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Food and Love and Family

Most of the food that you see me post on my social media on here or on my blog are efforts at me recreating the meals that I grew up on. The basis of the name of my blog, Food is Love Made Edible, is that I believe that food is one of the many ways that we can express love without saying “I love you.” With a trip to my local grocery store and the knowledge passed down to me by mom and aunts I can recreate the flavors of my childhood in my kitchen for myself and my family.

I did not grow up near my grandparents, but we would visit them three or four times a year. It was about a nine hour drive to get from where I grew up in Alabama to where my parents grew up in Louisiana so we would always arrive around dinner time. Arriving at that time made the hours stuck in the car completely worth it cause there was always a pot of goodness on the stove that had been slow cooking for hours. My grandma and grandmother of course knew that we were coming to visit so they made sure that we had a hot meal waiting for us. I don’t think they thought of it this way, but just in the way they kissed and hugged us telling us how much they loved and missed us the meal they had prepared was how they showed us we were loved.

If I close my eyes, I can still hear my grandmother tell us that the okra and the rice are done and for us to go on in and make our plates. A beat up old rice cooker and a silver steel pot (the same one all Southern grandmothers seem to have) that had fed all ten of my mom’s siblings and her for decades held the contents of what is still my favorite meal today. It took me probably three times of cooking smothered okra myself which included one of my aunts prepping me some okra, two calls my mom and another aunt, and practice to be able to achieve the same pot of food in my kitchen that made up so many happy memories of my childhood. When I did though I cried. I can’t tell if they were happy tears I was able to do so, or tears of sadness that I’ll never be able to eat my grandmother’s again since she had since passed away.

Why is it that our Grandmothers, Grandmas, Nannies, GiGis, or whatever we called them could make the simplest things taste better than any Michelin Star restaurant? Is it because we were kids and we look back on those meals as adults with such great nostalgia? Could it be that food was all around better twenty… thirty… forty years ago? I think it’s the Granny love factor. The intangible element that only someone that dons the title of grandma can possess.

Without fail my grandma would have a big pot of pork ribs on the stove that had slow cooked so long in a bath of onions, bell peppers, chicken broth, and spices the fat had rendered down to create its own gravy. Pulling onto the farm where my dad grew up was really like going back in time. A few turns down gravel roads off the main highway, passing houses where you knew everyone because they were family in one way or another, and a house that sat in the middle of pastures dotted with grazing cattle.

The farm like my grandma’s slow cooked pork ribs was something I did not appreciate until my early twenties. What was just something I knew would always be on the stove next to a pot of canned sweet corn and a pot of rice I now crave more than ever. I have tried so many times to recreate that meal in my kitchen, but I just haven’t gotten there yet. What I do know is the less ingredients I use. The less fuss I make when cooking it. The more I just let the few ingredients tell their story the better the meals come out. Which is really the epitome of my grandma. She is a very soft spoken but stern woman who epitomizes the Southern farm matron.

Unfortunately I am no longer able to enjoy the delicious meals of my youth in my grandmother’s or grandma’s kitchen anymore; the former passed away a few years ago and the latter’s health has been deteriorating over the years. Thankfully I am blessed with a wonderful memory of smells and flavors. With the memories of the bowls of smothers okra and slow cooked pork ribs I ate dozens of times in the kitchens of my grandparents I have been able to recreate the dishes I love in my own kitchen.

Bringing the flavors of my childhood into my home makes me extremely happy. Every time that my kitchen begins to smell like that of my grandmother, grandma, or my mom I become a bit emotional. The emotions of love wash over me and force away those unfortunate feelings of meals I’ll never be able to eat again.

The best thing is watching my daughter sit in her chair and tear through a big bowl of smothered okra, red beans and rice, smothered chicken, slow cooked pork ribs, or one of the other meals that I grew up on and love. What to her is just dad cooking her dinner as I always do; I know she’ll one day see it as one of the ways that I show her I love her.

So really there is nothing unfortunate. It is a fact of life that one day we will no longer be able to have our favorite meals of our childhoods cooked for us by those who introduced us to them. I once was sad at that thought, but now I have found peace in it. It is now my turn to take on the mantle of the family cook and provider of sustenance. The role of preparing the meals that keep my family healthy and happy is one that I cherish. It is one of the ways that I show them that I love them. Just like my grandma and grandmother showed me how.

It's ok that I will never be able to recreate the feelings of eating at the table of the grandparents' homes, because I now get to watch my daughter have those same feelings and experiences pulling up to my parents' house. Where there's always a pot of food, usually red beans and rice, waiting for her after the six hour drive from our home to theirs. The feelings for the meal that I looked forward to eating as soon as my grandparents' house she now gets to make her own, and the feelings of love that my grandmother and grandma had while cooking the dish for their soon to be arriving grandkids my mom now gets to have.

As the name of my blog says, “Food is love made edible.”24

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