OXFORD, Miss. – The Southern Foodways Alliance, an institute of the University of Mississippi, plans to host the first of four dinners celebrating release of the book “Cornbread Nation 4: The Best of Southern Food Writing” April 4 at City Grocery restaurant in Oxford.
The Shells, Swine and Sweets dinner is open to the public and features a three-course meal, inspired by the book and prepared by chef John Currence, SFA member and City Grocery owner. The cost is $35 per person. Reservations will be taken as long as space in the restaurant permits and can be made by calling 662-232-8080, said Mary Beth Lasseter, SFA associate director.
Shells, Swine and Sweets will include “some of the best oysters you can eat” from Apalachicola, Fla., said Amy Evans, SFA oral historian.
“The dinner is a great opportunity to have them (the oysters) in Oxford and also a good way to support the community and Southern Foodways Alliance,” Evans said.
Evans plans to “float” around to people who have ordered from the Shells, Swine and Sweets menu, giving a series of small interjections through the meal about a documentary project she conducted in Apalachicola where the seafood industry, particularly oyster harvesting, is a main source of income. Sixteen photos that Evans took during that project are featured in “Cornbread Nation 4” and will be reproduced on tables for the event.
“Given that the kind of overarching theme of this edition of ‘Cornbread Nation’ is the Gulf South, many of my photos were included,” she said.
The book, edited by Dale Volberg Reed and John Shelton Reed, is scheduled for release April 1 by University of Georgia Press. It includes original and previously published work such as essays, poems and collections of photographs and is “about anything and everything,” Lasseter said. It follows “Cornbread Nation 1: The Best in Southern Food Writing,” “Cornbread Nation 2: The United States of Barbecue” and “Cornbread Nation 3: Foods of the Mountain South.”
The dinner coincides with the 15th Annual Oxford Conference for the Book, hosted by the university April 3-5. For information about the conference, call 662-915-5993.
“We wanted to celebrate our book at home in the context of the book conference,” Lasseter said.
Other book release celebration dinners are planned in Washington D.C., Charleston, S.C. and New Orleans.
“I think that the SFA (and) what they do is uniquely important,” Currence said. “The draw that they have nationally and internationally is absolutely staggering, so for the folks locally to have the opportunity to attend and see firsthand an SFA event, I think is fantastic.”
City Grocery will be open for regular business the night of the dinner and any customer can order from the special menu, Lasseter said. “Cornbread Nation 4” will be available for purchase.
For more information, visit
http://www.southernfoodways.com.
For assistance related to a disability, call 662-915-5993.