Stories from across the globe: The Kitchen Sisters at TEDxGoldenGatePark (2D)
passion it's our beat we tell stories from the B side of history radio stories about the hidden parts of life traditions that people carry from one country to another across one generation to the next stories from voices that are seldom heard on the airwaves voices from the margins from the edges were drawn to people who are possessed by a vision by a mission by a plan with a principle and a plan we produce these sprawling nationwide collaborations with National Public Radio and with listeners across the country we like to pull everybody into what we're doing and so we open up phone lines and ask people to call us and tell us what they're thinking when we start a new series we've done things like Lost and Found sound about vanishing voices and people possessed by sound and sounds on the verge of extinction we did the hidden world of girls series about women who and girls who and that coming of age and rituals and rites of passage secret identities and the hidden kitchen series about a secret unexpected below the radar cooking how communities come together through food when we when we do this as i said we open up the phone line and we involve people in in the process and one of the first phone calls that came in and the hidden kitchens series was one that completely surprised us and sort of set the tone for the whole rest of the series we're going to play a bit of that for you today to just give you an idea of what that sort of collaborative process is pulling people and their passions their passions to tell stories their passions to tell secrets and to have their voices heard that's what these series bring out and our audiences message 23 was received at 110 p.m. today I'm Margaret ankle a woman who works for legal aid was talking to me about how many of her clients get dinner the people who struggle to even get food on the table because they don't have an official kitchen and who are using george foreman grills and the like the George Foreman grill has been an amazing success story as a kitchen appliance but what I think many people don't realize is that immigrants and low-income people have contributed to that popularity that is to me the epitome of hidden kitchen wow what a wonderful story I've never considered it at all i am george foreman two-time heavyweight champion of the world former Olympic champion and king of the grills growing up in Houston Texas my whole life was spent trying to get enough to eat having seven kids my mother did and that just was never enough food for me always dreamed about not a car not a beautiful home but enough to eat my name Piggly Wiggly I'll got groceries on my yeah my name is Jeffrey Newton Chicago I'm a great cook I'll treat that I had learned from my grandmother but I just haven't had a kitchen I'm living in a shelter at this particular time but I've been homeless all my life I lived under Wacker Drive where the expressway goes through and it's about 30 or 40 refrigerator boxes down there that's gonna be your home I would get a George Foreman grill that's the grill that I had for a while order wacker drive me and a fella by the name of smokey so you just get your long stint record they got a lot electrical plugs on the poles down there and just hook up we just making hamburgers & grill cheese sandwiches cuz we should take an iron and do that to press down you know your bread in your cheese my name is pat sherman and i'm the program coordinator of the walk-in centre Eric lied San Francisco when I was any single market I couldn't cook in my room but legally I couldn't I get me a big bowl put me some ice in it and while that became a refrigerator microwave toaster ovens hidden under the bed or in the closet did George Foreman grill that's the newest thing that set off the smoke detectors and says they come in colors you know it just looks like you getting real fancy in your room and decorating and it looks like you have a nice tabletop to the physical i but you know it's your kitchen it's a special TV offer from the king of the grill George Foreman my lean mean fat reducing guerrilla we see I grew up in Houston Texas in the fifth Ward area every day at lunch during the summer days you hit a parish call the kids in they would just tell me okay go home and eat your lunch and these people knew I had no food at home and I'd peep through the window at the kids eating and the parents would peel the crust off the bread and I would sit there and just hope they would just throw it out the window for me going to school you go through the lunch line 26 cents I couldn't afford that and I sit at the table and it was so embarrassing so what I would do I'd get a greasy bag blow it up on the way to school to make it look like there was a sandwich in it then I'd get to my classroom and say for I'd my lunch and I learned to disguise my not having food so that's an equity roll longer but he said George goes on to say that you know after years of being hungry and going without and turning into an angry fighting man you know he really his passion became food he when he quit boxing he found that people no longer really came around very much and he was lonely but that if he barbecued and if he could salmon and steaks they started coming around again so he really kind of picked up on that he also opened up all these sports centers for kids in Houston that are really really popular and important and to teach the kids boxing but more importantly to make sure that they have three meals a day I mean his whole motto is feed them we've been recording interviews and oral histories for some 30 years and over that time we've amassed a collection of some 30,000 recordings we call it the accidental archive and that's what we're dipping from today for you studs terkel zaz scrappy gnarly passionate oral historian from Chicago said I tape therefore I am we tape therefore we are and our motto is tape everything that moves you just never know when a story is going to jump out of the bushes and grab you always pack your piece that's another motto that we have from the start we've always carried our gear with us everywhere we go in the beginning it was reel 2 reals and then cassette recorders and then dats and mini discs and now it's flash drives and hard drives and iPhones and you just always got to be ready and so in 1979 when we were at a Tupperware party we were invited to a Tupperware party we brought our cassette player with us and pressed record this was a clan of people so possessed and passionate and passionate they could make a plastic bowl very compelling I'm lucky Laurel on your tupperware dealer she's lucky Laurel and I'm joyful junk that's lucky Laurel be silly some people are just temper where people do you know what I mean I'm an addict a Tupperware addict I'm ordering much more than I need and I can't stop myself it's part of my upbringing part of my heritage don't tell me blooming Lisa and this is a pocket comb or you can massage your scalp or scrub your vegetables or pet your cat please use it for only one of those calling things this might be a fact that you don't know you do not burp square containers only round seals do you Bertha scoff the scrape them off this is probably my seventh or eighth Tupperware party and