This Feeds Me Hungry Musings of a Gastronomic Gypsy – NC-based freelance writer Victoria Bouloubasis

Portrait of FOODIE screenwriter Eryk Pruitt at Capital Club 16. Photo by D. L. Anderson.

(FOODIE screens tonight at Motorco, 7 p.m.)

Let’s be real. Many of us have thought about that hypothetical moment of tragedy where, one day, after a freak accident—being caught in an avalanche or getting lost at sea—we find ourselves in a disgusting predicament: Do I eat the dead guy next to me to survive?

Foodie, a new short film written by Durham resident Eryk Pruitt, bypasses the idea of cannibalism as an uneasy survival tactic. Instead, the 29-minute dark comedy-horror flick explores an obsessive, underground sect of foodies who dine on humans in the most gourmet and trendy of manners.

Pruitt launched his food career as a pizza-delivery driver to earn money for college. Now his repertoire includes years of experience as the general manager of Blu Seafood in Durham; he currently manages Sitti in Raleigh. He carried on a sarcastic, twisted conversation about cannibalism and barbecue while eating a schnitzel sandwich at Capital Club 16.

Click here for the full story (and find out what wine pairs best with Greek people).

Jonathan Nyberg juggles a few whole nutmegs, taken from a shelf that houses his nutmeg shrine. Photo by D.L. Anderson.

Sometimes I’ll get a strange tip, like the one about a Durham man who has created a nutmeg shrine in his home. Read all about it!

Goats and I share a complex history. I wrote about it for Indy’s Front Porch last week. Every Greek Easter, I’ve relished in the crispy skin peeled straight from a roasted goat’s flesh. Until, that is, I witnessed the birth of a baby goat on a farming stint in Portugal. My indulgent, borderline barbaric behavior at Easter has forever been changed. (Ironically, and perhaps purposefully, I managed to eat beef shank this year.)

Read the full column, Goat gotten, here.

And for a Punky-inspired recipe, meat-free, try some pancakes!

There he is, the little punk. (The photo above is with his baby brother. Punky was too cool to pose.)

Photo by D. L. Anderson.

A year after a tornado rattled Raleigh, Earp’s Seafood Market reopened on South Saunders Street. Herbert Earp opened the market in 1968 with just $50 in his pocket, providing a family business and community legacy. Read the story in this week’s Independent.

It is legal in North Carolina for children as young as 10 to work in agriculture. With a $2,000 grant from NC FIELD, the Poder Juvenil Campesino youth take photography and video workshops. Photo by Jonathan Mendez, youth farmworker.

For this week’s INDY, I wrote an article exploring North Carolina’s hidden labor force: children working the fields. Almost half a million children are working in the fields in the United States. This week is also National Farmworker Awareness Week. Due to lack of space in the paper, a few excerpts didn’t make the edit. I’ve included them below, as they touch on poignant themes such as immigration and youth activism.

The youth I met were all either former or current farmworkers, along with many of their family members. Some were undocumented, others were born here. They live in rural Eastern North Carolina. In activist circles here in the Triangle, one often hears the words “mobilize” and “organize” as mantras. The youth in this group speak in a less abstract, more veritable vocabulary, from experience and from the heart. While individually sharing stories of what they have overcome – heat exhaustion, rashes, long days –a sense of empowerment clearly exudes in their youthful, yet tired, voices.

Milly Lima, 16: “We are being used, and they’re trying to make us think that we don’t have opportunities. They are trying to keep us underclass. But we have rights.” (Read more of her story in the full article.)

Nineteen-year-old Elvis Ordonez from Chiapas, Mexico, took a photo for the group’s campaign Give Food a Face. The postcard depicts a bare-backed youth hoisting an enormous bucket of sweet potatoes on his narrow shoulders. Ordonez once staged a sit-in in the fields when he and his fellow workers were refused a water break. He says days typically begin at 6:30 a.m. and end at 4:30 p.m., with only a 20-minute break. He initially came to the States to work for a bit with his father in the fields, and then study. That was four years ago. So far, he has only managed to take English classes sporadically and says he gave up on finding the time and resources to study. He and his father, and now mother, all work in the fields to send money to his siblings and family in Mexico.

“It’s an injustice. A child shouldn’t be working in the fields. They should be studying, so they can go on with life,” he says.

“I take photos because there are certain people who don’t feel comfortable talking about farmworkers in the field. But these farmworkers exist. There are emotions that people working in the fields are feeling that can be expressed through a photograph. Every time I take a photo, I always think of that. I think of telling a story. You can tell so many things from just one photograph, without words, without having to say anything.”

NC FIELD co-founder and documentary photographer Peter Eversoll has helped Ordonez and other youth obtain funding for photography workshops around the state. On a recent trip to Mexico, he secured an exhibit in Mexico City in October to display their photos. The downside: due to their legal status, many of the photographers can’t leave the country to see it. He said he will “Skype them in.”

“I’m very proud of them. These kids are ambassadors. It’s pretty amazing. Americans don’t know about child labor. They don’t know it exists here. We make all these provisions and acts to prevent child labor in places like Honduras and Phillipines, but not here.”

“You can’t do any more to this population. You’ve taken their drivers license. You’ve made them illegal, you’ve arrested them on the way to the grocery store. You’ve deported them,” says NC FIELD co-founder Melissa Bailey. “Society has made this such a political platform that they’ve literally destroyed the lives of children and are not accountable. We aren’t paying attention to who’s picking our crops. When we think farming, we don’t think farmworkers. We think farmers, county fairs. This is the reality of how your food is harvested.”

Full story here.

