The pages of a cookbook turn, the oven clicks on, a pleasant aroma fills the room and things start to feel just like home. For Lauren Cardon’s class, these experiences will be on display this weekend at the Sassafras Food Memories Festival.
Cardon, a University of Alabama professor, teaches English 455, an English class where the theme of the coursework this semester is focused primarily on food. Teaming up with Sassafras, a local non-profit organization centered on bringing the community together, students from Cardon’s class will be presenting recipes and narratives based on memories of food.
“Our theme this semester is ‘Discourses of food: Growing, cooking and consuming.’ All semester, the students have been reading and blogging about different writings on food and writing papers on foods themselves,” Cardon said.
Cardon instructed the class to write about food memories, where students could write about family members that passed down a recipe or a dish that stood out as “extremely palpable.” Six students were chosen to present their paper and prepare the dish for the festival.
One such student is Annemarie Lisko, a sophomore majoring in English and Italian. Lisko’s story was written about bread that her mother made when she was in elementary school.
“It’s basically just a simple homemade bread,” Lisko said. “We had a homeschool history curriculum, so this history book in elementary school had a guidebook of activities that were some things to complement the history studies and there just happened to be a really good bread recipe in it, so we started making that, and we’d bake it all the time because it was really straight-forward.”
In 7th grade, her mother passed on the recipe to her. The bread became a big part of Lisko’s daily routine, as well as the main focal point of her narrative for the festival.
“Being homeschooled, helping out around the house or in the kitchen was just always part of the day because we were all there all the time,” Lisko said. “Once it got to where I was making the bread, I’d get up in the morning, do a little bit of schoolwork and set up the bread. Mom would teach me stuff, like math. By the time that was done, the bread would have risen so I’d run upstairs to get it in the oven.”
Another student sharing her story is Yasmeen Sayyah, a senior majoring in English.
Writing about her mother’s hummus recipe, Sayyah’s story revolves around her experience in the kitchen, watching her mother make the dish and how the hummus was a constant in her life. Her father is Palestinian, while her mother is from Kentucky.
“I’m writing about how the cultures mesh in cooking,” Sayyah said. “That was the area I saw that their completely different world views best collide. From my Arabic grandmother, [my mom] learned how to cook Arabic food really well, so well that it’s even better than theirs now. Her hummus has always just been one of my absolute favorite dishes. It was always around at home, we could always count on eating that after school or whenever we wanted.”
Along with Lisko and Sayyah, four more students as well as a faculty member from the English department and community members will be presenting their stories on stage, while the rest of Cardon’s students present their dishes. The festival will feature a wide variety of food to sample, from vegetarian dishes to desserts.
“I think there will be a lot of food, but there’s also something going on the entire time,” Cardon said. “There’s music, the readings are going to be going on. It’s the kind of thing where people could arrive an hour into it if they wanted to, catch some of the readings and try some of the food. “
Each dish at the festival will include the work of the respective student as well as include the recipe for those who enjoyed the food to make it for themselves at home. Alongside the readings, local bands such as The Golden Monica will provide additional entertainment at the event.
Joya Elmore, chair of Sassafras’s’ art committee, has spent months working alongside Cardon to help bring the festival to life. Elmore has previously worked on community projects and workshops to bring the people Tuscaloosa together and get them engaged in art while supporting the community through environmental action.
“[Cardon] came to me with this idea and I said, ‘Yes, absolutely,’ ” Elmore said. “I mean, who doesn’t love food, stories and music?”
As well as featuring the dishes and stories, Sassafras will also be presenting plans for a new community project for Tuscaloosa.
“Our executive director, Eric Courchesne, has been working really hard to pull together our plans for making that space into an amazing public park, Elmore said. “We’ve been working with architects and we have everything drawn up for that, so we’ll be showcasing that as well.”
Elmore expressed interest in continuing and expanding the festival in future years to make the festival a bigger and better event for the community. As well as expanding the festival, she hopes to expand Sassafras’ reach through events and arts.
“It’s a really exciting time to learn about Sassafras because we’ve got a lot of great ideas and projects in the works,” Elmore said. “We really encourage people to come out and see the property and see the design for our public park that we’re planning to build on site.”
The Sassafras Food Memories Festival will take place April 17th, from 5-8:00 p.m. The event will take place at the Sassafras Center on Loop Road and will be open to the public.
“[Sassafras] is really bringing a lot of different elements of Tuscaloosa together,” Cardon said. “I think it’s a good way to celebrate our local culture.”
