gather most of my energy from the kids who I work with every week. Their passion and enthusiasm is enough for me to say, yeah, staying in Mississippi for another year of service is totally worth it.

During the past 99 days, my public speaking skills (which used to be one of my greatest weaknesses) have improved. I’ve discovered that you can use the same lessons for different classes and, lo and behold, you get better at teaching the same lesson the more you do it! And I’ve found out that kids, especially kids ages 8 or 9 and below, can never sing the “6 Plant Parts” song too many times. Now I’ve just got to convince them to actually eat all six plants parts, and then we’ll really be “cooking!” I’ve observed that forgetting to protect some plants from frost (ahem, bush beans) will cause them to —you guessed it!—wilt and die. But even a dying plant can be turned into a lesson in it’s own right. That’s part of the learning and growing process. And just as I have grown and learned throughout the past 99 days, I want to see Mississippi do the same. I yearn for a better version of myself and a better Mississippi. One seedling at a time.

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7:45: Hop on my bike and head over to the Pecan Park Elementary School.

8:00: Sign-in at the main office. If it’s not too busy, say hello to the office staff, telling them the weather isn’t too cold to bike…if you’re from up north (they won’t believe you). Organize the materials for the day’s lessons.

8:30: Teach two kindergarten seasons lessons. We will talk about how the seasons are cyclical, so next time, I will be able to use the seasons cycle to teach a lesson on patterns.

9:30: Take a break. Check my emails and get ready for another double-header. I already know what you’re thinking. Don’t worry; this is my busiest teaching day.

10:00: Teach two 2nd grade compost lessons from Do the Rot Thing. We will talk about all of the materials that go to landfills and relate composting to recycling.

11:00: Go outside and work on the garden. I try to get out there when I think some of my kids will have recess. If they do, have a few of them come over. It’s like a free class with them and they like it SO MUCH.

12:30: Depending on how ambitious I am, I might take a working lunch and check a few more emails. If not, chill.

1:00: Go back inside and work on the follow up lesson plans.

2:30: Hop back on my wheels and head over to my service site, Cooperative Community of New West Jackson, to work on the Folk Garden’s new raised beds.

4:30 or 5:00: Take one last ride, this time to my apartment, passing by Roger or a few other kids from school playing outside…Or maybe I might just drop my stuff off and head to Fondren After 5, in Jackson’s Fondren neighborhood, for dinner, music and a little art.

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Another FoodCorps Mississippi service member (who is also now one of my closest friends, like many of the service members have become), told me she had grown up hearing those three words: “Yeah I know that phrase! ‘There are two things we should give our children: one is roots and the other is wings.’” I loved hearing the complete phrase that way. I felt like that’s what my parents had done, and I feel like that’s what I’ve come here with FoodCorps to do — to help kids in Mississippi grow their own roots and wings.

As a FoodCorps service member, hosted by Mississippi Roadmap to Health Equity, I teach kids in West Jackson about what healthy food is and where it comes from, build and tend school gardens where they can grow that healthy food themselves, and try to help school cafeterias serve and celebrate healthy food on the lunch line. I strive to plant seeds of knowledge in my students’ minds, to help them engage with this knowledge and nurture it continually, so that it can grow and take root. As these roots of knowledge absorb more and more information and experiences, my hope is that their knowledge will bloom: that  they will be intrinsically motivated to stay healthy and connected to real food throughout their lifetimes, and see their doing so as an important and achievable goal. Eventually, a flower that has bloomed sends out seeds of its own, almost as if it has grown to have wings (if you have ever seen the wonder in a child’s eyes when they get to the last page of “The Tiny Seed” by Eric Carle, or blow on a dandelion, you have witnessed what I’m trying to describe). And I believe every kid has these wings already, even if they don’t always know it or haven’t had opportunities to spread them.

It can be very difficult not to romanticize the work of FoodCorps, but in my eyes this work is sort of romantic. It is about falling in love. With nature, with soil, with silly songs and dancing, with kids, with the state you’re serving in, with the people you’re surrounded by, and with real food. Sure, there is plenty of red tape in the food system and tons of room for improvement, and there are certainly days as a service member filled with frustration about the public education system, or fire ant bites, or a child in your class misbehaving or disliking a food you’re excited to share with them. And although there are these many setbacks in the neighborhoods I serve in for even the most motivated child or adult to be able to eat enough fruits and vegetables on a regular basis (West Jackson is almost entirely considered a food desert, which I have witnessed firsthand), I believe that part of my responsibility as a service member is to avoid getting overly discouraged. For every discouraging moment, I have easily been able to find ten encouraging and positive ones. The growth we are trying to see requires a lot of patience (just like gardening!), but most kids I have worked with this year are thrilled to go out in the garden, to try new things, to ask brilliant and insightful questions. I think kids naturally want to experience things with all five of their senses, and the garden provides the perfect environment for that.

