Talking food at B.B. Comer Library

Denise Sinclair
09-02-2005

She knows why grits, greens and chitlins are such favorites on Southern dinner tables and how many other Southern traditions in food developed. She’s grown heirloom fruits and vegetables, living artifacts said to taste, look and even smell so much better than other varieties. Butler County native Annie Crenshaw has also cooked on woodstoves, raised hogs and chickens and preserved produce and knows quite a bit about food history. Crenshaw visits B. B. Comer Memorial Library Sept. 29 and will bring her tales of tradition and lore along, titled "Mama’s in the Kitchen:Southern Traditions in Food." The program begins at 10:30 a.m. She will discuss how the Southern environment and culture have helped shape people’s traditions in food and help solve some of the mysteries that surround them. She also addresses some of our popular misconceptions about food, such as chitlins being the leftovers fed to slaves. She says it’s not so, it’s in the eye of the beholder, or rather, the culture of the consumer. "Southern food is the result of who we are, where we came from, where our ancestors lived, and what they had to work with in a particular place and time," she says. Crenshaw is also an artist and historian, and does research in genealogy. She is an active member of the Butler County Historical and Genealogical Society. The presentation is sponsored by the Alabama Humanities Foundation, B.B. Comer Library and The Arc of South Talladega County. Crenshaw is a member of the foundation’s Speaker’s Bureau. The program is free to the public.

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