Pat Branning’s Carolina Cooking: Memorial Day and the Gullah Festival
Carolina Cotton Fields, by Charleston artist John Carroll Doyle is meant to show a long overdue indebtedness to the African Americans who toiled in our southern landscapes well into the 20th century, picking cotton by hand before machinery relieved them of their arduous labor. The painting depicts three black field laborers beginning their day at sunrise. The central dominating figure stands up right and steadfast as she looks to the morning sky with noble determination, as if to say, “A New Day is Coming.” This painting measures 60” high and 48” wide."
Pat Branning’s Carolina Cooking
Memorial Day and the Gullah Festival
You might say there was a lot of razzle, dazzle goin’ on in Beaufort these past few days.
Each year during the Memorial Day weekend, Gullah folks and folks from all over gather for the annual Gullah Festival at the Henry Chambers Waterfront Park. It’s a celebration of the Gullah culture and a tribute to their forefathers. Their history chronicles the enslavement of tribes from West Africa and their relocation to southern plantations.
Their rich dialect has been passed down through the generations extolling the virtues of spirituality rooted in nature and family. Here at the festival the food of the Gullah people is expressed not only with clarity but pure passion.
Catfish stew, shrimp gumbo, Frogmore Stew and chicken bog are high on everybody’s list, but it’s the chicken bog that steals the show.
Chicken bog is chicken, rice, and anything else they can throw in the pot. It’s appropriately named because there’s not a better word for it than bog, which simply means it’s a soggy, cloggy, noggy, foggy mess. Often the chicken and rice will also have sausage and seasonings. Sometimes people add a few carrots and celery and sometimes they don’t. Anyway they fix it; it’s been a real attraction for years at church suppers, fundraisers and now the Gullah Festival.
People are zealous about it and opinionated, even bullheaded about chicken bog. It reminds me of the way folks are about their barbecue. While walking through the crowd, I heard one gentleman talking about how it was a major calamity to have either bone or gristle in chicken bog – or skin for that matter! “Maybe I’m just not country enough,” he muttered “but that’s just the way I am.”
Types of bog vary. There are dove, quail bog and duck, although they are more commonly called perlo. Mighty men from Coosaw and the surrounding areas have built solid reputations on the birds they hunt and add to rice before inviting other men to partake. There’s a whole lot of pride involved in the process.
Now don’t get confused about the difference between bog and perlo, because I’ve thoroughly checked this out. I can tell you what a city policemen said about it all. “The only difference I can tell you is in a perlo, the rice don’t stick together too bad.” He continued,” In a bog, you can sorta throw it up against a wall and it will hang there for awhile.” A gentleman from Yemassee overheard us talking and couldn’t wait to tell me about a political cookout where squirrel bog was served.
No matter how exotic the bog may be, rice is the one constant ingredient. It is inescapable in the Low Country, where plantations made South Carolina one of the largest producers in the world at one time. Folks mixed rice with everything whether it be beans, peas, okra; you name it, and ate it with every meal.
You talk about being shocked and amazed, the first time I went into a grocery store in Beaufort, I saw hundred-pound bags of rice for sale. Where I came from people didn’t eat rice all that much but around here it was pretty much rice with everything.
A lot of good ‘ol country cookin’ was there at the Gullah Festival that day. That means biscuits, country fried steak, cream gravy, cantaloupe and green beans that have been cooked in a big black pot for hours. They even ate gravy on their cantelope! While I could see that all this food is popular, it was the chicken bog that brought in the crowd! I learned that from a lady under a tent in a red apron wearing black tennis shoes who stood there stoking her chicken bog made from a century’s old recipe, served all the way, with sausage, skin and bone!
“Why even some rich folks eat bog,” she said. “Once the smell of this bog hits the air, people start comin’ over. “It was hard to fathom the depth and soul of this woman as she stood there that day, let alone the legends and lore of the times she grew up in.
Looking back, I think the whole experience was more about the memories of how things used to be and the spirit of times gone by. These old recipes originated in the days of milk and bread suppers, rice and cotton plantations – a time when men worked all day in the fields and women stayed home wearing aprons, cooking and canning food for the winter months ahead.
Their forefathers were people of their environment with deep spirituality and happiness and of love of God and all his creation. They are rooted and grounded in their environment and their food is a reflection of those values.
Having to make do with what they could reap from the land, they became resourceful. Most were farmers and workers who ate rabbits, squirrels, raccoons, just whatever they could shoot or grow. Pride is a lot of what I saw there – an honest pride in their rich heritage passed down from generation to generation along with the recipes that sustained them.
Pat Branning, the former women’s editor for WSB, Atlanta, is food editor for The Beaufort Tribune. She and her husband, Cloide, work together to help the underserved and uninsured in health care through a nonprofit organization called Wellness4America. Her new book of Lowcountry recipes, “Shrimp, Collards and Grits, recipes from the creeks and gardens of the South Carolina Lowcountry”, is available at bookstores in Beaufort and on Hilton Head. The website is www.mycarolinacooking.com.
Click here for more information about Pat Branning’s new cookbook.
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- Pat Branning’s Carolina Cooking: Hunting Island Flank Steak
- Pat Branning’s Carolina cooking: Soup’s On!
- Gullah Festival in full swing
- Pat Branning’s Carolina cooking: Shrimp for supper
- Entrance fees to Gullah Festival remain same as last year