One huge advantage we have is that the food from a school garden then sort of sells itself. Once you connect kids to a garden and show them how food grows, they are naturally drawn in and interested by the growing process, eager to help plants grow, and curious enough to taste the resulting fruits, veggies and herbs. In fact, I’ve had whole classes beg me to let them eat raw green onions straight out of the ground, or take a bite of raw pumpkin, or chew on all of the mint leaves in sight! People often assume kids won’t want to try new foods or get excited about eating a vegetable, and I like giving my students a chance to prove these people wrong.

Mississippi may have a reputation for being the least healthy state, but I think people’s spirits here are some of the healthiest. It is a natural fit to try and connect kids to real food here, because people here are already so good at connecting to each other. Yes, there are plenty of issues. Yes, racial tension exists. Yes, there is crime. Yes, Jackson has experienced all sorts of deterioration, neglect, and economic flight over the past fifty years. But, since moving here, I have never felt unsafe or pessimistic about Mississippi’s future. I feel invigorated, needed, challenged, and tested, but never truly pessimistic.

In fact, my eyes have been opened to a very hopeful Mississippi, one that is hard to find on a news station or on the internet. One that is full of thoughtful, hard-working people, brilliant artists and progressive politicians, and plenty of people who are here because they believe in a healthier Mississippi and are willing to put in the work to help it get there. I believe the potential is limitless, especially when it comes to this state’s food system. We have fertile soil, a long growing season, amazing gardeners and farmers throughout the state, and kids who – while they and their families don’t often have access to enough real food – are excited to grow it and to try it when it is available to them. I believe Mississippi is full of roots and full of wings.

While I hope I am making a real impact and difference here, helping give my students both roots and wings, I also feel grateful for the way that FoodCorps has helped me to grow: to become both more connected to everything in my life, and more aware of my potential. Through the many different forms of training and support I have received, the challenges of my service have become approachable and I have remained excited and optimistic. I feel both supported and free to tailor my service to my strengths, passions, and overall personality (from how I design my school gardens to which lessons I teach my kids). Jackson and Mississippi as a whole – its people, music, traditions, history, progress, and pace of life – have also given me this growth. My own roots and wings have both certainly expanded. And if you come here and witness it all for yourself, you’ll grow in both directions, too.

Interested in becoming a FoodCorps service member? Applications for the 2014-15 service year are open through March 30, 2014. Apply now!

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On December 2, 2013, a group of farmers, food service staff, educators, community organizers and others gathered in Pearl, Mississippi, for the 2nd Annual Mississippi Farm To Cafeteria Conference, hosted by the Mississippi Food Policy Council. After the conference, I caught up with Rose Tate, a Mississippi Delta-Native and current Food Service Director for Mound Bayou School District. She received her B.A. in Finance from Delta State and a M.S. in Health Education from the Mississippi University for Women.

James Tolleson: How did you become a food service director?

Rose Tate: Well, I kind of fell into the job. My aunt was a food service worker while I was in Elementary school. And I used to go out to the cafeteria and set inside the cafeteria and watch her. In the late 60s… They basically cooked from scratch. They had these old heavy pots that they had to lift and put on the old stove… Everything was done by hand.

I had a real good background in math, but I didn’t want to be a math teacher and I liked accounting and finance and all that kind of stuff. Well, after I graduated from college… I applied at my old school for a bookkeeping job, a secretary of bookkeeping job with the food service department. From there on, it kinda launched my career.

J: What kinds of changes have you seen over your 30 years in food service?

R: Oh god, a lot of changes. When I first started out a lot of the food was being prepared from scratch. We had a homemade pizza that the kids raved about and loved to get. In a period of however many years from my first job as secretary bookkeeper to where I am now, we’ve got from making homemade pizza to purchasing the pizza. I think these kids would probably murder you if you gave them homemade pizza. They can’t identify with that.

J: How has that impacted the cafeteria workers on a daily basis?

R: Well, we used to have to have more workers. It downsized the workers because when it’s processed you don’t have to have that many people making the food because the food comes pre-packaged… There was a time when we had 8-12 workers in the cafeteria. Now you only need from 3-4, depending on how many kids you have. We have equipment that is considered more efficient, meaning that you need less workers to process what you need to do. Whereas, back several years, the only thing that we really had was the oven and the stove and the refrigerator and maybe a mixer.

J: What made you go back to school for your Master’s in Health Education?

