Answering the call for gumbo

Torrey Johnson stood outside the small building, looked up at the sign and walked in for some gumbo. The minute he entered, he knew he couldn’t get a cup of gumbo, but he also knew he was supposed to be there. Gumbo Gallery owner Sonja Griffin Evans welcomed him and asked if he painted.  Though he hadn’t picked up a paintbrush in nearly twenty years, the unexpected venture inside her art gallery has him painting again. That’s quite a switch from his day job as security chief at a prison.

The current exhibit of Johnson’s work at Pensacola’s Gumbo Gallery is an exclusive. Johnson describes Evans as his mentor, and his work “inspired by black women and their trials and tribulations.” He, like Evans, paints in the Gullah cultural style featuring elongated, stylized African-American figures. The inspiration of his current series is women ranging from family members to musicians.  One watercolor, Sit Still, illustrates his mother wrestling with the hair of his young sister as she tries to style it. My favorite, a 8 x 24 piece with bold composition, features the side view of a woman seated at a table, forehead in hand, and other arm reaching towards a book. The woman is surrounded by past due notices; there’s a calendar in the background and a cup of coffee in the foreground. The book, Johnson pointed out, is the Bible and the answer is right at her fingertips.

At my house, when we say “I’ve got a real hankering for gumbo,” we fret until we make a pot of gumbo. The message haunts us until we take action.  Torrey Johnson had a real hankering for gumbo that day, too, and I’ll venture to say his actions changed his life, just as he can change the lives of many others with his art.

Gumbo Gallery http://www.gumboartgallery.com/

Torrey Johnson http://www.herthoughtsbytorreymjohnson.com/products-services/

It must be in the water

The Gulf Breeze Rotary Cookoff overlooks the Santa Rosa Sound from its site at Shoreline Park South.

Tastes like home or feels like home. I can’t remember whose slogan that is but I know the feeling. I “tasted” home at the Gulf Breeze Rotary Gumbo Cookoff last Saturday.

The cookoff takes place on the shores of Santa Rosa Sound with kids playing beach volleyball, fishermen and boaters, all within sight. An employee at Bay Breeze Retirement Center had “comped” me two tickets for this annual event; I wish I could have voted for Bay Breeze’s gumbo entry. It was delicious, but her boss one-upped her.

Bay Breeze fried some tasty gator and sauteed shrimp to top each sample of their gumbo entry.

Bay Breeze is one of several area retirement centers managed by Gulf Coast Health Care. For the past few years, their chefs have won the Gulf Breeze Rotary Cookoff. Each chef proudly displays his past trophies and “wrestling style” championship belts at the cookoff.

Past winners display their trophies and dress for success at the Gulf Breeze Rotary Cookoff.

This year, their nursing home entries had a lively competition among each other since one chef had transferred facilities, taking his gumbo-kudos with him. All three of the facility entries were delicious, but over in the corner was the Gulf Coast Health Care corporate office tent. And that’s where I tasted home.

I had just sampled a former champ’s entry, so a wonderful aftertaste lingered when I stopped at the lackluster corporate tent. No trophies, wrestling belts, Mardi Gras beads or posters with newspaper articles fancying up the place – just samples of gumbo under a bland tent. I didn’t expect much.

They asked if I liked oysters.

“In gumbo, they’re fine,” I said, just as I swallowed the first bite. It triggered an immediate memory of my grandmother’s front yard.

“Who’s recipe?” I asked trying to define the taste.

“It’s mine,” the young man answered.

And then I knew it. Something about the way he said “mine,” with just the slightest sound of home.

“Where are you from?”

“Pascagoula, Mississippi.”

High-five, fist bump.

“So am I.”

The corporate office chef on the left is from Pascagoula. The team dished out some tastes of home for this reviewer.

I don’t know if the corporate office won the cookoff, but they definitely won my People’s Choice votes. I learned that the taste of home is in the water, but not in the water from the Pascagoula River. It’s from the oysters which have filtered the brackish water around Pascagoula –  like those oysters my dad used to shuck behind my grandmother’s house while I played in the front yard.

Thanks for memories – and the tickets!

World Class, Emerald Coast Gumbo

Let the tasting begin

Destin, Florida is famous for its high rise, luxurious condominiums overlooking the see-through waters of the Emerald Coast. But fifty years ago, Destin was simply a sleepy little fishing village with a big fishing pier.

