Hey. So, I was searching for some ghoulish treats to bake up for some halloween celebrations tomorrow night, and came across some recipes for dirt cake. They vary by region, but mostly consist of crushing a whole mess of oreos into the cake batter until it looks in color and texture like dirt. According to Tammy Hooper, "This is a great conversation piece at parties. Adults love it as much as the children do." Great thoughts Tammy!
Well, I thought it was a pretty good idea, but before I could decide between presenting the cake in a pan or a flowerpot, I was off googling the origin of dirt cakes, and came across the phenomena of Geophagy, or eating dirt.
Apparently it's a regular practice spread throughout several non-western nations, but was also present in some Native American nations and persists to this day in the American South, namely Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida. These regions are culprit because they all hold the largest U.S. reserves of a mineral called kaolin - the "white chalk" so valued by the Cherokee nations, and discovered by English settlers to be a valuable material for manufacturing ceramics and rubber. Thus, the mining of it is a century old business in all three states.
However, it was in the rural mountainous regions of Georgia that modern american geophagy is thought to have originated. Reason being, with the early limits of transporting the equipment necessary to mine high in to the Appalachians, most miners settled with the plentiful deposits at sea level. So many mountain men would be living in their podunk towns built on these rich deposits of valuable clay, but would have to commute down the trails to work the mines in the valleys. The soft clay was the source of their livelihoods, but the living was hard. Rural employees were historically paid less because of class bias, which laid on them the brutal reality of being second class-citizens mining a clay which they had built their houses on, just a hundred yards up the mountain. While no clear origin story for it is documented, it is regularly told that the practice of kaolin came from the culture of the Appalachian kaolin dwellers on down to the rural towns at ground level. The origins of the legend at least seem to be that the townsfolk imagined the poor mountain men and their families eating the dirt they lived on to settle their stomachs. While that explanation stinks of a long ingrained sourthern class bias, a mythologizing of the unknown minorities as the other, last laugh goes to the one who don't eat dirt. and that means noboday's laughing. Reason being, once the practice allegedly came down from the mountains to the towns and the cities, it never left.
To this day, you can stop by local markets such as the "Sweet Auburn Curb Market in downtown Atlanta, [where] Ziploc sandwich bags filled with white chunks of kaolin sit behind produce at one vendor and next to cigarettes and over-the-counter medications at another. A 1-pound bag costs $1.49." You can even buy it online at wholesale prices at such fine establishments as "White Dirt Of Georgia" (note: I will be buying a bag of this, and will report back with my findings - time to make some real dirt cake). While I could go on for several more in-depth pages on the class bias that enters into the history and current medical view of Geophagy, I'll wrap it up here in the interest of the fact that you probably have to get back to work, or are sick of flicking up on yr iphone. Let's close with this quote from an anonymous Georgian woman, 51 that I found from some eye-wateringly boring paper on the history of dirt mining in Georgia:
Mama would give us 15 cents and say, ‘Go up to so-and-so’s house and get me some chalk,’ she said. Naturally, as a child you’re going to taste it. All of the sudden, I’d say within a year, it was like - ‘I want that.’ I don’t have much of a social life anymore. It’s more important I get home to get my fix. Do you know how the ground smells when it’s real dry and along comes a little sprinkle of rain - that fresh smell? If you could taste a smell, that’s how I would describe it. Most people expect it to be gritty, but it’s creamy smooth. Technically, I’d rather eat dirt than food. If I could eat dirt for breakfast, dirt for lunch, dirt for dinner and a little iced tea I’d be fine. Some people just go out and dig in their yard. But I’ve seen it at convenience stores, stores in black neighborhoods, gas stations. Even though it says right on the package that it’s a ‘novelty item, not for human consumption,’ sometimes you’ll find it with the vegetables at the grocery store. It’s embarrassing for me. It’s embarrassing for my family.
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