Ole Miss alumni Ron and Becky Feder, principals of the R&B Feder Charitable Foundation for the Beaux Arts of Ocean Springs, Mississippi, helped launch the Southern Foodways Alliance’s endowment fund during this October’s Southern Foodways Symposium with a $5,000 challenge grant to members. The grant is the first installment of a ten-year pledge totaling $50,000. SFA members attending the symposium met and bested that challenge, raising over $11,000 in additional funds during the weekend.

One of SFA’s most critical and pressing needs is an endowment that serves as a permanent and reliable source of funding for the events and programs that support its mission. Today, almost all operating expenses--nearly $100,00 annually--must be raised through the efforts of SFA staff. As the organization grows, however, demands on staff resources grow. This endowment will relieve some of the pressure to raise funds. Staff can then dedicate more of their expertise to assuring the same high quality of scholarship and service that members and the public have come to expect.

Interest earned on the endowment’s premium will provide funds for operational expenses such as supplies, printing, and postage, as well as for salaries, special events, and scholarships. Further, it will provide seed money for some of our biggest aspirations. Chief among those is a thorough compilation of oral histories about current, historic, and endangered foodways of the American South. A close second is planning for a public museum, library, and archives.
Projects such as these were once only dreams. Now, they are becoming reality. An initial collection of SFA archival materials, for instance, is on deposit at the University of Mississippi Department of Archives and Special Collections. Likewise, the oral history campaign has already produced histories on barbecue and baking. To manage that project, the board recently hired Amy Evans as a part-time facilitator. Amy, a graduate of the Southern Studies master’s program, was the lead researcher on our Tennessee barbecue project.

Both the University of Mississippi and the Center for the Study of Southern Culture are working closely with the SFA to develop the endowment campaign. The University of Mississippi Foundation will administer the endowment. All funds raised will be dedicated exclusively to the Southern Foodways Alliance.
The initial round of donations to the endowment came from SFA members, the board, the staff of the Center, even symposium speakers. A case in point: Jim ’N Nick’s Bar-B-Q of Birmingham, Alabama, responded to the challenge with a pledge of $3,000. Others may choose to contribute anonymously or make donations in another’s name. All contributions are fully tax-deductible and can be made by check, credit card, or pledge.

The Southern Foodways Alliance has always been a member-driven organization. I urge each member with a development or philanthropic background to continue that tradition by contacting me at sfaendowment@olemiss.edu or 215-432-4348 to offer advice and leadership on the endowment campaign. I am eager to discuss fundraising strategy, leads, and developing promotional materials.

Matthew Rowley

MUW Students Cook, Clean Up, at SFA Symposium

“I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried,” says SFA member Sarah Labensky, director of the Culinary Arts Institute at Mississippi University for Women. She’s referring to the ingenuity of a group of 12 juniors and seniors in culinary arts at MUW who traveled from Columbus to Oxford to cook Friday lunch and much of Saturday dinner for the 225 participants in the 2003 symposium.

The students arrived on Thursday afternoon to commandeer the kitchen of a local Baptist church and set up for their cooking marathon. Sarah Labensky and Ronni Lundy had worked out the menu in advance. Preparation was intense. “The first thing we had to do,” Labensky says, “was to make a lot of bacon fat. The kids rendered an entire case of bacon just to get the drippings,” indispensable to real Southern cooking.

The centerpiece of the meal was to be a big batch of Bill Best’s shuck beans. But anyone who arrived at lunch expecting a pot of beans and cornbread was in for a surprise. A glorious buffet of the best of the Appalachian South surrounded it: cucumbers and onions in vinegar, Kentucky heirloom tomatoes, deviled eggs, potato salad, butter beans and sausage, green tomato casserole, mustard greens with crowder peas, skillet corn, pumpkin grits pudding, cornbread muffins, yeast rolls, apple stack cake, blackberry cobbler, and peanut butter fudge. Of course there was plenty of sweet tea and cold buttermilk too.

While those of us who ate the lunch dozed through the afternoon’s presentations, the students were faced with cleaning up. Problems were many. The sinks at the church clogged. The students literally had to bale water with buckets to prevent flooding the kitchen floor. But a potential crisis was averted when one of the students had the bright idea loading the big pots and sheet pans into a pickup truck and scrubbing them down at a car wash with a power sprayer. Since the bed of the truck had served as a de facto bus tub, they even had to scour the truck bed before putting the clean stuff back in.

Enterprising students like these are a hallmark of the MUW Culinary Arts Institute, a four-year program that began in 1997 and now enrolls about 72 students. The Bachelor of Science degree offers the students a chance to become culinary specialists with minors in entrepreneurship/small business development, food journalism, food art (food styling and photography), and nutrition wellness. “Students know they want to cook when they sign up for our program,” Labensky says. “They have a high level of commitment, and that makes them a real pleasure to work with.”

The students look forward to the experience of working at the symposium. And their hard work does not go unappreciated. “The kids were great fun,” says SFA president Damon Fowler. “They are very sharp and also very grounded. I was very impressed by their calm professionalism and good humor.” The SFA tries to give back. In recognition of their efforts we donated $500 to a recent student research trip to Atlanta, Georgia. What’s more, several student internships have grown out of relationships forged at the symposium in Oxford.

MUW students participating in the 2003 symposium were Mel Howard, Millie Welborn, Allison Smith, David Stutts, Shannon Henderson, Opal Peacock, Rashanda Pruitt, Tameka Dallas, Cynthia Hembree, Gabe McCarter, Marie Eckl, Catlin Conner, and Pat Berry. Pictures of the students and their car-wash cleanup can be found on the Culinary Arts Institute’s Web site at http://www.muw.edu/interdisc/page64.html.

Thomas Head