Those days are preserved in Destin’s History & Fishing Museum, a small museum filled with local lore and fishing memorabilia. To help keep the museum going, the chefs from the posh restaurants roll up their sleeves and compete in the Destin Gumbo Contest. For three hours, they dish out all the gumbo you can sample in the community center across from the museum. Locals compete, too. This year their twenty individual entries (labeled A-S) flanked both sides of the gym. The home cooks ladle out samples of gumbo from crock pots, some of them splattered with former ingredients from church dinners and barbecues.

The sixteen restaurants displayed their creations across the front of the gym on tables decorated with Mardi Gras beads and colors. Many of the chefs were serving their own creations while hotel and restaurant staff members passed out coupons and menus.

For me, it was all about tasting. I had a plan to taste all 36 entries. By skipping the rice and limiting myself to two spoonfuls (at first) I tasted almost every entry. (Home cooks  “G” and “J” were already out by the time I got to their crock pots.) No two gumbos tasted alike even though most used twists on the same ingredients. One had duck, most had chicken, some were seafood, almost all had sausage. A few had tomatoes and okra, and I think I tasted coriander in a couple. I sampled every entry and easily selected the letter “I”, a medium-colored chicken and sausage gumbo,  as my individual favorite.

The aftermath of tasting at the Destin’s Gumbo Contest

Selecting the best professional etnry was much more challenging. Plus, I was beginning to get my fill of gumbo. I narrowed it down to Fisherman’s Wharf and the Marina Cafe, both seafood gumbos. After a second round and then a third round, I decided that the Marina Cafe (entry M #4) was best because of its unique buttery aftertaste.

I made one big mistake, though. I got so wrapped up in the tasting, the live music and the silent auction, that I forgot to turn in my vote. So, here’s a shout out for Home Cook “I” and  Marina Cafe “M #4,” the best in the Destin Gumbo Contest.

My gumbo grandmother

I first experienced the joy of giving in the seventh grade when my junior high Y-Teens Club adopted Rita, a teenage girl from the “state school,” for Christmas. We didn’t know if she was an orphan, a delinquent, or just poor. We did know we had collected seventeen dollars and were to buy her presents. So two other girls and I headed to Woolworth’s in downtown Pascagoula right after school. We shopped for nearly an hour, carefully tallying each purchase. I remember a scarf, perfume, costume jewelry, a diary, all luxury items from the five and dime. Nothing practical — it was Christmas, after all. There in Woolworth’s, somewhere near the cosmetics counter, I fell in love with giving and shopping, especially shopping with someone else’s money. Ask my mother, my father, my husband. I’ve perfected the art of shopping OPM, that’s shopping with “other people’s money.”

But don’t fall for the Christmas line that all the joy is in the giving. There’s plenty to be said for the receiving end. My grandmother, who had weathered what must have been terrible times during the Depression, was living a comfortable life in her seventies. She owned her own home and had a brand new Ford in the garage. Her six grown children and their spouses, plus twenty grandchildren, would give her anything she wanted, even if she never asked. She had a kitchen pantry filled with jars of preserves ranging from jellies and jams to vegetables. She had a freezer filled to the brim with butterbeans, shrimp and chicken. Outside stood a fig tree, a scuppernong arbor, a garden, and a chicken yard populated with fryers and layers.
The front bedroom where no one ever slept, directly across from the living room where no one ever sat, was a storehouse filled with bulk buys and bargains. When she escorted us into the bedroom, eager to show off the rolls of toilet paper and paper towels, or rows of canned goods, soaps, toothpaste or shampoos, we treated the room with reverence. Boy Scouts and Mormons could have taken lessons from her. My grandmother, Mrs. Jones, was prepared for the apocalypse.

One holiday season, the private school around the corner from my grandmother’s house decided to “adopt” my grandmother for Christmas. No doubt they thought she was starving. They collected dozens of canned goods and proudly delivered them to her door in a brown cardboard box. On Christmas Eve, she escorted small groups of us into the bedroom to admire her gift box from the school. She’d point to the creamed corn or the pumpkin and smile. Her sons and daughters shook their heads wondering why their mother was so pleased. But, the box was, without a doubt, far superior to any gift under the Christmas tree in the living room. My grandmother had received her perfect Christmas gift and was so appreciative and honored, that I doubt the thought ever crossed her mind that “the box” might have been meant for some other Mrs. Jones.

