Intro to Jubilee, a cookbook by Toni Tipton-Martin
Did you know The Jeffersons just celebrated its 50th anniversary? The original episode premiered on CBS on January 18, 1975, and ran for 11 seasons between 1975 and 1985.
Unrelated, I’ve been rewatching Buffy lately, a show from the late 90s, early 2000s, so that’s 25-30 years ago. There is almost no outfit worn in that show that would look out of place on someone today, but when someone shows up dressed like it’s the mid 1970s, 25 years before that, they’re OBVIOUSLY A VAMPIRE. Why did fashion stop changing? Like if a character on Buffy were to wear a suit like Sherman Hemsley’s in The Jeffersons, they must be the undead for no living breathing person would wear something so out of date.
Also rewatching Twin Peaks. I would wear every single outfit in that show (minus the shoulder pads) right now, today—and can we please have real wool sweaters back please? If I buy my own sheep, can I have real wool sweaters again? Or can I sponsor one at least?—Look at Cooper’s suits (25 years ago) and look at George Jefferson’s suits (25 years before that). How can Cooper not have a cell phone, but his suit looks exactly the same as it would now. But if George Jefferson showed up in Twin Peaks he’d be taken for a vampire. I mean Sunnydale. Actually, maybe both. I haven’t finished Twin Peaks yet. Maybe they have vampires.
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. And for that reason only.
Also please stop donating the vintage wool sweaters you ran through the drier to charity. They’re garbage now. Felted XL women’s sweaters that can only be worn by a Build-a-Bear are fun for no one.
Anyway. The Jeffersons.
I spent a few hours trying to find a good picture online of the kitchen from George and Weezy’s Deluxe Apartment in the Sky to start talking about Jubilee, and a curious thing happened. About 50/50 the photos were from the TV show or were photos of the preserved-in-time kitchen in Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello museum. And I thought about using those instead. But one of the interesting things about Jubilee is Tipton-Martin’s focus on celebrating the meals and cooking of the black middle-class and of black celebrations. It is after all Jefferson’s cooks, she reminds us, that brought French cuisine to the American South. And Jubilee is about celebrating the contributions of Black Excellence rather than simply contributions derived from of poverty, despair, and making-do.
Tipton-Martin describes in her youth her family moving to a part of LA that became known as “Black Beverly Hills” because of its affluent families in entertainment and white-collar professionals. It was a place where Berry Gordy’s limo was known to roll through, and the children of Ike and Tina Turner would ride around on the family Great Dane. Moving there, she says, was like “movin’ on up.” She writes”
“For more than two hundred years, black cookbook authors have tried to tell a multifaceted story of African American food that includes, but also looks beyond, what people call “soul food” today…. Previously when thinking about African American, Southern, and soul food, my angle of vision had always been through race; but discovering their lost legacy opened the view to an unexpected characteristic: class. This book broadens the African American food story. It celebrates the enslaved and the free, the working class, the middle class, and the elite. It honors cooking with intentionality and skill, for a purpose and with pleasure.… At its core, African American cuisine reflects the blending of two distinct culinary styles. One was crafted by ingenious and industrious field hands in the slave cabin, from meager ingredients, informed by African techniques. The other signifies the lavish cooking—in the plantation kitchen or in kitchens staffed or owned by people educated formally or informally in culinary arts” (12).
So The Jeffersons of the Eastside rather than Jefferson’s kitchen of Monticello. Or at least both.
Here’s Jennifer Hudson singing the theme song for ABC’s Live in Front of a Studio Audience performance of an episode from The Jeffersons in 2019. Good walk through of the live set, including the kitchen recreated from the original show.
So come join me this month as we cook from Jubilee, and celebrate black excellence, and learn with me, and hope with me that things get better.
Citation:
Tipton-Martin, Toni. Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking. Clarkson-Potter, 2019.