Editor's note: The Southern Foodways Alliance delves deep in the history, tradition, heroes and plain old deliciousness of Southern food. Today's contributor, Emilie Dayan, writes a weekly SFA blog series called "Sustainable South" about food and the environment, nutrition, food access, food justice, agricultural issues and food politics.

Since 2000, Joe Nelson Icet has been advancing on Houston’s Northeastern front. He calls himself a guerrilla gardener. As founder and director of the Last Organic Outpost, he takes abandoned lots littered with trash and turns them into fertile land. Planted off of Emile Street, Icet engages the community in urban farming, his biggest plot in the industrial ruins of the old Comet Rice Mill. In doing so, land in Houston’s Fifth Ward is revitalized through farming.

The mission is simple:
FULL POST

5@5 is a food-related list from chefs, writers, political pundits, musicians, actors, and all manner of opinionated people from around the globe.

Jacob Griffin doesn't want maple syrup to be stuck as a pancake staple; there's a lot more sweetness to tap.

Griffin is the chef at The Farm Stand Cafe at Madava Farms, an organic maple farm in New York’s Hudson Valley that is the home of Crown Maple Syrup.

Five Unlikely Uses for Real Maple Syrup: Jacob Griffin
FULL POST

5@5 is a food-related list from chefs, writers, political pundits, musicians, actors, and all manner of opinionated people from around the globe.

Since the Harlem Shake has jumped the shark, let’s get back to a shake that really matters - we're talking about the good ol’ fashioned milkshake.

Mark Robert Turner is here to make the transition a smooth one. Turner is the Operations Manager - and resident milkshake magician - of Bareburger, a micro-chain of organic burger restaurants.

If you don’t own a blender, you can use an immersion or stick blender, which works just as effectively. If you don’t have either one of those, grab a stainless steel bowl and a whisk; you should never deny yourself a milkshake because you don’t have the right equipment.

Five Tips To Make a Marvelous Milkshake: Mark Robert Turner
FULL POST

There comes a time in every food writer's life when they must reluctantly remove thine fancy trousers and succumb to the sugar-fueled enthusiasm the public expresses for mass market Easter candy.

Last year, Americans spent nearly $2 billion on Easter candy alone, including milk chocolate bunnies, cream-filled eggs, jelly beans and, of course, the cherished, brightly colored marshmallow critters known as Peeps.

The iconic chick- and bunny-shaped confections are made by family-owned candy manufacturer, Just Born, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The factory hatches an estimated 4 million Peeps a day, which is enough to give to one Peeps treat to every person in Croatia. (You're welcome.)

Should you find yourself hopped up on too many of the blood-sugar-spiking 'mallows come Monday, make the leftovers melt into memory with homemade Peeps ice cream.
FULL POST

CNN photojournalist John Bodnar is a second-generation Slavic-American whose grandparents emigrated from Eastern Slovakia, and his mother’s Carpatho-Rusyn ethnicity is the prominent influence for his cultural and family traditions. Previously, he wrote about haluski.

I’d like to introduce you to the Easter bread that we called Paska. It is a two dough bread that incorporates cheese and raisins, and the arduous process that can take up to SIX hours to prepare. There in no wonder that this bread was made only once a year. I can’t imaging how my grandmother, who had 10 children, could find time for anything, let alone spending so much time for baking bread, plus the rest of the meal preparation.

It will always be one of my favorite foods. I will occasionally make a small loaf, but it is never as good as Mom’s. When I visit her, frozen Paska is always “forced” upon me and I take it home with me. Outside the Easter tradition, it is amazing when toasted and covered with butter. Oh yes, did I mention Paska with a hot cup of coffee?

Get John's family recipe - Slovak soul food: Paska for Easter

More on Easter foods and traditions

Black swan. Unborn puppies. A hundred live doves “baked into a great pie” and prepared to “burst forth in a swirl of white feathers.”

Those are some of the dishes I decided not to attempt for my Game of Thrones-themed dinner party.

George R.R. Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” books are famously long (1,040 pages for the latest installment), and roughly 50% of the word count is devoted to describing what the characters are eating. One wedding feast features an ode to most of its seventy-seven courses; even a rundown of frozen defense outpost’s dwindling supplies is good for a three-page litany about storerooms filled with “potted hare, haunch of deer in honey, pickled cabbage, pickled beets, pickled onions, pickled eggs and pickled herring.”

The HBO series embraces the books’ gluttonous spirit: The producers got a castle banquet into the very first episode.

For food fans, this is clearly a challenge. A thrown gauntlet. One week ahead of Game of Thrones season 3 premier, I rounded up a few of my geeky friends - and some novices we hoped to convert - for our own recreation of a Westerosi feast.
FULL POST

Plenty of traditional foods pack an emotional whallop, but few of them back it up with a sensory punch as strong as horseradish's. The pungent root is a key part of a Passover Seder plate (along with salt water-dipped vegetables, a shank bone, a hard boiled egg, a sweet paste of apples and nuts called charoset, and a bitter vegetable - often lettuce) and symbolizes the harsh lives of the Israelites before they were delivered from slavery in Egypt.
FULL POST

All over the world, people gather to celebrate Passover - the holiday that commemorates the Jewish people's escape from slavery in Egypt. For seven or eight days (depending on where you live), families and friends come together for festive seder meals packed with ritual foods and a few dietary restrictions (for instance, no leavened grains).

And while many traditions remain the same the world over, favorite regional recipes can bring communities closer together. Here, families from Israel, Estonia and India share a few of their favorites, courtesy of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, to make your celebration a little larger in spirit.
FULL POST

Ashley Strickland is an associate producer with CNN.com. She likes tackling English toffee, channeling summer with sunflower cheesecakes, sharing people-pleasin' pizza dip and green soup, cajoling recipes from athletes and studying up on food holidays.

There is a grace in the harmony of simple flavors and taking the time and care to introduce them to one another. I like to think it’s embodied in a perfect pound cake.

Take a moment to get to know the grand dame of Southern desserts.
FULL POST