How do you take your coffee? Cream? Sugar? Or do you drink it Black? As the world's second most traded commodity (next to oil) it's hard to have your morning fix without coming to terms with the origins of your favorite drink. It'll probably come as no surprise that coffee as a long history of slavery. We discuss our own relationship with coffee as we tell of its origins and early history ..read more

Darryl and Kelly sit down to finish their conversation on fried chicken and share a meal of Popeyes. We finish our history on fried chicken and discuss some regionally black-owned restaurant chains. Lots of laughing and sidebars as we try to move through these final days of winter ..read more

We are back after an unplanned and unexpected break. We talk about what kept us away for so long, eat chicken, and talk about chicken. And we're keeping it broad and loose for this episode, only going over a few facts and cultural history regarding the bird we love to eat - chicken ..read more

The holidays can be really tough, and this year presents its own specific issues as we ease out of (or back into? or never left?) pandemic restrictions. Join Kelly and Darryl as they talk about depression, divorce, and other things that can make this time of year extra special. To get the full version of this episode, become one of our supporters at www.patreon.com/butterpecanpod ..read more

We are celebrating Native American Heritage Month with our new best friend, Nicole Robey. Join us as we chat with Nicole about growing up Winnebago, what it means to be a "white-presenting" Native, and the work she does today as part of the Indigenous Affinity Group at Amazon as well as doing ramen and fry bread pop-ups with her husband. We enjoy some fry bread while discussing its delicious yet divisive history within Native culture. Follow Nicole on Instagram @bigvoice_media and www.renshokuramen.com for her and her husband's ramen ..read more

What do Peanut Butter Bars, Circus Peanuts, and Bit-O-Honey all have in common? Well, they're gross, and WE ate them. In this episode, we lay the artificially flavored foundation for a forthcoming episode on sugar, share ghost stories, and acknowledge everything we've accomplished in our first year of podcasting ..read more

Immediately after we released our last episode on school lunch, Louisville's regional newspaper, the Courier-Journal, published a series of articles on magnet schools in the JCPS school system. So, we decided to record a bonus about what we found interesting about their investigation, and how school lunch continues to tell a story about race and class. Photo Source: Library of Congress Photo Archives ..read more

In the second part of Part 3 on school lunch, we continue our conversation on redlining and see how this practice kept schools segregated into the 1970s. We take a look at how Louisville, KY came up with its system of busing and how the city continues to be one of the most integrated school systems in the country ..read more

As we enter into the more contemporary history of schools in the United States, we must first look at the effects of redlining and housing discrimination. Where you live often dictates where you go to school, and in addition, property taxes are tied to school budgets - we can't look at one without looking at the other. So many sidebars and chitchat, we had to break this into two different episodes. ***Fact Check: Legally, realtors have to show a client any house they're interested in buying, but there is a practice known as "steering" when realtors direct people to neighborhoods with populatio ..read more

In Part 2, we discuss how school lunch menus were used as a tool to assimilate those who had immigrated to the United States. We also look at the messy metaphor of a Melting Pot for immigrant assimilation and evaluate how school lunches differ around the world. Please send us any of your personal stories (or your parents' stories) about what school lunch was like for you ..read more