Back to School Foodways Series: Part 6 Virginia Union

Orange, Pineapple, Banana Smoothie, recipe below

Reflecting on the favorite eateries students attended long ago. I conducted some thirty interviews with African Americans most of them born before 1945 for my book Hog and Hominy http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14638-8/hog-and-hominy. These are oral histories of southerners talking about food and eateries they frequented during Jim Crow. Some never left the South, and others were southerners or the children of southerners who migrated North. Some shared memories of great cheap eats during their college years. Here’s story from Virginia native Yemaja Jubilee. Located just a couple blocks from Virginia Union, an HBCU in Richmond, Virginia, were two popular eateries for African Americans called the Greasy Spoon and Johnnie B’s. Johnnie B’s made the best baloney burgers, served with “fried onions, lettuce and tomato, and if you want to, throw a little piece of cheese on there too, that’s good right,” recalls Jubilee, who attended Virginia Union in the 1960s. “And the buns were big! They weren’t like the buns now! I get excited talking about it,” says Jubilee. They also sold milk shakes, “all different kinds of milk shakes.” It was the kind of place where there were often lines going out the door to order food “and it was black owned.” Here’s shake/smoothie recipe I made from my 5 and 7 year children as part of there before school breakfast

Orange, Pineapple, Banana Smoothie recipe:

Ingredients

About 3 cups of orange juice or more

2 cups frozen pineapple bits

1 frozen banana

½ cup vanilla soy or regular yogurt

1/3 cup of honey if desired

Scoop of vitamin enriched protein powder

Method

Combine ingredients in a blender and crush on high, had additional orange juice if needed but best when served thick rich. Makes 5 servings