Biscuits and Coke

The NMGZ Community has shown me that people are eager to help and that food plays a crucial role in building relationships. The NMGZ Community field trip to Atlanta beautifully combined these two elements in a way I had never experienced before.

Atlanta is a growing city that continues to innovate its services for its community members. It also understands its roots and continually pays homage to its history and culture. This understanding of identity is evident in the city's architecture, art, companies, and even its food. This is where I found some of the most enjoyable takeaways from what the city has to offer: making biscuits and drinking Coke. I'd like to clarify that no, this is not a sponsorship by Coca-Cola. I just think we can all learn a thing or two from biscuits and Coke.

During our trip, we visited the Municipal Market and participated in the historic market food tour. We ate at five businesses and made southern-style biscuits. To make the biscuits, we all used the same foundational ingredients: mill flour, chilled butter, buttermilk, more mill flour, and even more butter.

Making these biscuits taught me three things:

1.    The process of making a biscuit can remain relatively unchanged, but the way we gather and use resources to accomplish a task has evolved. We still mix wet and dry ingredients to shape bread, but we no longer have to toil over land to acquire grain or actively tend to an open flame to cook them.

2.    We can have the same goal and similar means to accomplish it, but the end result will be different. We may use the same ingredients and follow the same directions, but each biscuit will have different layers, textures, sizes, and shapes.

3.    There is an unearthly amount of butter in biscuits. No matter how much butter you put in a biscuit, it is hard to eat bread without a drink to accompany it. I enjoyed a Coca-Cola: Spiced from a local vendor and shared the flavor with my trip attendees, Manuel Matos Pimentel and Josie Rackley.

The drink had notes of raspberry that complemented the iconic Coke taste. Josie described it best as, “a drink that has a lil’ tang to it.”

Our shared experience over a new flavor perfectly reflected our shared perception of Atlanta as a whole. It is a place that loves to change things up in ways that differ from the norm but knows how to keep its identity and what works. These firm reminders are why these trips hold so much value; we each gain a different perspective not only from each other in the NMGZ Community but also from the strangers we meet and the experiences we share in a place that is new to us.

The one thing I can always find peace in knowing is that unlike Coca-Cola, the friendships and memories we make together as a community do not go flat.