Commentary: On the joys of eating outside

This column appears every other week in Foster’s Daily Democrat and the Tuskegee News. This week Guy Trammell, an African American man from Tuskegee, Ala., and Amy Miller, a white woman from South Berwick, Maine, write about the joys of eating outside .

By Guy Trammell Jr.

When we sat in the yard on cool evenings in Indonesia, a man would appear with a pole over his shoulder. On one end hung a metal container of live coals. On the other end was a small cabinet with drawers and compartments.

For a small fee, he prepared a delicious, smoky meat-and-rice meal as my mother brought out plates. A great way to end the day.

I grew up knowing only Black barbecue masters, and in Alabama barbecue meant pork. My mother supported Greenfork’s Perry Barbecue, but our region’s best was Larkins, a Village of Greenwood staple on Haggins Street across from Murts Superette. Its steady stream of customers bought the chicken barbecue, various side dishes, and its famous rib plate, the tender meat so good you wanted to chew the bone.

As a college student, my budget limited me to the 75-cent chopped barbecue sandwich on a bun. However, each bite was an incredible, flavorful experience.

Historically, barbecue - or barbacoa - was traced to Caribbean Arawak people and later spread to North and South America. Jacques Le Moyne, a 16th century French explorer, painted the barbacoa as a raised wooden framework over a fire, with various wildlife being cooked.

The Chickasaws taught the Spanish to use barbacoa to cook their swine. This reached South Carolina, where an earthen pit was used, and spread across Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

But how did it change from a frame to a pit? During the 1600s, kidnapped African forced laborers arrived, most of them from West Africa where the Hausa lived, from Senegal to Cameroon, Niger and beyond.

They brought “babake,” meaning to grill, roast, toast, and cook meat in a pit, using wood for long cooking. Indigenous people were also used as forced laborers, and through cultural exchange, collaboration produced slow-pit-cooked savory meats for special occasions.

In my college outdoor cooking class, we grilled round steak in rock salt for a tender, succulent feast. However, my favorite technique was roasting unhusked corn cobs alongside a pound of butter in a large can of water, then pulling the husk back and dunking the cob in the water, coating it with butter. It was great! We all repeated that procedure, just to make sure we had learned the lesson!

For the Millennium, in Seattle, a family friend smoked a pan of salmon covered in mayo sprinkled with dill. It was absolutely amazing.

In 1881, Alabama chef Abby Fisher published “Old Southern Cooking,” the first African American Southern cookbook. It included this recipe for Game Sauce: a peck of de-stoned plums stewed with onions, vinegar, sugar, cayenne and black pepper, cinnamon and salt. (Sounds a lot like barbecue sauce to me!)

By Amy Miller

Let’s talk about some positive change. Let’s for a moment forget the news, the wars, and the climate and rejoice in some simple pleasures. Dining outside, whether you are served or cooking for yourself.

In the last four years, I have invested in sun umbrellas, microwaveable seating pads, thermoses and electric blankets to ease the way for socializing outdoors. I have built fire pits, bought fire pits and worn snowmobile outfits to sit in my own backyard.

I am not alone. Across the country the statistics and stories confirm the explosion of outdoor dining and socializing, whether at home or in restaurants.

Makeshift restaurant patios have emerged along city streets nationwide, while in more rural residential areas, backyards have been transformed so people can gather all times of the year.

“The pandemic of 2020 changed the way many consumers think about indoor social gatherings, and it forced operators outdoors to make up for lost seating capacity indoors,” wrote Kitchen Spot, a food service wholesaler.

About 70% of restaurants offered outdoor seating during the pandemic, according to a heating manufacturer, which also found that about the same percentage of adults liked the option of sitting outside.

Regulations that changed during Covid to allow outdoor seating in many cases have become permanent.

While it is true that restaurants have encroached on parking spaces, pedestrian paths and sometimes even neighborhood tranquility, overall it’s a clear win. One UCLA study found new business income far outweighed lost meter revenue.

A study reported by the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found “increased use of porch or backyard nature during Covid" was associated with better outcomes for breast cancer patients.

The social benefits, the feeling of being outdoors, cannot be so easily measured. But perhaps it is why so many of us love to grill. We can cook as well as eat outside.

Decades ago, I got to dive for conch, bringing up a large shell that more skilled friends cracked open to retrieve the meat. Within an hour we were sitting on a beach eating conch ceviche - thinly sliced raw conch seasoned with lemon juice, salt and pepper.

This week, I went on my first deep sea fishing excursion. We caught haddock and cusk, brought the fish home, cooked it up with spices and bread crumbs, then sat behind my house to dine. These are highlights in my dining experiences.

Years ago in Sweden, I sat at a cafe on a chilly fall day and was happy to be outside with blankets provided by the establishment. What a great idea, I thought, having never seen such a service in the United States. Then just last month, while I was enjoying an Old Fashioned cocktail at an oceanside eatery in Maine, I was about to run to my car to get a jacket when the waitress offered me a blanket.

This is progress. It’s a small thing, I know. But let’s celebrate where we can.

Amy and Guy can be reached at [email protected]

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Commentary: On the joys of eating outside