Home-style cooking was on the menu at the Eat-In hosted by performer Amara Tabor-Smith at CounterPULSE on Tuesday. — Home-style cooking was on the menu at the Eat-In hosted by Amara Tabor-Smith at CounterPULSE on Tuesday.

The meal was pot-luck and appropriately home-style. Rice, beans, salad, and Tabor-Smith's trademark Jamaican-style Coconut Cornbread, which features buttermilk and shredded coconut, accompanied her Recession Roots Stew. A fellow dance student, Claire Bobrow, had whipped up a pile of crepes in honor of Fat Tuesday and adults and children were happily slathering them with Nutella.

Among the attendees spreading the gospel of good food: Nikki Henderson, executive director of People's Grocery, and Dannae Washington, who helps runs the West Oakland food justice and education group's Grub Box program. Also on hand: Chef Bryant Terry, author of Vegan Soul Kitchen and co-author of Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen, whom Tabor-Smith collaborated with on "Visceral Feast." Chowing down in the crowd: Students from Mission High School and Pie Ranch youth worker Mary Ann Brooks, who helps these teens make healthy connections within the food system.

The Eat-In was part of a series of food-focused meet-ups culminating in a performance piece at CounterPULSE in April called "Our Daily Bread," a collaboration between Tabor-Smith's Deep Waters Dance Theater, director Ellen Sebastian Chang, and visual artist Lauren Elder.

"Our Daily Bread" is billed as a program of dance, text, and video that examines food traditions and how they're linked to cultural identity -- and impacted by industrialized agriculture, fast food culture, and the global food crisis. How do you, for instance, recreate your mother's gumbo when fish stocks are threatened and some species contain dangerously high levels of toxins?

And the thinking behind the community gatherings leading up to the performance premiere?

"These events are about sharing food, coming together, cooking together, and eating together, which is something most of us don't do enough of these days," says Tabor-Smith, who also teaches at UC Berkeley. "We're at a time when food has been exotified and people focus on restaurant dining. But there's nothing more beautiful than sharing a home-cooked meal together."

Event Details:

Our Daily Bread
April 14-24, Thursdays-Sundays, 8 p.m.
CounterPULSE
1310 Mission Street
San Francisco
Tickets $15-22 available at Brown Paper Tickets.

Scenes from the upcoming performance piece exploring food, "Our Daily Bread" features dancer Amara Tabor-Smith. Photos: Ana Teresa Fernandez, courtesy of CounterPULSE

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