German translation: I will play for gumbo

Except for the sausage, there’s wasn’t much German about the Elberta German Sausage Festival. But Jimmy Buffett’s “I Will PLay for Gumbo” knows no cultural boundaries.

Where else, but at the German Sausage Festival in Elberta, Alabama, would you see four gals dancing to I Will Play for Gumbo? I would have never thought the Elberta German Sausage Festival would be such a multicultural event! But then, that proves it — gumbo knows no boundaries.

Just like gumbo, small town festivals mix some distinctive ingredients to create a memorable serving. At this festival, which benefits the Fire Department, the firemen grill the sausage with such flourish you can see the smoke from the highway. The planners mix in several dozen craft vendors,  funnel cakes and carnie food, a rock climbing wall, some pony rides, and they’ve got an event. The sleepy town of fifteen hundred grows to more than twenty thousand for twelve hours in October, then again in March.

Now if you’re looking for a big time festival designed for dancing with gumbo, Geraldine (a reader who’s a native of New Orleans) has alerted me that Nov. 10-11  is the big gumbo festival that’s part of New Orleans’ Jazz Fest. Check it out at http://www.jazzandheritage.org/treme-gumbo 

The fact is, people do play for gumbo in New Orleans, so writes Garland Robinette, who designed the 2011 New Orleans Jazz Festival poster which features a long-haired Jimmy Buffett playing his guitar. Robinette describes how Jimmy Buffett played the street corners of the French Quarter while a college student at University of Southern Mississippi. An interesting read at http://www.art4now.com/cgi/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=ST-20110102

Gopher gumbo

Gopher gumbo was Friday lunch in the Florida Panhandle in the early 1900s according to historian Adelia Rosasco-Soule.. (menoutdoors.com)

A friend lent me a copy of Panhandle Memories, Adela Rosasco-Soule’s memoir of growing up in the early 1900s in the wilds of the Florida Panhandle. Inside the book, my friend left her presentation notes to help me with research on poet laureates of northwest Florida. As I removed the notes, the book fell open to page 48, “Gopher gumbo and snapper throats.”  I was hooked.

Rosasco-Soule writes “In the old days in Pensacola, meat was kinda scarce. . . we had lots of good fish and, in winter, of course oysters. We also had gophers. People had gopher gumbo every Friday     . . .  Several grocery stores sold gophers; had boys to kill and prepare the meat . . . Mobilians ate gopher gumbo just like us in Pensacola; in New Orleans, too.”

I grew up in this region and have never seen a gopher around here. I’ve seen plenty of squirrels, but never a real gopher, which is a ground squirrel. In the early 1900s the Florida Panhandle was a bustling lumber, sawmill and shipping area – a boomtown. If everyone was eating gopher gumbo on Fridays, no wonder I’ve never seen one.  The gophers are long gone – either they wised up and left town ( avoiding Mobile and New Orleans) or they ended up in gumbo.

City chicks and urban roosters

No doubt these beauties at Firefly Distillery on Wadmalaw Island in South Carolina are “rural” chickens.. The population of the island is around 2500 , but places that serve food (restaurants, fast food) are not allowed.

I heard a rooster crow this morning on my walk and paused to wonder if he would be considered an urban chicken. After all, I live in an unincorporated part of the county, though the population is somewhere between sixteen and twenty thousand. But, alas, it is the county. Thankfully, Gulf Breeze “proper” (population 6000) lets us borrow their name, but we have to use our own zip code. In my short morning walk I passed five other walkers (three dogs in tow), a school bus (thirty kids in tow), one cyclist and a jogger, confirming my belief that I lived in civilization. But my four-year-old granddaughter Keaton told me she has to go through a long forest to get to my house. So, I guess the rooster I heard must be a “rural” rooster.

My grandmother raised “rural chickens,” right there in a fenced chicken yard on the far side of the house. That was before chickens were chi-chi and municipalities were writing rules and issuing permits for urban chickens. Like today’s urban farmers, my grandmother raised chickens for eggs – eggs that tasted like eggs ought to taste. But unlike today’s urban chicken farmers, Mawmaw knew a good roasting hen when she saw it and knew how to wield a hatchet. Chicken gumbo for Sunday lunch?