Our focus this month has been on the concept of how eating in season can ultimately lead to feeling “at home.” In Episode 55: Refinding Home: Edna Lewis, The Taste of Country Cooking, and Me, Kim and I discussed how eating out of season can ultimately leave you feeling disconnected, not only from your food, but the very place that you call home. We used Edna’s Lewis’, The Taste of Country Cooking to guide and inform the conversation.
This beautifully written book is a recollection of food memories, family recipes, and community. Within each of the seasonal chapters, Edna recounts the foods that were foraged, harvested, and cooked. Cooking and eating in season wasn’t some trending fad, it was simply the way to eat. Mushrooms were harvested in Spring, hogs were slaughtered in the Fall, and beef was hung over the Winter.
Menus in the book include titles like A Snowy Winter Breakfast, A Busy-Day Summer Dinner, Hunting Season Dinner, A Late Spring Lunch. Every menu and recipe in the book is influenced by the season and the locale. Edna invites you to her table and shares the foods that defined her, brought her comfort, and fostered countless memories of home.
In My Hometown
My husband and I recently landed in Montana. It was supposed to be a spring and summer stopover while Eric, my husband, built mountain bike trails on Big Mountain, the once-local ski hill now turned corporate, sadly. But fate, it seems, had an entirely different plan. So, here we are and here we’ll likely stay.
From October 2021 to August of 2022, Eric and I lived and traveled in a custom built van. Delilah, that’s what we called her, was our full time tiny home on wheels. She transported us through the South as we explored cuisines and regional specialties. We experienced Galveston oysters, Gulf Coast seafood, Southwest Louisiana’s boudine, Georgia’s boiled peanuts. It was delicious!
As we made our way to Montana for a summer gig Eric had procured, we discussed where our next adventures would take us. Up along the northern part of the states, pasties in Butte, Montana, cheese in Wisconsin, chocolate in Pennsylvania. But those foods, will have to wait. In August on a return trip to Montana from Washington, Delilah became the victim of an out-of-control trailer hauling an excavator. Though, she didn’t make it through, she did keep her cargo safe. We all walked away from the crash. Though, now we were homeless.
First responders saw us safely to a hotel where we reserved a rental car with room to pack all of our belongings. The following day Eric, Jozy the Boston, all of our things, and I returned to Montana. To my hometown where a dear family friend opened her home to three slightly-bruised, thankful, weary travelers.
As I acclimated myself back into my hometown, meeting old friends at the local haunts - the one’s that still exist - I began to realize how important specific foods are to the identity of this community. My town is a working-class town. These people are salt of the earth as they say - and some of them are pretty salty. Their tastes are simple, their hearts are big, and their love of the natural beauty of this place is impressive. These are meat and potato people who often raise an eyebrow at dishes with names like confit de canard. They stick to the local diner where they know they can get 2 eggs, any-way-you-like, thick cut bacon, crispy hash browns, and white-bread toast. And supper is most often served around the family table. Only during special occasions, milestone birthdays, anniversaries, the occasional Valentine’s Day, are “fancy” restaurants employed to serve supper.
I’ll be the first to admit that there are days that I really miss the specialty grocery stores that I had access to in Western Washington. The fresh seafood, the sushi bar, ingredients from Asian, Indian, and Latin cuisines, and specialty bakery items.
But then I went into our local grocery and grabbed carrots from the Hutterite colony, cuts of elk and venison, and local huckleberry jams, jellies, and syrups and I realized that the specialty grocery supported a different life. It served its purpose and fed us well when we were there. This new life has provided some of the best tasting carrots grown in the state, meats that give a nod to wildlife that sustains a majority of this community, and fruit jams, jellies and syrups crafted from local, wild berries not found in many other locations. These foods feel right. They connect me to this place and this time. They ground me and they make me happy. They’re home.
What do the foods that connect you to your community, region, and culture look like?
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Next week we continue our conversation about the food that bring us home in Episode 56 of the podcast as Leigh shares her experience with one of Edna’s recipes and how it brought back memories of county fairs, Sunday suppers, and life-time frienships. We hope you’ll join us.
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Wishing you well in this next chapter of life. I've never had the opportunity to live away from my home town area but I know I'd miss the taste of the juiciest nectarines and peaches grown in the central San Joaquin Valley of California. [I've never tried a Georgia peach though...]
I am so glad you made it through. Delilah did her job well...to carry you safely at all costs. Well done, Delilah. RIP.