Blanching the mint and spinach helps keep their color vibrant. Instead of mint and spinach, you can substitute other herbs and greens like parsley and arugula. These alternatives may have slightly different blanching times and will change the flavor profile.

Even food is not immune to disinformation and opacity. And that’s why our Edible team is so grateful to be in a position to share real, meaningful stories about dedicated, hardworking people from across our local food landscape.

In The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South, Michael W. Twitty writes, “Food is an archiver, a keeper of secrets.” Yet Twitty, a culinary historian, scientist, cook, writer and reader, and justice seeker, shares everything, beginning with his Afroculinaria blog. With ancestral lines that span three continents and more than a dozen states and cities, Twitty speaks not about “from” but “of.” He is “of” these places, of parents born and raised “South by Midwest” and of people who liked to tell stories.

Most accounts suggest that cornmeal, also known by its Indigenous name maize, originated 8,000–10,000 years ago in an area of Mexico termed Mesoamerica and arrived in North America via the migration of Native Americans. In the New World, writes Elisabeth Rozin in Blue Corn and Chocolate, corn was a “beloved and worshipped grain that had nourished and nurtured the aboriginal populations for many thousands of years.” Indigenous peoples introduced corn to different parts of America, and eventually to Africa and Europe, through a system of trade routes. These cultures used intricate methods for farming, including the