High on the Hog_ A Culinary Journey From Africa to America - Jessica B. Harris [105]
However, it was not all grim; there were advantages to Bed Stuy as well. I was heartened by the families who lived next door and the villagelike atmosphere on Fulton Street, two blocks away. I liked the fact that on summer weekends a gentleman would park his car across from my house, open the trunk, and sell watermelons; and I loved his sign, which read WATERMELON SWEET LIKE YOUR WOMAN.It was a place that reminded me of the 1950s, when I’d grown up, more than the 1980s.
When I lived in the Village, I had to journey uptown to Harlem whenever I felt like some collard greens or when I wanted black-eyed peas for the Hoppin’ John deemed necessary to start the New Year off right, not only by me but also by most of Harlem, black Americans everywhere, and many white Southerners. In Brooklyn, there was no such difficulty; my local supermarket sold these African American staples year-round, and the greengrocer offered African American Southern seasonal specialties like raw peanuts. What the greengrocers lacked could be found on the back of trucks parked on Atlantic Avenue, where enterprising men hauled sausages, greens, sweet potatoes, and more up from North Carolina and did thriving business selling to those who still craved the foods of their Southern homes. The neighborhood was also home to a large West Indian population, so alongside the basic American produce, the local greengrocer also had dasheen, plantains, mangoes (in season), and a wide variety of root vegetables —eddoes, yams, cassava—as well as shelves of Trinidadian curry powder, Barbadian brown sugar, and vats of salted codfish and pickled pigs’ tails. There were small containers at the checkout counter filled with the fresh thyme sprigs and the Scotch bonnet chilies that are essential to much of the food of the Caribbean world. What was exotic in other parts of the city became everyday for me.
In the twenty-plus years I’ve lived in my neighborhood, I have watched as the place and my supermarket changed. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, my neighborhood has gentrified but not so much that it’s not still an African American neighborhood—at least for the next few years. The foodscape, however, is evolving rapidly. I can now get Chinese, Indian, and Japanese food delivered. A burgeoning Senegalese neighborhood has grown up around a mosque and is home to several small restaurants selling thieboudi-enne and chicken yassa to taxi drivers and adventurous locals. Folks even proudly boast of the Applebee’s restaurant that opened a few years back. My supermarket as well has taken on a new look. The abundance of pork and chicken products is still there, as are the thin steaks, but the new dietary habits of African Americans and the upward mobility of the neighborhood are reflected in the goods sold. The produce counter now offers an abundance of fresh salads: arugula, mesclun, baby spinach, and spring mixes alongside the collards, dasheen, and kale. I can even find sun-dried tomatoes and haricots verts. A bakery purveys freshly baked croissants and pound cakes as well as bagels. I can find flour tortillas and wraps for spring rolls as well as wheatgrass health potions and tahini. The shelves still have their sugary cereals and canned foods, but they also display Greek yogurt, soy milk, and even tofu.
The changes in my neighborhood supermarket reflect, more than anything, the transformation of the African American diet in the final years of the twentieth century and the opening ones of the twenty-first. The traditional Southern diet of pig and corn is still consumed, but increasingly it has become celebration food for many families, eaten only on Sundays, on holidays, and at family reunions. The black middle class continues to increase, and upwardly mobile African Americans eat more widely ranging foods. The culinary explorations of the 1960s have added dishes from the African continent and the Caribbean to the menu.
There has