This weekend offers an embarrassment of riches for local food study….

• First up is the Louisiana Folklore Society’s annual meeting, held this year at Whitney Plantation in Wallace, LA on April 16th and 17th.  The meeting’s theme is The Mississippi River Road Corridor: Cuisines, Cultures and Communities from the Black Atlantic to the Plantation Belt.   Friday evening’s keynote address will be delivered by cultural historian Dr. Jessica Harris, Endowed Professor and Professor of English at Queens College in New York.  Her talk, Three is a Magic Number: Culinary Cultures in the Making of a Southern Louisiana Cuisine, will present the three matrix culinary cultures of southern Louisiana: Indian, African, and European using images and texts of the period. She will also place the Louisiana experience in hemispheric context and make comparisons with other creolized New World culinary cultures.  Many of Saturday’s paper presentations will highlight food-related Louisiana topics.  See the entire program here.
• The Southern Food & Beverage Museum is the host site for the “Cornbread Nation 5″ release symposium on Saturday, April 17th from 1 to 5 pm, followed by a reception from 5 to 7 pm.  Sponsored by the Oxford American, the event celebrates the release of the Southern Foodways Alliance’s 5th compendium of Southern food writing.  Food writers John T Edge, Sara Roahen, and Lolis Eric Elie will participate in a debate addressing “The Problem with Creole Cuisine and Why New Orleans Cuisine is Not Necessarily Southern,” among other speakers and topics.