Gravy

In Texas and Louisiana, chefs, millers, and home bakers are increasingly turning to using whole-grain, stone-milled flour in their breads, cakes, and pastries. These flours are milled with the ancient process of stone milling: flour is produced by crushing the whole kernel of the wheat grain between enormous stones, versus the more modern process of roller milling, which produces the finely grained, snow-white flour most of us are accustomed to. Stone-ground flour is coarser and more nutrient dense, and can also be more difficult to source, use, and store thanconventional flour. Despite that, these flours are no longer the sole purview of professional pastry chefs and artisan bread bakers. A new group of consumers are turning to organic, stone ground, and so-called heritage or ancient strains of wheat: followers of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement. These home bakers are increasingly convinced that modern, roller-milled wheat is making them sick, resulting in diagnoses as broad as chronic inflammation, IBS, and non-Celiac gluten intolerance.

As a baker and recipe developer, Bronwen Wyatt wanted to get to the bottom of the flour debate, which reflects a growing anxiety around the safety of American food. She speaks to bakers Pamela Thibodeaux of Barton Springs Mill in Dripping Springs, Texas and Keira Watt of Bellegarde Bakery in New Orleans to learn why they choose to use stone milled flour, and what their customers are communicating to them about their flour choices. She also turns to scientistsDr. Jessica Biesiekierski, an expert in non-celiac gluten intolerance, and Dr. Aaron Fox, who specializes in organic and sustainable agriculture, to learn more about whether our fears aroundwheat mean we need to change our shopping and baking behaviors. Do we need to have an all-or-nothing approach to conventional flour, or can all the South’s many diverse, long-standing baking traditions continue to co-exist?
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In “There’s No Business Like Hansen’s Sno Bliz-ness,” Gravy reporter Eve Troeh takes us to New Orleans, home of the sno-ball. In the South you need strategies to beat the summer heat, and ice plays a big role. Street vendors used to shave big blocks of ice by hand and add flavored syrup—a treat that became known as a sno-ball in the Big Easy.

In the late 1930s, a local man, Ernest Hansen, invented a machine that changed the tradition. Sharp blades, encased in metal, turned chunks of ice into the most fluffy, fine “snow,” and he eventually patented this creation. While he kept his day job in New Orleans’ manufacturing industry, Ernest’s wife Mary ran with her husband’s invention. She set up shop at home and eventually moved to a brick-and-mortar, dishing up fresh “snow” and dousing them with signature flavored syrups that she made by hand. They called their place Hansen’s Sno-Bliz.

Remarkably, Ernest’s hand-built machines are still in use today, as are many of Mary’s syrup recipes, and the business continues to cool off customers with some “air-conditioning for your tummy.” Hansen’s Sno-Bliz is now in its 86th year, with Ernest and Mary’s granddaughter, Ashley Hansen, at the helm. Ashley’s was a long and loving journey to take on the business. She learned alongside her grandparents day by day. In a city that practically worships tradition, she honors her family and her customers by maintaining not just the original 1930s ice-shaving mechanics and syrup recipes, but also by cultivating the warm hospitality her grandparents always extended to anyone who entered.

The cinder block corner shop on New Orleans’ Tchoupitoulas Street looks humble, but you’ll always find a line of customers stretching outside around the corner. The James Beard Foundation even bestowed Hansen’s with its prestigious title of American Classic. New Orleanians from every corner of the city—and visitors from all around the world—eagerly line up to experience Hansen’s, and form an of-the-moment community with each other as they choose their flavors and chat.

In this cool edition of Gravy, Ashley Hansen shares the history, innovation, and spirit of her family’s institution, always with Hansen’s Sno-Bliz motto in mind: “There are no shortcuts to quality.”

Eve Troeh is a seasoned podcast producer and award-winning journalist based in Los Angeles. She's also a proud former New Orleanian, and a veteran of the line at Hansen's.
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In "The Piggly Wiggly Way: A Memphis Story, "Gravy reporter Mackenzie Martin visits the Pink Palace Museum in Memphis to understand how Piggly Wiggly changed grocery shopping forever.

Meal kits. Instacart. Door Dash. At the turn of the 20th century, we didn’t have all of these options. You mostly showed up at a counter and told a clerk what you wanted, and they’d gather all the necessary items and package them up for you. And there wasn’t much in the way of competing brands, either.

Then everything started to change in a big way 110 years ago this year, when the most influential self-service grocery store opened in Memphis, Tennessee. Founder Clarence Saunders called it “The Piggly Wiggly Self-Serving System,” and he had several patents for everything: the layout, the price tag system, and even the way he incorporated refrigeration. “You could go in and do your own shopping, and all you needed was one stocker and one clerk,” says Steve Masler, the former curator of exhibits at the Pink Palace Museum.

