About 150 friends of the late award-winning cookbook chef and Southern icon Nathalie Dupree will gather in Charleston Saturday to remember her extraordinary life.
They’ll tell stories, shed a few tears and revel in the joyful cultured messiness that made Dupree, who died in January at age 85, a memorable soul all over the world. And for those of you wondering, yes there will be food after the gathering, likely to be inspired by the 15 cookbooks she wrote or co-wrote that explain just about everything about Southern food.
While most speakers likely will highlight Dupree’s huge impact on the food world – keeping alive recipes and techniques, mentoring young women chefs, making complicated preparations simpler – she had a pretty good opinionated political side, too.
So much so, in fact, that you might recall a 2010 last-minute write-in bid for the United State Senate against then incumbent Jim DeMint and Alvin Greene, an undistinguished, unknown, surprise Democratic candidate who refused to drop out despite being mired in controversy.
All of this mess led Dupree to drop into the race as a write-in candidate on a bright, fall day at Waterfront Park in Charleston. While it was pretty clear she knew she wouldn’t win, she engagingly pointed out there had been a write-in candidate who won a last-minute bid to the U.S. Senate – and that the person was from South Carolina. (Hint: Strom Thurmond in 1954).
On the day in late September 2010 when Dupree announced, there certainly was a twinkle in her eye about her chances, but she was serious about voters having alternatives so that DeMint didn’t just walk away with the election. (He did and went on to leave the seat early to head the Heritage Foundation, which some argue is a major collaborator in the mess facing the country today.)
With all of this fodder in 2010, it was clear a newspaper column was in order – and perhaps one that was a little tongue-in-cheek. So came a commentary with the headline, “Dupree wants to cream DeMint.” It went downhill from there:
“The entry of Dupree, better known for her shrimp and grits than politics, will add much-needed spice to a relatively dull Senate race. Just imagine the glee that boiled over in newsrooms around the state when Dupree announced the write-in campaign. Like sugar plums, all sorts of headlines certainly danced across their minds, although few actually made their way into print.”
And that led to an effort to see how many bad cooking clichés we could stuff into the column. Here are 10 runners-up to the headline (above) that went with the column:
- Dupree wants to cook DeMint’s goose
- Dupree burns DeMint for being against pork for SC
- Nathalie wants to bring home the bacon
- Dupree punches for DeMint’s sweet spot
- DeMint gives Dupree a bad taste
- Dupree whips up support
- DeMint nutty over port, Dupree steams
- Dupree muddles DeMint
- Dupree stirs the pot
- You, me and Dupree: Why not Nathalie?
Dupree and other write-in candidates didn’t knock off – err, crush – DeMint. All combined, write-in alternatives got less than 2% of the vote to the 61.5% garnered by DeMint, who spent more than $5 million to beat the unknown Democrat.
But Dupree, who by then had won two national James Beard Awards for cookbook writing, went on to win two more – for American cooking in 2013 and the “Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America” in 2015 for her contributions to the food and beverage industry.
Even two months after her death, people are still talking and remembering how Dupree changed lives and elevated Southern cooking.
So maybe one more bad headline:
- Dupree’s legacy still stews among friends across South.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report and the Charleston City Paper. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
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(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
