I asked my mom if we could try to make it, and she helped me find the recipe.Īt Monticello, it was called Macaroni Pie, and my mom explained that it is different from a lot of macaroni and cheese recipes because it doesn’t require you to make a flour-based cheese sauce. I didn’t know why this recipe was really special-honestly, I kind of pictured Thomas Jefferson eating Easy Mac-until I watched an episode of a show called High on the Hog with my mom, and saw them making Hemings’ version, standing in the Monticello kitchen. James Hemings learned to make macaroni and cheese, but the guy who enslaved him gets the credit, and even learning to cook some of the best food in America didn’t change the fact that he didn’t have a choice about that. We serve this at Thanksgiving because it’s part of our family’s history, but also because we want to remember that coming to this country and building this country wasn’t the same experience for everyone. I also know that people give Jefferson a lot of credit for bringing macaroni and cheese to the country, which isn’t exactly correct. I always knew that Jefferson used enslaved labor at Monticello, and that the Hemings family is part of that legacy, even though they didn’t want to be. Hemings brought macaroni and cheese to America, and Jefferson frequently asked for it to be served. He also took his enslaved cook, James Hemings, who studied cooking there. My great-great-great-great-great-great (there may be too many greats in here) grandfather, in fact, is Thomas Jefferson, and my recipe comes from his dinner table in Monticello.ĭuring the Revolutionary War, Thomas Jefferson went to France. But I enjoy making it just the same, mostly because it’s kind of a family recipe.Īnd when I say family recipe, I mean that it’s been around since before the Constitution. John Erickson is a sixth grader at Ignite Middle School in Dallas.įirst things first: I don’t really eat macaroni and cheese.
0 kommentar(er)
