Welcome to CRAVES SOUL FOOD-
Charleston, South Carolina

Celebrating Our Heritage-

1st Feb 2010, by Craves, filed in Soups & Veggies
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The preparation of Gullah/Geechee Soul Food:

Our ancestors also planted greens on the pieces of land they lived on.

Making a “mess of greens” it was called… cooking a lot of leaves, water, and meat in a big black iron pot.

Greens were mostly served with sweet potatoes,

macaroni and cheese, corn bread, and ice tea for a real “down South” meal.

  • Black-eyed peas, another soul food icon, originally came from Africa and was often eaten in US on New Year Day to bring prosperity. This tradition is still carried out in many homes today. Some also believe that black-eyed peas will make you become strong.
  • Sweet potatoes were often parboiled, sliced and then baked, using sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and butter. This dish was, commonly called “candied yams” also boiled, then pureed and baked into pies .

“Rice”- One pot cooking, Low Country Gullah Rice, Geechee call it “Prioleau rice“

Join us at CRAVES Soul Food- Heritage Cooking at it’s best!

CRAVES Soul Food,  Catering Service, Charleston SC
buffet
     
     
     

 

From Staple Food to High Cuisine. Rice, Soup, Stews and more…      

 

Shrimp ‘n grits – shrimp is simmered in a brown gravy and served over grits. This dish can be served for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Most Gullah/Geechees consider grits to be a must-have for breakfast and rice a must for dinner.  
“Prioleau or Perlo” rice– a one-pot meal of rice marinated with a vegetable, bean, and/or meat. Shrimp Prioleau, Red Rice, Hoppin John, Chicken Prioleau, Okra Prioleau are popular favorites. Rice was a major cash crop from the late 17th century until the Civil War, and it has continued to be a major Southern food staple.
 
Vibration Cooking, or The Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl, (New York: 1970), cited in Karen Hess, The Carolina Rice Kitchen: the African connection (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1992)
  
  A Gullah woman describes a typical meal at home, 1930s   

 We had rice everyday. When you said what you were eating for dinner, you always assumed the rice was there.

That was one of my jobs too. To cook the rice.

 A source of pride to me was that I cooked rice like a grown person.

I could cook it till every grain stood by itself.  

 

 Gullah slave song from the South Carolina Low Country, recorded in 1862

Among the Pines; or, South in Secession-Time (New York, 1862)

 Come listen, all you darkies, come listen to my song,

It am about ole Massa, who use me bery wrong:

In de cole, frosty morning’, it an’t so bery nice,

Wid de water to de middle to de hoe among de rice  -Edmund Kirke  

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