When it comes to social activities, grown black folks don’t do nightclubs because people at clubs present a fake representation of themselves. What grown folks choose to pursue is more mature social events such as rent a private VIP table or go watch a movie as a group or other group dating activities together and bond with quality friends for life. 

A bigger mistake among grown black folks is the tradition of going out to eat on a date or taking their significant other out to eat. Going out to eat cost too much, you have to dress up, drive across town and then pay a tip. If you are on a date, you are not really bonding, just looking at each other across the table waiting for the food to be serve. Dining out and taking a date out to eat also have an air of phoniness between two people, even in they are in a relationship.  

African-Americans need to stop the materialistic culture of running to Red Lobster or Longhorn or Benihana or PF Chang or these buffets and realize the power and essentialism of food and the art of meal making. We need to return to the traditions where the family eat, pray and stay together.  Food is so important and central to our lives but the African-American community do not realize the reason we are not as together, we are not as a community as we used to because of the most primitive element – food. 

When I started dating all these beautiful Asian, Latino, Arab, Motherland African and Indian women out there, I discovered the true meaning of a relationship between a man and a woman I did not learn from the African-American community. I learned how to sit down casually over coffee and tea and talk to each other. We never went out to eat, we went to the grocery store late Saturday night, then cook all day Sunday and not just one dish, but many dishes.  We didn’t eat all the food, we cooked in abundance with each other as an activity. When I met these women family, I never had a problem because I brought food and helped the family prepare dishes.

Instead of keep going out to eat, a grown black person should focus on the art of meal making with their significant other.  Even when it comes to dating, focus on dating the other person that appreciate the art of meal making, the most important aspect of all our lives.  With that said, Dream and Hustle is committed to bringing back the art of meal making to the black community and making it the centerpiece of who we are and how we express ourselves. 

Dream and Hustle is going to have a new channel dedicated to food and meal making to cover the lifestyle of food from an everyday living perspective.  This channel will not be like the current food offerings that focus on upscale lifestyle. Our focus will be on incorporating meal making as an expression of oneself and what our people can prepare for others and we will start creating content (articles, short stories, videos) to help African-Americans move away from consumerism to essentialism when it comes to food. 

Real black families cook, real men cook and real moms cooks and real couples cook. But most important, real communities cook and commune and it’s time to make that the forefront of the African-American journey.  We taking this back to the kitchen.