Chinese Southern Belle (CSB) is a mother-daughter multi-faceted business that uses food to connect people and culture– to build healthy, sustainable communities, support diversity, and strong local economies. I’m Natalie. As the third daughter (considered unlucky in a Chinese family), I was very lucky to be born closer to Canton, GA rather than Canton, China. My parents immigrated early to Atlanta on graduate school scholarships, before we hosted the Olympics and before the Braves started winning as America’s Team (!)  As the only Asian family in the neighborhood in which we grew up, my sisters and I learned quickly about “being different.” We attended football pep rallies and played PacMan, but were fined a dime for every English word spoken at home. Dad listened to Johnny Cash tunes and preferred hamburgers to Chinese food when eating out. Mom whipped up amazing stir-fries and country Asian creations like Hot Hunan Catfish, Pepper Steak Rice-a-Roni, and Five-Spice Rutabaga in a blazing hot, cast iron skillet. Between the worlds of egg rolls and fried chicken, we felt right at home. The family stories and recipes of how one Asian American family thrived and adapted to the ways of the Deep South are shared in the spirit of food as a cultural gateway and a political olive branch. Fun, memorable eating and cooking experiences break down barriers and stereotypes around the unfamiliar, and instead, reminds us of values we all hold dear – good food, good health, and community. From urban food deserts to state dinners, I believe with all my heart (and tummy) that the experience of breaking bread, challah, injeera, or bahn mi—together– is the starting point, and best hope for achieving healthy, livable and sustainable communities, and yes, world peace. https://chinesesouthernbelle.com/about/

For 11 years, Farah’s days would start and end the same: she woke up early to help her mother with household chores. She took care of the family’s goats. She worked alongside her older sister. The only interactions she had with those outside her family were people who inquired for her mother’s services; as a birth attendant, For most of her childhood, Farah was one of the 22.8 million children in Pakistan left out of school. Most of those children are girls, leading to a void of educated Pakistani women: in some parts of the country, up to 75 percent of women have not completed primary school. Late last year, however, Farah’s uncle visited her parents. The first-ever girls’ school was opening in their village, he told them. Farah listened from another room as her uncle said something unprecedented: he wanted Farah’s parents to add her to the list. “I didn’t know what a school was and I didn’t know what the word education even meant. My mother told me school was a place to learn, write, calculate and become a better human being. She told me that come what may, she would find a way to send me to school.” #education #girlseducation #noeducation #noschooling #Punjab #Pakistan #triumph #family https://www.unicef.org/rosa/stories/cost-education-punjab-pakistan-0

In 1944, Elena “Ica” Kalina, her sister and parents were rounded up from their home in Hungary and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Her parents were sent to the gas chambers immediately. The sisters were sent for forced labor at a munitions factory in a sub-camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. At night in their barracks, Kalina and the other women prisoners would talk about their favorite recipes, and Kalina recorded them with a small pencil and slips of paper from trash baskets that she’d been able to steal. Kalina survived, and so did the 600 recipes. She moved to Czechoslovakia, married, and immigrated with her husband to Minnesota, where she kept the scraps of paper in a tin box in a closet. Now, in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Kalina’s daughter Eva Moreimi has published Hidden Recipes , a book about her mother’s life, including the recipes. (https://evamoreimi.com/)