The book, Recipes for Change: 12 Dishes Inspired by a Year in Black History by Michael Platt, is a child- and family-friendly cookbook that serves as a cultural journey told through food. The book is organized around 12 thoughtfully chosen recipes, one for each month of the year, and pairs seasonal cooking with pivotal moments, movements, and figures in Black history.
Each dish serves as both a meal and a conversation starter, inviting readers to reflect on how food, memory, resistance, and celebration intersect across time. This book is a great way to introduce historical topics to your family. Through storytelling, historical context, and accessible recipes, Recipes for Change encourages readers to honor Black history not just by learning it, but by experiencing it at the table, month by month.
The Greensboro Sit-In's Cherry Protest Pie
The February recipe is inspired by The Greensboro Sit-Ins in 1960 led by four Black college students in Greensboro, North Carolina. They sat at a lunch counter where Black people were not allowed to eat and quietly asked to be served. Even when the young men were refused service, they stayed, sitting peacefully, until closing time. They kept returning. This quiet act of rebellion sparked more sit-ins across the South that helped end segregation.
Serves 8
Ingredients
- 2 ready-to-bake pie crusts
- 2 cups (440 g) canned pitted cherries, drained
- 1 cup (200 g) superfine sugar
- Finely grated zest of 2 lemons
- 3 tablespoons cornstarch
- ½ teaspoon cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon almond extract
- A pinch of nutmeg
- 1 egg, lightly beaten
- 1 tablespoon sugar, for dusting
Method
- Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C) and grease a 9-inch (23-cm) pie plate. Put a baking sheet in the oven to heat up.
- Unroll one of the pie crusts and line the pie dish, trimming off any excess.
- Line the top of the pie crust with parchment paper and add pie weights to hold it down. Bake for 15 minutes, then carefully remove the paper and weights and cook the pastry for 5 more minutes, or until golden.
- Mix together the rest of the ingredients and pour them into the pie plate.
- Roll out the remaining pie crust and cut into long strips. Weave the strips together over the pie to form a lattice. Press down the edges to seal and trim off any excess. Brush with the beaten egg and sprinkle with sugar.
- Bake for 40 minutes, or until crisp and golden.
- Cool for 20 minutes before serving.
More Recipes
Check out the Recipes for Change book by Michael Platt for more delicious recipes:
About the Greensboro Sit-Ins
Learn more about the inspiring story of the Greensboro sit-ins from the documentary February One: The 1960 Greensboro Lunch Counter Sit-ins (57 mins), available to stream on Kanopy for free with your library card.
"In one remarkable day, four college freshmen changed the course of American history.
FEBRUARY ONE tells the inspiring story surrounding the 1960 Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins that revitalized the Civil Rights Movement and set an example of student militancy for the coming decade. This moving film shows how a small group of determined individuals can galvanize a mass movement and focus a nation’s attention on injustice. FEBRUARY ONE not only fills in one of the most important chapters in the Civil Rights Movement, it reminds us that this was a movement of ordinary people motivated to extraordinary deeds by the need to assert their basic human dignity."
Contributed by Daniela Leyva
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