‘Food for the Soul’ videos go live with local cooks making healthy soul food recipes

The Selma Sun and Black Belt News Network have gone live with the first of four healthy soul food recipe videos that were made using funds from several grants and in partnership with the Our Community Doc nonprofit based in Selma.

The first video that went live on Black Belt News Network’s YouTube channel last week features a healthy recipe for macaroni and cheese made by Lashun Langdon, owner of Happiness Nutrition 27 in Selma.

Langdon makes her mother’s macaroni and cheese recipe but shows us how she put a healthy twist on it. Her mom, Annie Towns, joins Langdon in the video as does Langdon’s 13-year-old daughter Alysia for a three-generation special edition.

The mac n cheese recipe is the first installment of the cooking series titled “Food for the Soul” and is a segment of the larger project “Health Matters” that will include videos of fitness and other health topics. The series is also live at BlackBeltNewsNetwork.com/health-matters.

The next “Food for the Soul” video goes live next week and features Selma’s Alicia Chestnut making greens – the very popular soul food dish – with her healthy changes.

Food for the Soul is the brainchild of Kingfisher Media founder Cindy Fisher, publisher of Black Belt News Network and Selma Sun. Her idea was to feature videos of Dallas County cooks making healthier recipes of soul food classics to show families an easy way to adjust eating habits without having to say goodbye to everyday favorites.

“The idea was to show how to make popular dishes with small changes that are easy to make, like using lower fat cheeses and margarine instead of butter,” Fisher said.

The cooks in the videos point out the healthier ingredients used with each recipe to show how easy they are to find at any grocery store, even in the Black Belt where access to healthier foods can be challenging, said Fisher, who also lives in Dallas County.

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“We show in the videos that you can find these ingredients at Walmart or Winn Dixie,” Fisher said. “In the Black Belt, we don’t have Publix or Whole Foods and those stores are often more expensive. But these healthier ingredients usually cost the same as higher-fat products and won’t change the taste of our favorite dishes. It’s a win-win.”

Fisher had a strategy behind having only female hosts of the videos: the matriarch of the family is usually the one passing down recipes to the next generation, so she wanted these healthier versions to come from the moms.

Originally, when looking for cooks to star in the videos, Fisher thought she would need to have a healthier recipe written out for the cooks to prepare. Our Community Doc partners Dr. Sunmi Oyesiku and Dr. Deedy Baker of UAB Family Medicine, along with Fisher’s mom Debrah Fisher, who is a certified diabetes educator, helped write up the recipes to use with that idea in mind. But in the end, the cooks came with their own healthier twists that had been established organically over the years, Fisher said.

“It was fun to see all the different changes they had made and how they swore it still tasted great,” Fisher said.

The third video to go live will highlight Sabrina Carson cooking oven fried chicken using Keith High School’s kitchen. Sabrina’s video is sponsored by the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Building Healthy Communities initiative of the Minority Health & Health Equity Research Center. Orrville is a part of their initiative and families in Orrville will get printed cards with each recipe at the program’s food giveaways starting in November.

The last video will highlight a sweet potato tart recipe made by Deborah Mosely, who makes cakes and cookies for events in Selma. Mosely changed her traditional sweet potato pie recipe to tarts to control the portion her family eats.

Kingfisher Media and Our Community Doc received grant funding from Mike & Gillian Goodrich Foundation and Daniel Foundation that support many projects in the Black Belt to make these healthy videos.