Defiance Cuisine and the American Flag
How to eat on our nation's 250th anniversary. And where.
Cassidy Steele Dale forecasts and contextualizes the present to equip us to make a better, kinder future…
… and one of those ways to give you recipes for pulled pork and American virtue.
So a while ago I read The Clockwork Century series by Cherie Priest (a steampunk series about an alternate 1880s in which the Civil War still raged and technology lurched forward because of horrible war need and a zombie apocalypse is slowly spreading across the land) and in the climax of one of the books — I can’t remember which, it’s a great series — the cavalry, a ragtag fleet of sky pirates in dirigibles, showed up to save the good guys. The pirate ships were crewed by freed and escaped slaves, by the Comanche, and more. The good guys couldn’t tell who all the sky pirates were — Was their escape cut off and they about to be blasted from the air by a hundred cannons and they'd plummet to their deaths? — until they noticed that none of the ships flew Confederate flags; they flew their own. And Cherie Priest’s next line about that pirate fleet has stuck with me ever since:
They flew the flags of the defiant.
It seems like The Fourth of July has always been about the flag and about food. So let’s talk about both.
So. About the flag, and about patriotism: I can’t believe we’re in this situation on our 250th anniversary. The Founding Fathers would be ashamed of us for all of this — this is a patriotic, civic, and spiritual failure — and the Founding Mothers would be Revolutionarily rendering some Lexington-and-Concord on our butts if they were here right now.
But I don’t think this is the final chapter of the American Experiment; I think it’s a middle chapter — another one — when it wasn’t clear whether American democracy would live or die but after a moment in the deep dark we refused to let it go. I’m sure you’ll read a lot of doom about American democracy this week but I don’t think it’s done. I just don’t. There’s too much hope and resistance happening these days for the dark to have the last word.
It does feel to me, though, like we’ve left one American epoch but can’t see what the next one is yet. And yes, the probable passage of The One Big Beautiful Bill — maybe by the time you’re reading this — will be a major determinant of what comes next. I’ll talk more about the possible big shifts soon — two or more will be part of the scenarios I’m working on for you.
In the meantime I’ll talk about something very small but very patriotic that you can do this weekend.
I’m talking about food. Eat barbecue this weekend. Not because it’s ‘MURICAN but because it’s American.
Here’s what I mean:
Barbecue is a method rather than a food. It’s a verb, not a noun. It’s just cooking meat slowly over low heat over a long time over a pit in the ground or in a metal tank of some sort that holds in heat and moisture. This method was brought to the New World by the enslaved and by the people of the islands of the Caribbean and by the people of the Pacific Islands, from the Ring of Fire. It didn’t come from Europe. It didn’t come from white people. Only a few of the sauces came from white people and they were following along long after the fact.
If you need the histories, here are some short forms and some people and books to learn from:
And:
And if you watch both of those all the way through you’ll be smarter on barbecue than most people. It’ll be one of the better ways you spent a cumulative half hour.
Oh, if you need a really good vinegar-and-red-pepper-based North Carolina barbecue sauce, try Lillie's Q. If you need a good Kansas City tomato-and-brown-sugar-based sauce, try Cattlemen’s Kansas City Classic BBQ Sauce. If you need something that’s some kind of brilliant mystery-in-between, try Blues Hog’s Tennessee Red. (Any sauces by those three companies are great, actually.) But if you want no sauce at all and want only dry rubs, then Dizzy Pig BBQ’s Red Eye Express and/or Crossroads are great places to start.
And if you’re making pulled pork and need a great run-on sentence: get a pork shoulder, trim off whatever fat is maybe half the size of your thumb, leave the fat cap on, lightly coat the whole thing in a neutral oil or mustard, sprinkle dry rub over every inch of it, then double that amount of dry rub (no, more than what you just put on, trust me, you want a good “bark” of rub when it’s finally done), grill or cook that thing fat cap up low and slow at 300 (give or take 25 degrees) on indirect heat (not directly over the fire, this ain’t a hamburger) for the “turbo butt” method until it reaches 200 degrees internal — it’s gonna be a good six hours, think an hour a pound — but keep an eye on it because that’s your main job today, then take it off the heat and let it rest for an hour wrapped in foil or maybe paper in an empty cooler or the microwave and then shred/pull it with regular table forks. Then sauce it or don’t. Slaw it or don’t. Bun it or don’t. And if you’re making anything else, don’t ask me because I don’t know how.
My point is this: one of the cuisines I love most is not my own. It is not of my ancestral origin. It was brought here by legitimate and illegitimate means but via both ways it became part of the American identity and the American palate. Just like everyone else’s cuisine did. ‘Murican cuisine is the white man’s; American cuisine, though, is one where the world’s methods and flavors are options on the menu and all are accepted and appreciated. And if you don’t believe me then tell me next time you’re eating good ol’ American spaghetti or a hot dog. Almost all American food is immigrant food.
Want to be a patriot this weekend for America’s 250th anniversary — even though it may not feel like you’re doing anything important or grand for democracy? Then do this:
Eat a cuisine that’s not your own. Then recognize that it’s not yours but that you love it anyway and that you’re a better person (and a better-fed person) because of someone who is very different from you. And that America is about different people living together and trying to create a more perfect union. We may not have all come here by choice but now we live here together by choice.
Bigots may rule today but they won’t rule tomorrow.
And sometimes how you dine is how you defy.
And eat somebody else’s cuisine within sight of an American flag — even if that flag is only on your phone. I don’t care how you feel about the flag right now nor about flag-wavers, and I don’t care who you think culturally owns the flag right now. That flag flew over those who fought a global tyrant during the American Revolution and that flag flew over those who fought slavers during the Civil War and that flag flew over those who fought tyrannical-fascist-racists during World War II and that flag flies over you now today. It belongs to you, not kings or Confederates or Nazis or any current combination of the three.
That flag has always been the flag of the defiant, of those who defy the dark.
You are the defiant.
So go fuel up on your fellow Americans’ cuisine, then get up and go bend the world toward justice and kindness and liberty and e pluribus unum.
Like real Americans do.
And crap, I can’t do math this week. Let’s all just pretend I wrote my 250th anniversary message a year early because, you know, I am a futurist. (I’ve actually been dealing with a slow rolling emergency behind the scenes these past few weeks that I’ll tell you about someday — we’re all fine — but clearly I hit my cognitive limits a couple of days ago.) Remember, kids: If you want to embarrass yourself in public, post on the Internet!
And I just found toothpaste on my belt loop. I don’t know how to GET toothpaste on a belt loop but hey, I’m a pioneer. OK, now I’m gonna go to work.