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• What Does a Minion Taste Like?
• At Atlanta’s Magic City, Chicken Wings Cast Their Own Spell
• How ‘Buy Nothing’ Facebook Groups Are Emerging as Sites for Mutual Aid
• The Happiest Food on Earth?

What Does a Minion Taste Like? Posted: 01 Jul 2022 09:00 AM PDT You might assume banana, but there's so much more https://www.polygon.com/23186689/minions-food-flavor-explained

At Atlanta’s Magic City, Chicken Wings Cast Their Own Spell Posted: 01 Jul 2022 07:54 AM PDT https://atlanta.eater.com/23156667/magic-city-chicken-wings-best

How ‘Buy Nothing’ Facebook Groups Are Emerging as Sites for Mutual Aid Posted: 01 Jul 2022 06:26 AM PDT Kate Green/Getty Images Alongside gifts of Ikea furniture and outgrown toddler clothes, some groups are becoming de facto food distribution networks This story was originally published on Civil Eats. Yulia Koudriashova is a single mom and teacher living with her two daughters in San Francisco's Outer Richmond neighborhood. Her parents moved in with them in March when they were evacuated from Kiev after Russia invaded Ukraine. With Koudriashova's salary as the household's only source of income, the family has come to rely on the boxes of food they pick up nearly every week from a neighbor's garage. "For my parents, it's very helpful because they see the support of the members of our community," Koudriashova said. "They have nothing, they don't have money, and we are sharing the same budget for five people." If Koudriashova can't make a pickup, which typically takes place on Saturdays, she will likely receive a text message from host Priscilla "Cilla" Lee to make alternative arrangements. For the last 15 months, Lee has hosted a weekly food pantry out of her garage for the community of people she connects with through the online platform Buy Nothing. The neighbors share everything from food to clothing and furniture. Members of the group view the food pantry as a valuable resource that helps feed their families while preventing food from going to waste. Lee is the administrator for the official Outer Richmond Buy Nothing group, which has more than 700 members on Facebook, and she recently launched an unofficial Buy Nothing sister group that also includes a nearby neighborhood to accommodate residents who wanted to participate. Within a month, it had 350 members, and now it's close to 500. Lee envisions her hyperlocal food pantry as a feel-good familial event, where members can meet their neighbors and build community. Members must RSVP to visit the food pantry to ensure Lee has enough food, but she has noticed that spaces are filling up faster these days. At a time when inflation has skyrocketed across the country, making everything from groceries to clothing and services more expensive, members of the group view the food pantry as a valuable resource that helps feed their families while preventing food from going to waste. Grocery prices have soared nearly 12 percent in the last year, the largest increase since 1979. At the same time, 1 in 6 adults turned to charitable food in the previous 12 months, according to a December 2021 Urban Institute survey. Although that's a 10 percent decline from 2020, the rate is still higher than before the pandemic. If it weren't for Lee's food pantry, Koudriashova says she would probably have to visit a food bank, which she said would be much less convenient and welcoming. She estimates that each week, the boxes save her family at least $50 that she can use for children's activities or other expenses. "That's why it's very important," she said, "Now prices are so high in the shops, so I need to pay much more [for groceries] than before." On a recent Saturday, a Buy Nothing member with a flower-decorated van pulled up in front of Lee's house loaded with fresh food from the Second Harvest food bank; Lee coordinates volunteers through her community to pick up the food at various food drives if she can't do it herself. Perishable items like meat are transported in cooler bags before they're placed in ice chests. For food safety reasons, Lee said she typically distributes food within an hour of its arrival. By the time she had set up, roughly 50 people had started lining up on the sidewalk outside her house. Then, one by one, they grabbed a box and filled it with food. There were coolers of packaged raw chicken drumsticks and crates filled with apples, melons, onions, potatoes, and heads of lettuce. Bright blue buckets held loose carrots and ears of corn, and cartons of eggs, loaves of bread, and bags of coffee beans, rice, and pasta were up for grabs. Lee also set up a table for visiting kids with donated cupcakes, ice cream drumsticks, and