Today I came across a new cookbook called Vegan Soul Kitchen, by Bryant Terry. it's a vegan interpretation on soul food that sounds pretty good. Reminds me a bit of Brown Sugar Kitchen's Tanya Holland, who wrote New Soul Cooking, which features healthy, local, seasonal versions of traditional soul food. Growing up on a farm, helping my mom butcher chickens and tend the garden, I'll probably never go vegan entirely, but I'm intrigued by the efforts to match my eating with my values. After all, home-raised and butchered chickens are a far cry from the mass produced variety. I got to checking out Bryant Terry and found yet another Oakland guy who is totally cool and making connections between things like food culture, structural racism, and urban politics. It reminds me yet again why I love this city. There's a whole culture of organizations doing great work around here. I don't know if the Oakland Men's Project is still operable, but I used some of their stuff when I was doing anti-sexism/anti-sexual-violence work.
And then I went with a group of folks to Allen Temple Baptist Church in one of the poorer areas of Oakland. It was an amazing service with great music and message - but most remarkable was how much we felt welcomed and accepted despite obviously not belonging to the regular congregation. Not to mention that Allen Temple does some awesome social service work.
Dunno, I'm just feeling the love for Oakland these days.
1 comment:
For me it's the awesomeness coupled with the non-pompousness.
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