Toni Morrison at the table

African American Southern cuisine, passed down by families who migrated to the industrial North like Lorain. No starter-main-dessert: a grand Sunday meal where everything arrives together on the table — a main meat, sides (slow-cooked greens, starches), cornbread that accompanies everything, a sweet treat, and a cool drink. You serve yourself in shared bowls, and the "pot likker," the greens' cooking juice, is drunk or sopped up with bread.

A piece of smoked pork (hock, fatback, or smoked turkey leg) slowly flavors the greens. The resulting broth — the "pot likker," a legacy of enslaved cooks who wasted nothing — is so rich in taste and vitamins that it's drunk. It's the flavorful memory of the South carried to Ohio.