FERN’s Friday Feed: Prison tamales
Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
How to run a tamale business in prison
Gravy
“I lived in a cell right next to Lucky. Me being Mexican, Lucky being Mexican, Lucky was always mentoring me, giving me psychology books to read, books on my culture and heritage, giving me books that made me think about the brain,” says Jason Hernandez. “One of the things that Lucky could do was make tamales … He would get bags of Doritos. And I’d grind them and smash them as much as I possibly could until they actually turned back into almost a dust. Almost. Once you get that, then you put really, really hot water in there. Then you’re mixing them; we get the butter from the kitchen delivered to us. And it turns right back to a masa and we start making these little balls smaller than a tennis ball.”
A North Carolina food bank works to keep up with demand
FERN
“The past few weeks have been a struggle—both here and at similar operations around the country,” writes Barry Yeoman. “The first problem came with the supply chain. With consumers panic-buying, shelves emptied and supermarket companies had less to donate. So did food manufacturers who were racing to restock those shelves. The Food Bank’s model relies on product donations, but since the outbreak it has purchased more food outright. The Food Bank has also had to limit the number of volunteers on its warehouse floor to maintain social distancing.”
‘Southern hospitality,’ heavy with contradictions, now faces an existential threat
The Bitter Southerner
“Since returning home [to the Sea Islands in South Carolina] from Arkansas, I’ve grappled with what Southern hospitality means now, even as who identifies as a Southerner has also evolved,” writes Shane Mitchell. “Despite its problematic roots, Southerners are inextricably tied to the humble act of sharing something to eat or drink. That may prove to be our downfall or our salvation. Who guessed a lethal viral outbreak would so rapidly shutter our most beloved dining institutions, possibly forever?”
One restaurant’s struggle to weather the pandemic
Slate
Most restaurants “operate on wafer-thin margins, with little financial cushion to sustain the business through prolonged periods of diminished income. Thamee, which opened in May 2019 and made the Washington Post’s list of best restaurants of that year, was no different,” writes Christina Cauterucci. “The restaurant had only just completed its first five straight weeks of profitability when those reservation cancellations started rolling in. Like many new restaurants, Thamee was still in debt, with just about one month’s worth of rent and one pay period’s worth of wages on hand.”
In Kabul’s oldest restaurant, tradition trumps rockets
Longreads (This piece, published in 2017, was pulled from the archives under the heading, Stories to Distract You)
“For over 70 years, Bacha Broot, located in the center of the Old City of Kabul, has been serving chainaki — savory lamb stew — despite Soviet occupation, civil war, and the Taliban,” writes Maija Liuhto. “While wars have raged on the restaurant’s doorstep, very little has changed inside. The claustrophobic stairs, the sparse interior, the tiny door easily missed in the maze-like bazaar; all in their original state. While modern fast food joints lure Afghanistan’s younger generations with pizza and burgers, Bacha Broot stays loyal to its recipe for success. The famous chainaki — lamb on the bone, split peas, and onions cooked for four hours in tiny teapots — has drawn customers for decades, during war and peace, good times and bad.”
Faux meat taps into America’s food’s cultural currency
High Country News
“As the Impossible Whopper and other fake meats add new links to the industrial food chain, advertisers are leaning into the cultural currency of the modern carnivore,” writes Carl Segerstrom. “The message behind Burger King’s ad is clear: You can be an American, even a rugged modern-day cowboy, have your burger and eat plants instead of beef. This embrace of Old West iconography shows how large stories loom in American food culture — often masking the consequences of how that food is produced.”