Tom Douglas

Happy to be home but sad to leave the South/by Shelley Lance, Blog Editor

We are home at last from the Southern Foodways Alliance Symposium after missing our connection at O’hare which caused us to spend the night in Chicago.  Sean (TDR Operations Manager) and his wife, Julie, and I tried to make the best of this delay by seeing a little bit of the Windy City. (Windy City indeed, because high winds closed the airport causing us to miss the flight.)  The next morning, we thought we had the opportunity to have breakfast at Rick Bayless’ newest joint, Xoco, and  we did get close enough to take a photo (top, left), but, sadly, discovered it was closed on Monday.  Julie said, “I was calm about missing our flight to Seattle, but I almost cried when we realized Xoco was closed, and we weren’t going to get to try the churros.”  At heart, we are always foodies.

Starting at the ending, the last BBQ we tasted in Memphis was at Jim Neely’s Interstate BBQ, (photo top, middle) conveniently located on the way to the airport.  Neely’s has a drive through window, and we did see  a pick up truck zip through for some ‘Q.  Inside, we were seated in a typically casual space, adorned with photos of the Neely family. Our BBQ, also typically, was served on paper plates and we were given (gigantic) red plastic glasses of ice water.

(Photo top right:) These are spareribs, not baby backs. They were exceedingly tender with good tasting sauce. The beans and coleslaw were tasty as well.  Even though we only had a short time to spend at Neely’s, we managed a few bites of a warm sweet potato pie. Then off to the airport (Memphis, Tennessee, is the closest airport to Oxford, the site of the SFA Symposium), then the unscheduled overnight in Chicago, and, finally, home to Seattle.

The Symposium, in Oxford, Mississippi, which started Thursday evening, October 21 and ended early Sunday afternoon, October 23, was amazing- even better than we had hoped- and I will try to gather my thoughts and photos for several posts.  Every day of the Symposium was full of surprises. Who knew that some of our favorites would be videos by Chingo Bling, a Mexican-American Texas rapper, or a poetry reading of “Hot Tamale Charlie” by Greg Brownderville, of Pumpkin Bend, Arkansas, or a hip night time art show called “One Night Stand,” at the Ole Miss Motel, where each artist exhibited work in a funky, rundown motel room, complete with a bed or two, or a fascinating and scholarly lecture on the African origins of rice in the American South that made us feel like we were in graduate school?  And I haven’t even started talking about the eating and the drinking!  More to follow; stay tuned.

October 26th, 2010