The Stories We Tell
I believe that good food - truly good food, the kind that sustains not only your body but also your soul, comes from our stories.
It's my best friend's Puerto Rican mother cooking and sharing stories of when her aubela would teach her how to cook. It's my friend Kenny discovering his love for roasting good coffee while he lived in Cambodia and starting a business out of that love. It's your grandmother's biscuit recipe you pull out for every special occasion, and that recipe was her grandmother's before passing it on to you.
It's every Two Bite treat being made with Dominican vanilla, because that's what was in every baked good I had growing up.
When you close your eyes and go back in time, I'm sure there's a food memory that immediately sticks out. And if I had to, I'd bet that memory has impacted the way you act in the kitchen now.
The food we make tells our stories. It's the cultural inheritance we're given, passed down to us from generations before. It tells the story of who we are,
where we come from, and where we've been.
My parents spent time living in the Dominican Republic before I was born, so I grew up eating Dominican food and box brownies with Dominican vanilla mixed in. I also grew up with my mom trying to replicate her dad's collards recipe, and Christmas parties with my grandpa's spicy cinnamon cranberry relish. Every Christmas, my grandma would make a variety of Polish cookies - cookies that I didn't appreciate as a kid because they weren't sweet enough, but I'd give anything to have again.
I know my limits in the kitchen - I'll leave the Dominican food cooking to the lovely people over at Orlando's Market, and the collard making to my mama. But I've hunted down some of Grandma's cookie recipes that I hope to pull out this Christmas season, and while I'm positive they won't taste the same as hers, they'll still be part of me.
I hope you can make something this week that pulls a memory out for you. A sweet one, full of joy and simplicity. Maybe it's as simple as pulling over for orange-vanilla soft serve, or grabbing your favorite takeout dish. Maybe it involves a little more love and work put in - give yourself grace if it doesn't come out exactly the same!
The best things we create tell our stories.
May we tell them well.
