dsmWeekly - June 12, 2024

Red velvet cake and other red foods, like barbecue and watermelon, are a traditional part of Juneteenth.

FOOD & DINING

How red velvet cake became a staple for Juneteenth

By Mathany Ahmed

From the first slice, as bright white frosting gives way to a blood-red crumb, red velvet cake is full of surprises. The rich cream cheese frosting, not-quite-chocolate flavor and especially moist sponge have made the dessert a popular staple in American cooking for at least a century.

To add to its surprises, it also has long and proud connection to Juneteenth, the holiday that commemorates June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers marched into Texas and told the 250,000 people who were enslaved there that they were finally free, more than two years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

But the cake’s symbolism goes back even further. “In West African cultures, red symbolizes spiritual power, transformation and strength,” Iowa Juneteenth Director Dwana Bradley said. “It also represents the blood of enslaved people who never gained their freedom.”

Just as home cooks debate the finer points of the cake’s recipe variations, historians disagree about the origins of the cake’s vibrant hue. Today, most red velvet cakes are dyed with food coloring, which wasn’t popularized in the United States until the 1930s. The color may also result from a chemical reaction between baking powder, buttermilk and the acids in cocoa powder. Others attribute it to the sugar beets that cooks used as an alternative sweetener during the Great Depression.

At modern Juneteenth celebrations, guests often enjoy red velvet cake alongside other red staples, like barbecue and strawberry soda. Watermelon, which was probably part of the first Juneteenth celebrations, is also a must.

“The practice of eating red foods — red cake, barbecue, punch and fruit — may owe its existence to the enslaved Yoruba and Kongo brought to Texas in the 19th century,” Michael Twitty, a culinary historian, wrote in 2011 on the website Afroculinaria. “For both of these cultures, the color red is the embodiment of spiritual power and transformation.”

Here in Des Moines, guests can sample all of these Juneteenth foods and more at Thursday’s Community Builders’ Appreciation Banquet, one of the many events Bradley and Iowa Juneteenth are hosting this month. The event will feature a buffet, silent auction and guest speakers, including Ian Roberts, superintendent of Des Moines Public Schools.

“The history of food within our culture is pretty amazing,” Bradley said. “I love to be able to share this small piece of it.”

A young dancer from Des Moines Breakerz gets down at last year's Neighbors' Day celebration. (Photo: Iowa Juneteenth)

BEST BET

Where to celebrate Juneteenth this month
Calling all neighbors: You’re invited to the Neighbors’ Day celebration Iowa Juneteenth is hosting this Saturday in Western Gateway Park. This year’s theme is “Remembering Our History, Releasing the Past and Reshaping Our Future,” and the festivities will involve more than 80 vendors, food trucks and performers who plan to celebrate the history of the holiday and the community.

“It’s going to be a great day of family fun,” Iowa Juneteenth Director Dwana Bradley said. “We’ll have a book walk for the kids, bounce houses and pop-up games, miniature golf, and indoor and outdoor events.”

Bradley’s team also plans to reveal this year’s new Juneteenth wrap design for a DART bus, which will honor two individuals for their contributions to the community. (We asked for details, but their identities are also under wraps until this weekend’s big reveal.)

Later this month, Iowa Juneteenth will partner with the NAACP for a screening of “The Right to Read,” a documentary by LeVar Burton, on June 19 at Fleur Cinema. Later, you can join the charity golf outing on June 28 at Bright Grandview Golf Course.

Learn more about all the events and get tickets at iowajuneteenth.org.

The Week Ahead

AViD: Jasmine Guillory (7 p.m. Thursday): Vogue crowned this author the “undisputed queen of modern-day romance.” The author of the best-seller “Wedding Date,” who will speak at the Central Library, is the final guest in the Des Moines Public Library’s annual Authors Visiting in Des Moines series, which this year hosted the likes of James Patterson and Joyce Carol Oates.

Samara Joy (7:30 p.m. Thursday): The young jazz singer with three shiny new Grammy Awards, including the 2023 trophy for Best New Artist, performs at Hoyt Sherman Place.

“Camelot,” (7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday): Tallgrass Theatre Co. revives Lerner and Lowe’s catchy, clever 1960 musical about King Arthur, Guenevere and the Knights of the Round Table at the Jamie Hurd Amphitheater in West Des Moines. Bring lawn chairs or blankets, and consider pitching in a freewill donation, on site or online.

