TODAY We’re Toasting to a VERY SPECIAL Birthday 🍹🥳🍰 and talkin ‘ bout a buncha food & drink topics including but not limited to:

• American Moonshine …

• Dougnuts!

• Veggie Burgers

• And the history of Gingerbread (in June?!)

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🎉Cheers to June 5th’s Quintuple Celebration Today — HOORAY! 🎂🥃🍪

[📸 Happy Birthday, Kenya❣️! 🎁🎂🥂🍾🥳🎈]…

🥳 First and foremost, it’s my beautiful baby sister’s BIRTHDAY — she's brilliant, bold, and radiates beauty both inside and out. Please help me wish Kenya! 💖 the happiest of birthdays today as I intend to continue to celebrate her (and WITH her!) through the end of this month. Stay tuned for more snapshots of celebration and — no surprise — lots of toasts!

✨CHEERS! ✨….

Til then see more below on how today’s topics, including Kenya’s crucial role in one of my biggest food media projects ever hat took place in the not too distant past , where we collaborated from beginning to end to create content for an unprecedented online miniseries for the Food Network …

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[📷: Archival-style side-by-side photo of two men (one Black, one White) drinking from moonshine jugs

Sippin Moonshine in the Movie “Sinners “ (images via “Exclusive Deleted Scenes via MovieClips”….)

Speaking of spirited activity and such— June 5th is also National Moonshine Day! 🥃✨
Ahhh yes — a spirited topic I look forward to going into deeper than time usually allows. This high-proof, low-fuss, homegrown elixir holds a complicated place in American drink history. From backwoods stills and juke joints to bootleg legends, moonshine evokes both rebellion along with economic empowerment plus deep cultural resilience — especially when examined through a Black vs. a (default) White lens.
I’ve got insights and analysis not often talked about and frankly not really known to many. Yes, I’ll share some in due time, but you’ll have to stay tuned… including until i FINALLY see Sinners  on the big screen 🎦—not only so i can connect some dots to this current pop culture phenom but b/c I’m told there are many moonshine-related moments packed into this motion pic that carry much historical and cultural weight. Perhaps that report-back, blended with the deep wells of analysis I’ve been amassing on the topic will uncork the jug. Likely on my Patreon Platform, where the deeper pours happen. Just sayin… 😉

[📸 Gingerbread House (& Family!) Boat Float, Balboa Bay Parade]

….And finally… for some reason it’s also National Gingerbread Day?! In June. 🤷🏽‍♀️ … But cosmically, as you can see it does fall on my sister Kenya’s birthday — who just so happened to be the showrunner, producer, AND first guest of the very first episode of the Food Network series I hosted, The Kwanzaa Menu — where in fact ginger, a main ingredient in GINGER BREAD lol, was one of several spicy topics woven into a sweet and satisfying (yet very short!) segment.

Yup, in just 90 seconds, we packed in a lot — including a mini-lesson on reclaiming the power and purpose of once-colonized spices. We’re still exploring ways to honor the cultures that birthed them and to restore their stories to our tables….

🎁Check out the Patreon version of this post for deeper peek into the pathways that shaped global flavor — with a spotlight on ginger’s ancient journey through African, Asian, and Arab spice routes to medieval Europe, and eventually to the New World, into colonial-era kitchens and dining tables via African-descended cooks and cultivators throughout the Americas. 🍽️✨

As for Donuts and Veggie Burgers —well …

.. Enjoy the above eye candy for now - where you can click through for the post source on the retro pic in the middle — or better yet, you can DM me (AFTER you join my Patreon platform or subscribe to my Substack or newsletter if you’re interested in things like delicious grain free or grain diverse GLUTEN-FREE donut recipes or your own PDF copy of the Smoky Black Bean Beet Burger recipe above (one of 24 recipes i curated for Food.com’s Juneteenth Special)

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LEARN A LITTLE MORE HERE ABOUT THOSE DEEPER POURS THAT HAPPEN ON MY TFG’s PATREON PLATFORM

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