21 WWW.CHARLESTONWOMENPODCAST.COM | WWW.READCW.COM | WWW.INSTAGRAM.COM/CHARLESTONWOMEN We’re a Hardscape business, locally owned in Charleston, SC. /MoralesOutdoorCreations @MoralesOutdoorCreations Call Today for a Complimentary On-Site Consultation! (843) 614-0209 | MORALESPAVERSCHS.COM Installing Fire Pits, Patios, Building Outdoor Kitchens & more! gredients are foundational to Charleston’s culinary scene is often lost on residents, tourists and even many local chefs, according to award-winning chef, food writer and native Charlestonian, Amethyst Ganaway. “People assume the Gullah ingredients and cooking techniques started with enslavement, but our foodways were developed thousands of years before that,” she said. “Africans were brought to these shores specifically because of their astrological, engineering and agricultural knowledge. Enslavers recognized that certain people from certain regions had intelligence that could be applied to growing crops such as rice, indigo, tobacco and cotton in our similar climate and landscape.” Ganaway added that while each plantation and household was run by a different playbook, the task system, which often required enslaved people to work from sun-up to sun down, sometimes allowed laborers to have “free” time after completing the day’s work during which they could pursue their interests, which would include hunting, fishing and growing produce such as okra and beans in provision gardens. According to chef Kevin, oral tradition says that those plants may have originated from seeds and grains that Africans sewed into their hair before they were transported from their homeland to America during the Middle Passage. Another interpretation of how those ingredients likely arrived in the colonies, Ganaway said, was that ship captains and their crews brought seeds and grains back from the continent when they realized that laborers refused to eat the gruel they were being fed. FOOD & FASHION Shrimp and Okra Perloo Photo by Rhonda Mitchell
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