snacks. Each person made their way through, picking what they wanted. After everyone finished, some stood in another line for a second round to grab whatever was left. Lee walked around checking in with members and making sure the distribution went smoothly, with a senior poodle in a sling on her side. Any food not taken is added to food boxes that are picked up later by members who couldn't visit the pantry that day. Lee aims to give it all away every week. Since Lee, who works in customer service for a major airline, started the makeshift food pantry more than a year ago, she has only missed one week; when that happened, she assembled boxes that members could pick up. She's come to know pantry regulars and remembers their needs. For example, she'll tag member Khadija Lchgar when she sees someone in the group giving away diapers. Lchgar, a stay-at-home mother from Morocco, lives in San Francisco with her 3-year-old son and husband, who is a full-time student and works part time — the family's sole source of income. Lchgar learned about the food pantry after joining the Buy Nothing group to look for free supplies for her home. Lee often receives donations of things like sushi, bagels, and sandwich rolls from local restaurants and she'll point out whether any of it contains pork or alcohol, which Lchgar's family avoids as Muslims. Sushi, for example, is made with Mirin, a Japanese rice wine. For the food pantry regulars like Lchgar, Lee started a group Facebook chat. She shares recipe ideas, which come in handy for times when the pantry receives an abundance of zucchini three weeks in a row. Lchgar said the recipes motivate her to experiment with new dishes. "It helps my family because I am able to feed them healthy food," Lchgar said. "We always get protein, dairy, vegetables, pasta, and whole grains. I think if you have this variety of food, you can make a different dish every time." Origins in the Gift Economy Documentary filmmaker Liesl Clark launched the Buy Nothing Project in 2013 after spending time working in the Himalayas. She was fascinated by how the region's remote villages operated as cashless economies without much of a retail footprint. "They all take care of each other through a true gift economy model, and so I wanted to see if we could do something similar to that in our own community." Back at home on Bainbridge Island, west of Seattle, Clark and friend Rebecca Rockefeller used the Facebook Groups platform to invite friends and friends of friends to their inaugural Buy Nothing group. It was an experiment: Before you buy something at the store, consider asking the group for it first. If you have anything in abundance from your garden or home, offer it here first. And when the giving and receiving starts to feel good, share your gratitude. Neighbors began sharing odds and ends. Someone asked for — and received — a missing part for their coffee maker. A woman needed a spring for her toilet paper holder; lo and behold, a neighbor had one, and the two met and became close friends. "Those were funny little matches, but then the human matches were happening," Clark said. "And we were starting to come to know our proximal neighbors and really connecting with them. And the easy part was the food." "We were starting to come to know our proximal neighbors and really connecting with them. And the easy part was the food." Clark shared eggs with a neighbor she'd never met (and made a film about it). Some gave away tomatoes, lettuces, and even weeds from their gardens. (Chickens love to eat weeds.) Others gifted extra enchiladas or half-eaten pizzas they didn't want to throw out. Members purged their pantries and offered up their unwanted canned goods, teas, and spices. Clark's group started a community potluck in a park, where they gathered and shared meals or extra food. A local farmer handed out vegetable seedlings so members could grow their own produce. One woman filled her car with donated food and held impromptu mobile food shares. Buy Nothing communities proliferated on Facebook, eventually reaching 5,000 groups. Participation has tripled since the beginning of the pandemic, Clark said. After facing some limitations with the platform, the Buy Nothing Project launched an app last year on Buy Nothing Day — also known as Black Friday — to give users more flexibility to engage with communities beyond neighborhood boundaries. Six months later, the app has more than 400,000 participants. Clark has heard of other food pantries held through Buy Nothing groups. But they may not have the scale of Lee's operation. Inspired By Her Mother — and the Pandemic Lee estimates that she redistributes more than 7,000 pounds of food every month to