it every time we're a party you feel like you need to buy one thing for the hostess so here I am by a shape oh I think it takes a lot of courage to have a Tupperware party long as it hasn't you know been abused the temperance I've got Tupperware that I've had for 30 years I guess and most of its good yet my mother always used Tupperware and I remember after every holiday like a Passover Rosh Hashanah all the leftovers simha sand filter fish went into the Tupperware containers tomorrow's my 12th year in Tupperware I used to be a deputy sheriff I had done that for ten years after six months I quit that security job I had and then three months later became manager and I love it what do you like about it the Monday I love the positive input instead of the negativeness I used to have in law enforcement 953 is there a Tupperware union no it's an opportunity company but he's welcome to to join to be a tough word dealer Tupperware treat you so well you wouldn't have anything to do bargain for and what are the fringe benefits of temporary your buying power to buy Tupperware the gifts that you earned the last contest we have ironed American of Martinsville sofa I've earned done Oregon and my god won a trip I forgotten your breasticles I guess you know tougher gives us cars future a lot of news I've won a nine hundred dollar set of North talk with China dime my word ring from Tupperware crystal dinner but my station white you know know how to bring the station like mock just a little feminine things the women love so that's the plastic bowl party some people look at a pie and they see a pie and some people look at a pie and they see a weapon for social change like Georgia Gilmore a woman from Montgomery Alabama in the 1950s who was whose passion for civil rights and social justice equaled her passion for cooking George has started a surreptitious group called the club from nowhere women who would secretly bake pies and cakes and sell them at beauty parlors and she raised money to help support the bus boycott in Montgomery and when this message came in on our hidden kitchens hotline we were on a plane the next day to Montgomery one thing we've learned over 30 years of storytelling together when the story is deep and hot get to the flame hey my name is john c edge and I lived in an Oxford Mississippi indirectly southern foodways alliance there's a woman y'all need to know about thanks Georgia Gilmore she was a club in the 1950s in Montgomery Alabama and when I think of hidden kitchens I think about the story of her backdoor restaurant her secret kitchen that fuel the civil rights hey how you doing you live on the street do you know what miss p.m. are you suspect miss George Guillermo yes miss Gilmore house down now you see that marker now Jamie Stewart a mom oh yeah I see it now you see the back in the yard George Theresa Gilmore I'm her son councilman mark you old you know did you she could cook 19 20 19 9 she was a stone cook her food was cooked on her mama level and George it was like Big Mama southern tight Mama's maybe 10 to 15 of them my mother determining was a midwife by profession you cooked that national lunch coming in Montgomery when the movement started when mrs. Rosa Parks was arrested or a few to give up her seat in 1955 mama got involved in the bus boycott she lost her job because management learned of her being a part of this movement that was going on my name is Johnny Roberta car and i am the field president has a Montgomery Improvement Association Alabama during the bus boycott City Montgomery brought suit against King and 90 other members of the Montgomery Improvement Association march of 1956 they were claiming that the bus boycott was an unlawful conspiracy Georgia Gilmore testified in court she in essence called out this bus driver who had kicked her off of us miss Gilmore stood up in court she got fired you cannot be afraid if you want to accomplish anything you got to have the willing dispute and overall you got to have to get up everybody could tell you George Gilbert didn't take no junk I'm Ravenel Dixon you pushed her too far she said few bad words and if you push made her brother she would um she did you she was screw up on the feet she the moon i'm wade by 354 pounds marlies king told Kenny God what is it about men and meat and midnight and a pit ask David close he'll tell you about watch out once he get started we met him in a parking lot at dawn on the outskirts of Houston alone grilling shrimp links ribs on a grill the size of a semi a grill he tricked out himself that looked more like the Endeavour than a Weber this is a man possessed by smoke this is what we call bling-bling it's a standard mobile hip feeds about probably 600 people 20-foot trailer seven foot wide it's got 24 karat gold mags and handles had a friend of my dip electroplated and gold it has a two by four foot sliding steak grill on the nose that fish frying burner for doing you know deep frying turkeys and peanut oil boiling corn Brian catfish at all it's got gas injection hundred 60,000 BTU for lazy man cooking on top of the firebox is a one inch solid granite lazy susan pull pots of coffee at the perfect temperature for keeping them warm because you go around back we've got an infrared grill that cooks at 2,000 degrees for new can Kevin boy stay behind that you have gold sinks 24-inch three lmb satellite dish it's got a DVR recorder holds up under motion picture DVD players satellite radio satellite TV this is solar powered as well as electric cars so I can run the lights the TV radio and all that off of the solar power the lighting on the trailer will flash to the music and we can even rigged it where jack daniels and coke comes out of the faucets you don't have to do anything you don't have to plan anything you don't even have to have food all I have to do is pull that pit up on a cul-de-sac and get out lighting and people start showing up with food hay bales people party at the drop of a hat the paint job on the trailers a Ferrari metal flake burgundy should last about a hundred years I could have had a Maserati or this barbecue pit now what textin would have picked the Maserati none of them this is forever this is always going to be here maybe they'll find it hundreds of years from now and wonder what the hell this was you know I won't stop till I made everything in the world into a barbecue pit I want one of the moon I've talked to the administrator of NASA you know ceramic fiber finish with platinum coils inside with solar panels probably an oxygen fixed environment inside when people land I want to see the world's first close interplanetary grill that sings I'll give them the rest of the money I make the rest of my life that put one on the moon for me that I mean that's a scratch on the planet that you were here the rest of its move the rest of its the moot that's my favorite line and we have a new obsession and its new series we're doing with KQED called the making of the making of the bay bridge the making of a jar of jam the making of the iphone and opera a surfboard a neighborhood what people make in the Bay Area and why and we'd love it if you join us at the break in that beautiful mural room and let us know what you're making and what we should know about and we'll help tell your story passionately thank you