Welcome to the SFA

Welcome to the Southern Foodways Alliance -- an institute of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture with headquarters at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi.

The Southern Foodways Alliance documents and celebrates the diverse food cultures of the American South. We set a common table where black and white, rich and poor -- all who gather-- may consider our history and our future in a spirit of reconciliation.

Great Pimento Cheese Competition
Finalist 3

finalist 1 | finalist 2 | finalist 3

Beth Edelstein
Timonium, Md

Notice right away that you and I pronounce the word differently. That's ok. Georgia and Mississippi are quite different places. This weekend I am heading to a family reunion in Tifton, Ga. where I am sure menta cheese will take a star's role. I hope you like my memories as much as I liked remembering them and as much as I like eating menta cheese.

Menta cheese signaled celebrations and all the seasons. Summer brought bare feet, sweet tea, and menta cheese samitches. When school started, the very favorite samitch from the Roy Rogers lunch box was menta cheese, thermos-squished and scrumptious. In November, we were thankful for menta cheese in celery sticks, so elegant in a crystal dish. Santa Claus’s treat? Well, menta cheese, of course. He never left a bite. Valentines’ Day meant tiny mounds with itty bitty pimento hearts on top. Almost too beautiful to eat, but eat it we did with abandon, with crackers, and with fingers.

The Recipe

Cheese, a bunch of it, sharp cheddar, rat cheese with the wax rind is best, grate it on the middle hole of a three hole grater into a large bowl. Add enough black pepper so that you can really see the pepper. Grind it if you are feeling fancy; otherwise just sprinkle it from the can. Drain the juice from a jar or two of pimentos and put in with the cheese. Stir. Add Hellman’s mayonnaise, just a little at a time. Taste. That’s the best part. Keep adding cheese, pimento, pepper, and mayonnaise until it tastes right. You’ll know. The trick is to stop just when it tastes right and not when you have eaten the whole bowl and not saved any for your guests. That’s it. You can add anything else to it if you like: pecans, curry, Tabasco, cumin, garlic, celery seed, scallions, or olives. Just know that if you do you have changed the essence of menta cheese.

The Ruth Fertel Keeper of the Flame Award

Each fall, the SFA (with support from the Fertel Foundation) honors an unsung hero or heroine, a foodways tradition bearer of note, with the Ruth Fertel Keeper of the Flame Award.

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Join the SFA

Help the Southern Foodways Alliance celebrate, preserve, promote, and nurture the traditional and developing food culture of the American South.

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