It’s unknown why Saunders named the chain what he did, but the mystery intrigued people. In September 1916, he ran one of the first of many bizarre newspaper ads to announce its opening: “The Piggly Wiggly will establish a new fashion,” it read. “Don’t come, though, unless you mean business and want to buy something.”

The idea of choosing your own items at a grocery store seems commonplace now, but it was revolutionary at the time. Suddenly, after years of going to a general store and handing a list to a friendly clerk, customers were expected to wander the aisles on their own and carry items in a wooden shopping basket.

Historian Lisa C. Tolbert, author of Beyond Piggly Wiggly: Inventing the American Self-Service Store, says one of the most radical things about the design of Piggly Wiggly is that the traffic only went one direction. That forced customers to walk by and inspect every product in the store, which increased spontaneous purchases and overall sales. “It’s like a vending machine you’re walking through,” she says.

In 1922, less than a decade after the opening of the first store, there were 1,200 Piggly Wiggly stores in the United States. Then more grocery store chains followed Piggly Wiggly’s lead and adopted self service models of their own, and Piggly Wiggly transitioned to the more traditional supermarket model we’re all familiar with.

Today, there are just under 500 Piggly Wigglys in the U.S. They are in 17 states, partially in the Midwest, but overwhelmingly in the South. It’s an outlier in the grocery store industry in the sense that it’s managed by individual franchisees across the country and perceived as more local than other nationally known grocery store chains. It’s the kind of place where baggers often carry groceries to customers’ cars, and you can get a soda for 50 cents. “It’s the Piggly Wiggly Way,” said one employee.
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In “Making Groceries,” New Orleans-based Gravy journalist Katie Jane Fernelius travels to the frontlines of food insecurity in Louisiana—from the bustling warehouse floor of Second Harvest Food Bank in south Louisiana to a grocery aisle in rural Evangeline Parish—to examine the place of food stamps in fighting hunger.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, is a federal food-assistance program that helps low-income households buy groceries. It has consistently been shown to reduce food insecurity and poverty, especially among children.

But SNAP has also been at the center of policy fights for decades, as legislators at both the state and federal level debate not only who should be eligible to receive benefits, but what they can spend those benefits on. While some legislators may emphasize the impact of SNAP on state and federal budgets, moms like Dafnee Chatman experience the importance of SNAP in their personal budgets, knowing the crucial role that food stamps can play in feeding her family of five.

In this episode of Gravy, Fernelius follows Chatman through a grocery store as she does the math of a weekly shop on SNAP benefits. She also speaks with John Sillers and Lindsay Hendrix of the Second Harvest Food Bank of Greater New Orleans and Acadiana about how families struggling with food insecurity fill their pantries. Fernelius looks at hunger in Louisiana from a wider angle: not as a single crisis, but as a system of support, strain, and political choices that shapes how everyday families eat.

***

Acknowledgements:

Thank you to scholars Tracy Roof and Laurie Green for their illuminating conversations about the history of food stamps.

Thank you to Second Harvest Food Bank in New Orleans and Dafnee Chatman, for their helpful, impassioned participation in this episode.
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In “Spilling the Tea in the Mississippi Pine Belt” Gravy reporter Georgia Sparling explores the tea farms popping up in Mississippi’s Pine Belt, where the tannic soil is perfect for growing tea.

While many think of strong, syrupy sweet, ice-cold tea as quintessentially Southern, the only thing truly Southern about this ubiquitous beverage is how we drink it. Almost every tea leaf we consume in the United States comes from somewhere else.



Tea has been cultivated for more than 5,000 years, first in China and now in India, Nepal, Kenya, and even Argentina. Mississippi, though, seemed unlikely. The tea plant, Chinese camellia, tends to thrive in inhospitable places, such as mountains and hillsides. While the Pine Belt can certainly be inhospitable with its three-digit-degree summers, tornadoes, and dry spells, it’s a wildly different climate than where most tea is grown. The soil, however, was just right for the acid-loving plants, which are known to adapt to their circumstances.



Still, much was unknown when The Great Mississippi Tea Company in Brookhaven and the Longleaf Tea Company in Laurel planted their first crops in 2011 and 2018, respectively. Tea is a long-term investment. It takes three to five years for the plants to become established and ready for harvest. After that, they can live for a century or more—that is, if they survive. Both farms experienced heavy losses during their first seasons of planting. Great Mississippi lost all four acres of their initial crop, while Longleaf lost 300 of their first 1,000 saplings.



But they replanted, and today these small but mighty farms have not only taken root but they are thriving. Great Mississippi and Longleaf are finding that not only do tea plants have a taste for Mississippi soil, but Mississippians (and beyond) have a taste for the delicate and complex flavors of Southern grown tea. Georgia Sparling visits these farms and learns what it takes to grow a perfect cup of tea.
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