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Rondia’s Southern Soul Supper
November 5, 2022 @ 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
$45
Photo of Rondia Kaufer on Pine Mountain from page 55 of Medicinal Herbs of California.
Please be sure to use the REGISTER link below before returning to this page to click on the PayPal button to complete payment and secure your space. Note: Online payment includes a PayPal fee. To avoid that, when you register you can request instructions for mailing a payment of $45/person (or $50 to include optional Shrimp & Grits).
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RESERVE YOUR SEAT
Please join us on Saturday, November 5, for our first-ever Southern Soul Supper, presented by my wife Rondia Kaufer. This one is a warm-up for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, featuring delicious dishes you may want to serve at your holiday feast. It’s built around mustard greens, an essential ingredient of Southern cuisine that can be wild-foraged in our area. Locally-sourced herbs will be sprinkled throughout the menu, which includes:
- Roasted Turkey Breast with Dressing and Gravy
- Three Greens with Cornbread
- Sweet Potato Tart
- Hot and Cold Beverages
A special side dish of Shrimp & Grits will be available by advance request for an extra $5 charge. The dinner will be served in Fisher Hall at St. Andrews Episcopal Church in Ojai.
Questions? Please email register@herbwalks.com.
ABOUT RONDIA KAUFER:
Born in Texas while her father served in the Air Force, Rondia was raised in her parents’ hometown of Chicago. But the story of her cooking begins in Mississippi where her parents grew up.
“The first thing I remember about cooking is dissecting a whole chicken,” Rondia told me. “My mother would always make fried chicken on Sundays. She had to buy whole chickens because it was cheaper and she would always buy two to feed us all. By then I had two younger brothers, one younger sister, an older half-brother, and my mother was pregnant. I would stand on a chair and watch her or Grandma Alma dissect the chickens in the kitchen sink.
“When I got older, my mother would guide me with the chicken dissecting and then I would watch the rest: how she coated the chicken and fried it in a big skillet. Boy, did it smell good with all the seasoning she would put in her batter! Later she taught me how to tell if the chicken was done. My mother would always cook rice and gravy with the fried chicken. Grandma Alma would have me help her make biscuits. That’s how I learned to make biscuits from scratch. So there’s the first Mississippi meal I made standing on a chair over the stove: fried chicken, rice, gravy and biscuits for eight.”
As a teenager, Rondia was the designated chef for her musical family’s’ popular backyard barbecues. When the chicken and ribs came off the grill, she turned in her apron for a red electric guitar. As Rondia and her brothers played the Isaac Hayes hit, “Theme from Shaft,” Rondia’s culinary and musical reputation spread through the neighborhood, granting her a kind of immunity from the gang violence that made the Cabrini-Green project a national symbol of all that was wrong with inner city housing.
In her second life after moving to California, raising her kids, and retiring from the nursing profession, Rondia became known locally in Ojai for the fried chicken she served at the Bowlful of Blues and her barbecued chicken wings at the Ojai Mardi Gras. She also had a guest chef stint at the World Flavor Cafe in Ojai, competed in the Mess O’ Greens contest in Oxnard, served food for the Ojai and Ventura County Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations, and otherwise provides what she calls “Southern comfort food” at private parties.
