Chef and activist Teneile Warren talks history and food on tour of Kitchener Market with Andrew Coppolino

With June 19 being Juneteenth, I was curious to know more about the historical and cultural contexts of the food we eat.

That was the inspiration to ask local chef and activist Teneile Warren for their perspective during a tour of the Kitchener Market last Saturday.

Before we headed down the aisles of farmers and vendors, I asked Warren if Juneteenth, a federal U.S holiday that recognizes the Emancipation of enslaved African-Americans first celebrated in 1865 in the aftermath and slaughter of the U.S. Civil War, had relevance in Waterloo region.

For Warren, there is a connection to Canadians of African descent.

"We did have the Underground Railroad and Black Loyalists. We did have communities that moved here from the United States," Warren says.

"We do have Black American ancestry in Black Canadian history, so I do think there are Black identities here that recognize Juneteenth."

Warren adds the holiday celebrates Black American freedom but that it's "a reminder" of the oppression too.

"We need to look at Juneteenth in the context of both joy and trauma," they said.

Common ingredients can differ

As we looked for the tropical vegetable called eddoes, Warren identified some of the related and complex histories and contexts of the food we buy (and likely take for granted) each week at markets or grocery stores; and cultures, for instance, which cannot be reduced to their food.

"[Regionality] is very much present in the way that different Diasporic communities may have and share the same ingredients, and there may be some ingredients that are popular in one place and aren't in another," Warren said.

While we didn't see eddoes as I had seen in a local supermarket, Warren points out that Jamaicans may use cocoyams, a similar tuber — "They can be confused at the market."

We did find some sweet potatoes — a common ingredient in the North American diet and a darling of pub grub menus for fries — and Warren pointed out that the Jamaican version, available at Caribbean specialty stores and at some grocery stores, is different.

"The orange sweet potato is very North American. It has a more yellow flesh and is still sweet but with a bit of a different texture," Warren says. "We would roast it on open coals and eat it just like that."

The humble tomato, a so-called "Old World" crop, we take for granted as ubiquitous in North America. But the member of nightshade family has a richer significance, Warren said.

"There's no Jamaican dish that doesn't begin with tomato and onion. And with west African food as well, it's the base of a Jollof (rice)," they said.

"But it's also a base where there has been European influence," Warren said. "When you look at older recipes, you find that there was a tree tomato which was sweet. They are still very much used in Afro-Latin cuisine."

As tomatoes thrived in the Caribbean, Warren says, it became a base of the cuisine.

"But it's also a base of European cuisine. There was a lot of learning 'to cook for the Europeans,' to cook for the colonizers, that took place. That influence is there, but you see it less in Black southern American cuisine. There are ways that we connect and ways that we drift," Warren said.

Hierarchy of beef cuts

Eventually, our short tour came to beef, part of a North American diet of protein for which thousands of customers visit their favourite farmers and vendors at the market each week. Warren's cultural reading of meat preparation and consumption describes one that it is tiered.

"European culture is built around stews because of winter and cold. But when you look into early history, there was no separation of cuts," says Warren.

"This butchering that is a craft is very much a European thing, so you find that the colonizers — the plantation owners, the British, the Spanish and so on — in the Caribbean would be confused."

European influence, according to Warren, then dictated that specific cuts of beef be used for specific purposes, and this shifted the culture toward what the master or the plantation owner wanted to eat.

"That's how you started to get this hierarchy of beef cuts in the Caribbean that always existed in Europe," Warren said. "I don't think I spoke about sirloin and ribeye until I came to Canada."

The "hierarchy" of beef cuts was something I thought was universal, but what certainly is universal is humans' need to reduce food waste: nearly one-third of food produced each year is wasted before it can be consumed.

Rethink how items are used

For Warren, there are lessons in the Caribbean kitchen we'd do well to observe as we wander the bounty of the market aisles. It's a moment to reflect on the diversity of our food but also its at times hidden cultural complexity that dates to the 1860s and before.

"One of things we need to think about as we see new cultures is how does it relate to our own goals of challenging food waste and food shortages?" Warren said, adding that perhaps it's not about "more farms" but encouraging people to eat the squash leaves, eat the pumpkin leaves.

"Maybe it's about, how do we learn to blend better and pull away from the idea that we can't eat more of the plant and the animal. There's an elitism about 'this part is good and that part is bad.' That's something we can learn and think about as we try to bring more cultures into our mainstream diet."