Bacoon Ride (7 a.m. Saturday): The annual bacon-fueled bike ride on the Raccoon River Valley Trail is sort of like RAGBRAI, but with more bacon and fewer miles. What’s not to love?

Des Moines People’s Pride (Noon-5 p.m. Saturday): Support queer-owned businesses and performers at the second annual community-centered Pride celebration hosted by Des Moines BLM at Water Works Park. If you can’t make it, consider donating queer-themed and multicultural books at local bookstores for the free book exchange. Here’s a list of participating book stores.

Des Moines Gay Men’s Chorus (7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday): The choir that recently brought us a night of Kelly Clarkson hits breaks out brand-new works by composers Ben Wexler and Matthew Armstrong for a Pride concert in the grand ballroom at the Temple for Performing Arts.

At Living History Farms, an "Antiques Roadshow" appraiser interviewed a guest about an 1860s quilt top she bought for less than $20 at a sale 20 years ago in Albia. It's now worth $400-$600. (Photo: Michael Morain)

COMMUNITY

‘Antiques Roadshow’ finds lively history at Living History Farms

By Michael Morain

If the feds ever decide to privatize the Transportation Security Administration’s airport operations, may I suggest handing it over to the crew from “Antiques Roadshow.” Same big lines. Same inspections of personal belongings. But way more fun.

An estimated crowd of 5,000 eagerly lined up Monday at Living History Farms to have complete strangers inspect their stuff, judge its worth and, possibly, ask them to show it off for the popular show’s 29th season. Three hourlong “Antiques Roadshow” episodes from Urbandale will air sometime between January and May 2025 on Iowa PBS.

Folks carried boxes and bags stuffed with rare and not-so-rare stuff. They pulled little wagons. They pushed carts. There were “gadgets and gizmos a-plenty,” to quote Disney’s Little Mermaid, plus a few Whovillian floofloovers, tartookas and gardookas, to quote the Grinch.

By now you’ve probably heard about the Jackie Robinson baseball bat that belongs to a woman from Grimes, or the early Grant Wood landscape from Axios reporter Jason Clayworth. Maybe you even heard about one woman’s collection of 20 years’ of personal correspondence with E.B. White, the author of “Charlotte’s Web.”

I took a funky orange teapot in the shape of a toad, one of the stranger gifts my parents received at their 1969 wedding. Turns out it was made in Japan in the 1880s or ’90s and is now worth $150-$250.

“We’re learning history through material culture,” “AR” executive producer Marsha Bemko said during one of her rare breaks from racking up 18,000 steps — or about 9 miles — over the course of the day. “It’s fun learning. You don’t notice that you’re learning, which is why it’s fun.”

Of course, sifting through all that material culture takes a lot of work. And after almost 30 seasons, including previous visits to Iowa in 1999 and 2010, “AR” runs a well-oiled machine. The staff of 25 travels with a setup crew of 50, plus locals they hire in each city. Here they enlisted more than 110 volunteers from Iowa PBS, which brought host Charity Nebbe and a separate production crew to shoot behind-the-scenes segments that will air with the “AR” episodes. The 70-some experts appraise approximately 500 items every hour.

Urbandale was the fourth of five stops in this season’s tour, with earlier visits to Las Vegas; Bentonville, Arkansas; and Littleton, Colorado; and one more planned for Baltimore.

“The crew is just amazing,” Living History Farms marketing and communications director Elizabeth Keest Sedrel said. “I can’t say enough good things about 'Antiques Roadshow.'”

Together, they built a pop-up colony of tables and tents for various stations, starting with “triage,” where guests were directed to specific stations for furniture, jewelry, paintings, toys and so on. (My weirdo teapot and I went to the diplomatically titled catch-all, “decorative arts.”) There, guests either received an appraisal and went their merry way or, if they were lucky, moved over to the “green room” tent for a bit of hair-and-makeup zhuzhing before a recorded interview. The appraisers saved their assessments for the cameras, to preserve the surprise of the guests’ on-air reactions.

At the final station before the exit, guests were invited to record quick feedback interviews about their experience, no matter the monetary value of their odds and ends.

And really, wouldn’t that be a welcome addition to the TSA screenings at the airport? Why not give folks a chance to tell their tale?

“I love a good story,” executive producer Bemko said. “For me, the story is king.”