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Where Y'Eat: Louisiana Food Culture, Helping Louisiana Neighbors

Louisiana's love of gathering around food can be a tool to help people rebuild from disasters
Ian McNulty
Louisiana's love of gathering around food can be a tool to help people rebuild from disasters.

When everything is torn apart, we gravitate to what brings us together. In Louisiana for all the hardships we’ve seen on the ragged edge of that equation, we’re fortunate to be so strong on the other side. Our shared food culture is one of those anchors.           
 

As floods ravaged our state, the impulse to help, to get up and do something, very often flowed through food. People gathered supplies, hit the road and made sure those pushed from their homes had something to eat.

Now that we shift rebuilding, the compulsion to help is no less vital. Food will be part of these efforts and it’s up to more of us to see them through.

It’s about harnessing food, Louisiana’s reputation for it and the traditions we already have around it, as vehicles to help others.

This second wave of support is not just about getting meals into people’s hands although, make no mistake, that will be an urgent need for a long time to come. As the full reach of the disaster is measured, more people will need help with the cost of rebuilding, with threading pathways through this process, and with managing that stain of stress and anguish that marks a flooded community long after the water has gone.

This is a long haul, and the support our people need calls for funding. We will need to come up with a lot of it ourselves, and that's why food lovers in Louisiana should expect to see appeals to dig deep when they dig in. 

The food-based fundraiser is a fixture here, and it’s shifting into high gear around a common theme of flood relief and rebuilding. You see them at restaurants, of course. Our restaurants are natural gathering places, same with our bars and coffee shops, and so they become rallying points for community efforts like these.

But that’s not where it ends. With autumn on the horizon, Louisiana will enter one of its great social eating seasons. It’s the time of tailgating and fall festivals, backyard parties and group outings. Wherever food draws people together, there is an opportunity to tap that gathering for help. It could be fundraising on behalf of charitable agencies that are household names or it could be a grassroots campaign for one household in particular.

Whether you’re pledging a portion of proceeds or literally filling a bucket with cash at the cook out, this is flood relief through food.

Yes, you could just forgo the meal and donate everything, and many will do just that. But we all still have to eat, Louisiana’s compulsions around cuisine and cooking will continue, and if people can find ways to support their neighbors while carrying them on, then that weaves the effort into our daily rhythms. And that’s what being in it for the long haul means.    

It’s about using part of our Louisiana lifestyle to help others build back their own lives, and it draws on a culture that is so strong in Louisiana to help people when they need strength most. Stay generous, stay hungry, and keep your eyes open for the next opportunity to step up to the plate.

Ian covers food culture and dining in New Orleans through his weekly commentary series Where Y’Eat.

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