Mecca Restaurant is the oldest family-run restaurant in the state. It has been in the Dombalis family since 1930. Courtesy of the restaurant's website.

Raleigh pulses at its downtown core. The recent piece I did for SavorNC Magazine includes five itineraries as set by the magazine’s VISIT series. I indulged most in the Epicure section, mentioning the trendy restaurants amped on an edgy, farm-to-fork wavelength, as well as the legendary, family-run businesses like Mecca restaurant. Read the entire piece on pg. 16 of the virtual version.

DIY dinner: beef bulgogi ssam at KoMo KoMo in Cary, NC. Photo by D. L. Anderson.

KoMo KoMo opened in November as the only Korean French restaurant here in North Carolina. The unusual juxtaposition of bimbimbop and bouillabaisse on the same menu provides a true choose-your-own-adventure style meal. Read the full story here, published March 21.

A cocktail at The Standard. Photo by Sarah Matista Photography.

Two new bars, both former staples of local mayhem, have snuck onto the scene quietly. The Standard, formerly Henry’s and Fuse, and Peccadillo, the former Go! Studios and Reservoir, offer stiff, neat drinks and quality bar food (since the column published, Peccadillo owner Timothy Neill informed me that a fine charcuterie offering is in the works). Read the column here.

Snail mail is sexy

I recently discovered Peat and Repeat, recycled handmade postcards by Durham resident Jess Kemp. What does sexy snail mail have to do with food? Kemp uses old cereal boxes and other food packaging to create one-of-a-kind, meaningful mail art. They are perfect for your loved ones and lovers, and maybe even a frenemy or two. Read the column for more.

Peat and Repeat’s designs typically include beautiful messages, many by Persian poet Hafiz. I found one poem particularly alluring and powerful:

Run my dear,
From anything
That may not strengthen
Your precious budding wings.

Run like hell my dear,
From anyone likely
To put a sharp knife
Into the sacred, tender vision
Of your beautiful heart.

Hafiz

Happy day. Love yourself, love others, today and always <3

Kitty Banks runs the kitchen at InterAct, a shelter for domestic violence victims. Photo by Jeremy M. Lange.

A piece on hunger runs the risk of feeling stoic or redundant, full of statistics and absent of hope. I struggled with this as I researched and spoke to numerous people involved in local hunger relief projects. Then I  met Ms. Kitty Banks, who gave me the honor of telling me her compelling story.

“Not only am I doing what I want to do,” Banks says, “but it’s part of my dream to have my own kitchen. This is as close to mine for now.”

Thirteen years ago, this wasn’t the case. Banks says she was a “functioning drug addict, trying to hang on” as a single mom working two jobs to support her kids and her habit. Though smiling, she still can’t avoid the tears welling in her eyes when she recalls an incident that happened many years ago: She sat at her kitchen table and ignored her children’s pleas for breakfast.

“They knew mama was hung over, that she started her day with a BC [powder] and a Sunkist.”

Read the article here.

Ben Horner cools freshly roasted beans at Counter Culture. The local company works directly with farms to ensure the coffee is fairly traded under economically and environmentally sustainable conditions. Photo by Jeremy M. Lange

Fair Trade USA has changed its standards for fair trade coffee certification, pulling from the Fair Trade International model. Among the changes: expanding the criteria to include farms that are not part of a cooperative. My story’s focus explores the local perspective via Counter Culture and Carrboro Coffee Co. These two prominent Triangle, North Carolina roasters apply their own ethos, methods and certification to their product, with varying opinions on both the former and new certification standards. The issue itself, as well as other issues surrounding the coffee economy, is extremely complex. An interesting debate follows in the comments, so be sure to read them.

Read the story here.

*NSYNC's Joey Fatone chows on Chirba Chirba juicy buns. Photo by Victoria Bouloubasis

It slipped my mind to post this on the site. How could I have forgotten about my day with a former boy-bander turned food personality? Thanks to Chirba Chirba, the Triangle’s official dumpling raid on wheels, I spent some time hanging out with the Chirba crew and Joey while he filmed for his new show, My Family Recipe Rocks, to air on the Live Well Network in January. Read my Indy Big Bite blog post about it!

From bean to bar at Escazu Chocolates in Raleigh. Photo by D. L. Anderson.

Chocolate has a convoluted history tantamount to the saga and intrigue of a tragic heroine. Powerful men throughout time, be it Aztec kings or Spanish emperors, pursued her with vigor–an elusive object deemed precious, indulgent. European conquerors claimed to discover cacao in a world they assumed to be new, cheapening her title as “food of the gods” and stripping her sacred seeds from indigenous hands.

Now, many local chocolatiers honor these roots of cacao, creating a historic, delicious tribute to what is now a globally revered staple beyond just the dessert plate.

Read the story, featuring Cocoa Cinnamon, Escazu Artisan Chocolates and Elemental Chocolate, plus a list of more local purveyors.

Porcino and its gorgeous pasta colors. Photo by Jeremy M. Lange.

The latest DISH issue focuses on food made by hand. One of my contributions was a look at the homemade pasta artisans here in the Triangle. The allure of fresh pasta features Porcino of Carrboro, Dur’m Pasta Co. of Durham and Melina’s Fresh Pasta of Raleigh. Each purveyor had a passionate story to tell, including Carmella Alvaro of Melina’s, who confessed many joys of being raised by immigrant parents obsessed with good food, including the following: “I was a vegetarian for five years because I went to get the laundry one day and there was a lamb hanging from the ceiling.”

Great cover shot, too, with the help of Porcino’s delicious curry macaroni!