R: They [the food service industry] were talking about obesity and what was healthy: obesity and fatty foods and trans fats and all this stuff and I had no idea what they were talking about. My background was in finance… I had taken about 12 hours of nutrition so I had general perspective of what I was doing but I had no idea about setting up health programs, wellness, obesity, you know, “what causes it?”, “how does it impact our area?”, “how can we deal with it from the perspective of a food service program?” So I got an opportunity [to learn more].

J: And then, tell me about the first process for doing a farm-to-school purchase. When did that first happen?

R: Well I had actually purchased some farm-to-school products from the Alcorn Extension Service that’s about maybe 10 miles down the street from where my school is located. I purchased collard greens from them… I got turnips and mustards from them too.

And then I went to a couple of national conventions: National Food Nutrition Association Conventions. They were talking about farm-to-school and… encouraging us to buy from local farmers, but I didn’t know any farmers locally that could provide me with a lot of the fresh produce. Then these regulations came out that we had to prepare more fresh fruits and vegetables.

And I’m sort of thinking: if we put all these vegetables out there that our kids are new to… they eat greens pretty good. They eat broccoli pretty good, but all of this other stuff, and to have more of it, like raw carrots, raw celery, that kind of stuff. I hadn’t introduced it to them since I’d been here, so I didn’t know if a new group of kids, especially at the elementary school would even identify with it. So I came back and started talking to our elementary school food service staff and we come up with the idea to do our garden, plant us a little garden. So, we did, we planted us a little garden… so the kids could see how the vegetables was growing and they could relate what was in the garden to what they was eating on the serving line. So I think the first year we started out with tomatoes and maybe some okra or something. We planted different things cause they would see okra in their soup and not really know what it was. But we started there and next year we got some volunteers. I think some grandparents came from in the community and we planted and harvested that year… And the classes started teaching nutrition to the students and our students did begin to eat vegetables and identify with them a little bit better, a lot better. When they were taught in the classroom, they would actually come to the cafeteria and if they saw some of the fruits and vegetables that they had been taught about you could hear them say the benefits: “we eat grapes cause grapes do this for our body. Grapes are brainfood.” They would come through the serving line saying that so we knew that they were being taught that inside the classroom.

J: How do you decide who you purchase from?

R: If you can supply me the same thing that my produce company’s supplying me, I look at the quality and quantity and price and go from there. Usually, I like to buy as fresh as I possibly can. If I know that I’m getting some fresh broccoli right out of somebody’s garden compared to something that’s come through my produce company from California or Florida, that has been picked and packaged and I may be getting it two weeks after it’s been picked, I’d rather have something that’s been picked three days ago.

J: What do you see as your biggest challenges to purchasing local foods?

R: The lack of suppliers. And we need reparable suppliers. You need people that you can trust that have farms or are growing products that are safe for our kids, that are not using a lot of chemicals and are doing it the wholesome way. Most of the farmers that I’ve dealt with, I’ve kinda checked them out.

J: How does the price of local products compare to your vendor? Is it higher?

R: Well, it was relatively the same. My produce company is more competitive. They kinda dropped their prices a little bit to be competitive with where I was buying local. When he found out that I was buying collard greens local, they let me know that they’d go to another buyer and get them a lot a cheaper. But I wanted fresh not cheap.

I think that the motivation is there—we just don’t have the products. It just needs to be set up from a business standpoint. It needs to be set up like: farmers for northern Mississippi; farmers for central Mississippi; farmers for southern Mississippi. You need a distribution center: somebody who’s making sure we’re getting what we need, that it’s coming out of the field. Somebody to take an order at the beginning of the year and assure us that farmer A has this and you’ll be getting it around September 30^th or whatever. That’s what we need. We need somebody to come between us and the farmer and supply us what we need.

J: As a last question: In terms of the future of farm-to-school in Mississippi, what advice would you give to food service directors and what advice would you give to farmers?

R: My advice would be, to farmers first: there is a market in Mississippi for fresh farm-raised products. That’s coming from meat products, beef, pork, on down to your fruits and vegetables. There is a market. We, as food service directors, want to buy wholesome, healthy food for our kids. And with the obesity rate being at the top of the scale for Mississippi, we think that if we supply fresher food, if we supply healthier food to our kids, it would help combat the obesity problem. I know that there is a market and that once we have sources to supply that market, there will be jobs available for people that want to work in Mississippi. We have the available land; we have the resources. I don’t know what the mindset is for working, you know, because we have gotten away from farming in Mississippi. But Mississippi is a jewel. Cotton was King here years ago. And I don’t see why fruits and vegetables and food can’t be King now.

And to the food service directors, I would say that we need to push for farm-to-school. We need to push for healthier food in our cafeterias. And the healthier food is gonna be the food that comes out the ground, that’s fresh. If you can cut down processing to 5 days from 10 days. If we can buy here from right under our noses, it would be better for us, it would be better for our economy, it would be better for the state of Mississippi.

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