Divorce, depression, and candy corn–we cover it all in this bonus episode about dealing with the holidays.
This year may be especially difficult as we come back into a life that we have not experienced in some time. The pandemic has figuratively taken our lives, thrown them up in the air, and now as things begin to come back down, it can be tough to find value in the same things we used to.
We hope you find comfort in our show because it has definitely been something that we have found solace in over the past year. But, if you feel overwhelmed and need help, please reach out to someone. If you don’t or can’t reach out to anyone, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is: 800-273-8255
In the second part of Part3 on School Lunch, we continue our examples of redlining in Louisville, KY. As we mentioned in our last episode, Louisville has a “rich” history of redlining and busing, so we decided to stay here and examen the city’s struggle with school integration. Because this is still an issue in our schools today, we will do a short bonus about an article on the continued segregation in our system that just came out in the Courier-Journal.
“In Louisville, housing segregation declined more than 20 percent since 1990, likely contributing to the city’s relative escape of Detroit’s struggles. School integration and housing plans can work together to reduce the dependence on busing for equal education. Louisville leaders offered three exemptions to the busing program: one to already diverse neighborhoods that met the racial balance goals established in the original court order, another to black families who made an integrative move into a predominantly white neighborhood using housing vouchers, and another to neighborhoods that eventually evolved into integrated environments. Although an imperfect plan, failing to prioritize socioeconomic status and overlooking public housing site selection in segregated neighborhoods, Louisville’s exemption policy produced an incentive for neighborhoods to become more diverse. Eventually, this provision ended, but not before the entire program of city-suburban comprehensive desegregation had limited the amount of concentrated poverty in the region and reduced white-flight from the city, stabilizing home values and tax revenues. Parents in Louisville can feel confident that the location of their home will not negatively impact either the resources or the racial composition of their child’s potential school.”
So be sure to tune into our next “Gravy” episode as we analyze this paragraph and discuss the current status of integration in Louisville.
Mac n’ Cheese is an all time favorite of ours, but Kelly did not realize that Darryl didn’t grow up with it as an “everyday food” until we recorded this episode. We investigate how Black culture made this food a special occasion dish and perfected it in a way that made it exceptional enough to serve it at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
We go all the way back to 1AD and trace the history of this pasta and cheese dish all the way through colonization, emancipation, and the era of soul food. Darryl cooks the mac n’ cheese he grew up with, which was one of the first dishes he helped out with in the kitchen, and we talk about our love for Tillamook cheese.
We posted our holiday episode last week, and if you haven’t had the chance over this busy week to listen to it (just like it took us a week to post it here on the blog), then you can check it out now.
Darryl and Kelly got together to discuss some of their weird family foods and the little they know about the origin of these dishes. We look forward to doing more in-depth episodes on these “salads”in the future.
If you have weird dishes that your family serves, please tell us about them in the comments or send us an email at butterpecanpod@gmail.com
Thank you all for following us in 2020 as we began this podcast – it has been one of the few gifts that the year has provided both Kelly and Darryl. This show has been something that we have both wanted to do for some time and it somehow got dug out of this insane, horrible, depressing year. We look forward to a big 2021 and hope to see you all on the other side.
This all started with ice cream. After a year of working for Louisville Cream, Kelly had noticed a pattern that she felt too shy and too embarrassed to ask anyone about. A google search did not answer her question and she didn’t yet consider turning to twitter, so one day she asked: Is Butter Pecan a “black thing”? With Darryl’s signature laugh, he replied, “Of course.” And so began months of research and digging, and what ultimately became the larger project of this very podcast.
In this episode about our namesake, we share what we have discovered so far about ice cream, and talk a little bit about how it all began. If you have your own story about Butter Pecan ice cream or eating ice cream while black, please send us an email at butterpecanpod@gmail.com or leave a comment below.
In our final installment on Coca-Cola, Darryl and Kelly cover the discrimination case brought against the company in 1999-2000 and the decades leading up to the final ruling. We talk dress code, hierarchy, and “the issue of invisibility” at Coca-Cola. The series ends in the present day as we process Coca-Cola’s response to the Black Lives Matter movement in June.
Please bare with us as we recorded this episode remotely, got silly at times, and freaked out a little bit about the stuckness of it all. We also did the Pepsi Challenge, which was at the same time hilariously fun and incredibly disappointing.
Butter Pecan Pod 