co-workers, her Buy Nothing community, and some of her neighbors. In addition to the food bank, she often receives donations from nonprofits and people in the community that have extra food or fruit from their backyard trees. Lee had always wanted to volunteer during the holidays serving food to those in need. But she typically worked holidays. Then the pandemic hit. "It was so scary. If I was financially stable, scared, and unable to get food [because shelves were bare], I could only imagine how other people were feeling," Lee said. "I just decided to look for places where I could volunteer and find out how I could be active and give back to my community." She was also inspired by her mother, who passed away six years ago from cancer. Even during her treatment, Lee saw her mother still helping family, friends, and acquaintances however she could. "My mom's not here anymore, so I think about all the things that she did," Lee said. "Like everybody else during pandemic, you kind of reflect upon your life and the things that are important to you." In 2020, she took a leave of absence from work to help the company reduce layoffs. She also rallied her colleagues with seniority or financially stability to do the same. She ended up taking off a year and a half. During this time, she started fostering senior dogs and volunteering at food banks. She discovered her local Buy Nothing group and saw that there were people in the group looking for food. "I said to myself, 'Wow, we live in a really nice district. Who would've known that there were so many challenges to get food?'" She found that one door opened another. A food pantry where she volunteered let her take home excess food — five crates of potatoes here or 10 boxes of apples there — which she gave away. Before the pandemic, Lee didn't know how to cook, but when she had too much extra produce, she taught herself how to transform tons of zucchini into zoodles, turn too many cucumbers into salads, and she used a food chopper to make cauliflower "rice" like she saw sold at Trader Joe's, all of which she shared with her community. "I always have some kind of shenanigans going," Lee said. "It's almost like the 'Lucy' show. I come up with an idea and I'm just like, 'We've got to get this going.'" She keeps extra produce, dry goods, and bins on hand for members who need help outside the normal pickup times. For example, a new Buy Nothing member needed extra food for her three kids after a family member stole her EBT benefits. "Everyone has a different story, and I never ask," Lee said. "They tell me, but I don't require any story to visit. Just good faith from everyone, and I request they don't pantry hop since I always can get plenty for people weekly." Now, Lee works about 30 hours a week at her airline job and spends at least 10 hours on the food pantry every week. Her dedication inspired Paola Capuano, a Buy Nothing member and single mom, to volunteer at the pantry. "When you see a person so involved, it makes you feel more motivated," Capuano said. "So, whenever I can do anything to help her, I'm happy to do it." That makes Lee feel grateful that other people want to contribute. "I find if I lead by example, people will follow." • 'Buy Nothing' Groups Are Doubling as Food Distribution Networks [Civil Eats]

The Happiest Food on Earth? Posted: 29 Jun 2022 06:00 AM PDT Theme parks have long used fried chicken to evoke a sense of old-timey, wholesome Americana. But who, exactly, is this nostalgia really for? As you stroll across the colorful plaza just off of Disneyland Park's Main Street U.S.A., the oil-drenched scent of crispy fried chicken hits the nose instantly. Wafting out of the pink three-tiered Victorian mansion known as the Plaza Inn, the fried chicken dinner at Disneyland is one of the 66-year-old park's most sought-after offerings. It is also, arguably, its most iconic because it was a favorite of Disneyland founder Walt Disney. Most importantly, though, it's a dining essential for the millions of people who visit the "Happiest Place on Earth" each year. A few miles away, one of America's first theme parks — Knott's Berry Farm — got its start as a bustling fried chicken restaurant. Opened in 1920 in Buena Park, California, the park was originally a berry farm. At the entrance sat Mrs. Knott's Chicken Dinner Restaurant, which, starting in 1934, served steaming plates of fried chicken, buttermilk biscuits, and, of course, boysenberry pies. By 1940, the restaurant inside what was once the Knott family home had become a phenomenon, selling up to 4,000 chicken dinners each Sunday. Eighty-some years later, the fully fledged theme park welcomes over 5 million visitors from all over the world each