This week Clay and I participated in something a bit different. We had a takeout drive through dinner for the History is Served event from Historic Arkansas Museum. The 2020 History is Served series explores the culture, communities and cuisine of the Arkansas Delta. The second in the series, the theme this month was The Italians of Sunnyside –how Italians migrated to Arkansas and settled at the Sunnyside Plantation in Lake Village.
We were to pick up our dinner between 4:30 – 6, and then at 7 participate in a zoom webinar where we would learn more about the Italian roots.
I arrived at the Anthony School a little after 5 and things were not moving quickly. I think they were a bit overwhelmed by the huge response for this event. Cars were lined up both in front of me
and by the time I left, way behind me.
We had an interesting 5-course meal,
complete with a can of wine!
I have never had wine in a can before. (Still haven’t, since I was drinking white that night). I will drink it soon. The brochures that accompanied the meal shared some recipes. With our meatball and rice we had tomato gravy.
We had just discussed this concept at a recent book club, where one member who grew up in the delta, was talking about it. The rest of us had never heard of it. It is basically like making a white gravy with a roux, but you add tomato sauce instead of milk. In my opinion, it needed some more seasoning, so I think I will stick with spaghetti sauce from now on.
In a normal year, the History is Served event, is a seated dinner. I think there are a lot of restaurants and chefs, having to reconsider food service from cooked and eaten on site, to cooked, packaged, reheated and eaten at home.
Next month is Chinese communities with chef C.C. Key, formerly of Southern Gourmasian will be the chef. I think I will try it too. To learn more about this event go o to the website.