Ancestral cooking, heritage cooking, soul food . . . no matter what you call it, the meat, vegetable and side dishes and the cooking methods handed down to us by our parents, grandparents and their forebears are an important part of what ties us to our African homeland. As genealogists, we also look for clues in the types of foods and how they are prepared to determine where our ancestors came from on the continent as well as to the traditions forged in different places in the Americas to determine their more recent origins.

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