year, according to Knott's, and sells upward of 1,000 chicken dinners daily. "It is just nonstop fried chicken," says Carlye Wisel, a theme park expert and journalist who's written extensively about Knott's Berry Farm and Disneyland. "And as my husband describes it, it's 'just fine' fried chicken. It's kind of like pizza in the sense that even if it's not great, it's still pretty good — because it's fried chicken." More than a century after the founding of Knott's Berry Farm and almost 70 years after the opening of Disneyland, fried chicken remains a staple at theme parks nationwide. "Chicken is one of those foods that travels well. It's easy to produce. If you're at a theme park and you're hungry, a drumstick or a wing is quick and easy to eat," says Dr. Psyche Williams-Forson, chair of American Studies at the University of Maryland and the author of Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food and Power. "It's also flavorful and filling and feels like a comfort food." Most of the country's largest amusement destinations now boast some sort of fried chicken on their menus, from the basic boneless nuggets at parks like Six Flags to the beloved fried chicken platters at Disneyland's Plaza Inn. Disney/Bob Desmond The Plaza Inn, once called the Red Wagon Inn, was the first sit-down restaurant at Disneyland and served country chicken plates. OC Archives Mrs. Knott's Chicken Dinner Restaurant serves a full dining room in the 1940s. Disneyland — and historic amusement parks like it — aren't just peddling family fun and fried foods. They're also manufacturing a highly romanticized version of America's past through stories of American exceptionalism, often centered around the decades just before and after the turn of the 20th century. After hitting Victorian-era Main Street U.S.A., Disneyland parkgoers can stroll through Frontierland, with attractions glorifying the "Pioneering fun" of the mostly European western migration in the 1800s. At Tennessee's Dollywood, you can start with a ride on an antique steam engine train (a proud symbol of manifest destiny) and end inside a replica of an old country chapel (a nod to folksy moral purity). Just outside Branson, Missouri, Silver Dollar City features working blacksmiths, candle dippers, a covered wagon ride, and a paddleboat dinner cruise all dedicated to the American "spirit of adventure." Across America, amusement parks draw millions of visitors each year with a mix of family-friendly fun, "simpler times" nostalgia, and an opportunity to revel in a "shared" national identity. But these versions of history have been heavily edited and sanitized, reflecting a very narrow experience of an even narrower swath of people and begging the question: Whom, exactly, is this nostalgia really for? The same can be asked of the parks' favorite food, too. No dish more accurately evokes the complicated history of Americana, or classic American culture, than a plate of battered and fried yardbird — but that nostalgia is rooted in a time when "Americana" really meant "white America." "Fried chicken is a dish that gets to be beloved by white folk as a piece of Americana, when really it's way deeper than that," says chef and writer Amethyst Ganaway. "This is my opinion, but for old white people, fried chicken brings nostalgia in the same way that old white people love to visit Charleston, [South Carolina].… A lot of those nostalgic feelings don't come from their grandmas making them fried chicken because their grandmas probably learned to make it from a Black person. It's rooted in their racism." Fried chicken was popularized in America by former African slaves. Its exact origins remain unclear, though the technique has possible roots in Senegalese chicken yassa, or stewing fried pieces of meat in a flavorful sauce. At the beginning of the 20th century, fried chicken was viewed as a "lesser" food and used as a way to malign Black people in this country, due in large part to a scene in the horrifically racist 1915 film The Birth of a Nation that depicts actors portraying rowdy Black elected officials, one of them eating fried chicken "ostentatiously." Following a period of World War II red meat rationing, in which chicken became a popular protein in the United States by necessity, fried chicken underwent a cultural revamp, moving outside the realm of Black Southern cuisine and into the popular consciousness as a cheap, hearty meal. By the 1950s, "there were a lot of transitions happening. It was the Electrolux and Tupperware era, with all kinds of material goods being mass-produced and disseminated for the first time," says Williams-Forson. "It was also right after the end of World War II, when African-Americans served as cooks during the war, often preparing fried chicken." As soldiers returned home from the war and food rationing restrictions ended, fried chicken saw a rise in prominence across the country. Colonel Harland Sanders would franchise out his recipe for "Kentucky Fried Chicken" for the first time in 1952. It just so happened that at the same time, the country was entering a second golden age of the amusement park. Postwar America was in the midst of a new era of economic prosperity — including for Black Americans — and some people now had the financial means to take vacations with their families. Theme park proprietors embraced the lure of Americana in an effort to draw big, mostly white crowds. And as the American economy boomed, so did the bountiful family-style spreads of fried chicken on theme park tables across the country. Three years after Disneyland opened, Paul Bunyan's Cook Shanty opened in 1958 near the picturesque Wisconsin Dells, a tiny vacation destination known as the Waterpark Capital of the World that attracts more than 4 million tourists each year. The establishment, inspired by a mythically strong lumberjack, served all-you-can-eat fried chicken dinners to patrons for more than 60 years. (Recent pandemic-related staffing shortages have forced the restaurant to close for lunch and dinner, and take fried chicken off the menu, much to the disappointment of Dells regulars.) Silver Dollar City launched in 1960, and its Southern Gospel Picnic at the House of Chicken and Fixin's features a buffet — the ultimate signal of abundance, another national value — of "Miss Molly's famous fried chicken" and sides. America's love of excess was matched by its soft spot for the past. In 1986, country singer Dolly Parton partnered with an old Tennessee theme park and rebranded it Dollywood, where she still serves up heaping plates of her mother's famous recipe for fried chicken. Available inside Aunt Granny's Restaurant, the Southern-style chicken here is seasoned with paprika and cayenne pepper, fried to a crisp, then served family-style with sides like mashed potatoes, green beans, and cornbread. When Walt Disney opened Disneyland in 1955, chicken was on the menu at the 1890s-themed restaurant the Red Wagon Inn, the park's first sit-down dinner establishment. Now called the Plaza Inn, the restaurant still serves three chicken pieces pressure-fried to a golden-brown crisp alongside mashed potatoes, veggies, and a fluffy buttermilk biscuit — for a cool $18.99. "People who visit Disneyland starting when they're a young child grow up and bring their children there, and maybe even their children's children," says Wisel. "People feel tied to it. It's a generational thing, and I think a lot of its fandom is rooted in the people who went there as a child and fell in love with the park — and its fried chicken." Dollywood Dolly Parton purchased an old steam engine-themed amusement park in 1986 and rebranded it Dollywood. Dollywood Vintage Dolllywood brochures tempted travelers with images of fried chicken feasts from Aunt Granny's Restaurant. By the mid-1960s, fried chicken was being used to sell everything from Mrs. Tucker's shortening in the Saturday Evening Post to Banquet frozen dinners offering a taste of this down-home favorite without all the flour and frying. By 1974 Kentucky Fried Chicken, the country's first major fried chicken chain, was already taking its product international, expanding to Canada, the United Kingdom, and Jamaica. "When big brands saw how Kentucky Fried Chicken was able to mass-produce a meal that was recognizable and a comfort food for so many people, it was a no-brainer to add those items to their menus," says Ganaway. Today, Southern-style fried chicken continues to be a staple for almost any business trying to tap into a sense of quaint, old-fashioned family fun. But the truth is, for many nonwhite consumers, "old-fashioned" does not equate to fun — not even close. A bitter reality underlies the charming trappings of this manufactured Americana, even if theme parks have done their best to sweep the horror of our history under the rug. It's especially bizarre considering that, now for multiple generations, Americans of all backgrounds have made their own happy fried chicken memories at places like Knott's Berry Farm and Disneyland. That's the nostalgia they're trying to tap back into and happily pay more than $100 a ticket for — plus $18.99 for fried chicken. Michael Hoeweler is a New Jersey-based lifestyle illustrator who loves to make drawings about people, culture, fashion, nature, food, and more. Fact checked by Kelsey Lannin Copy edited by Leilah Bernstein

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