Small Helpings

A recipe prompt, a riverboat kitchen, and how food carries us back

Small Helpings: A Food and Memoir Workshop

What do we remember when we eat the food we love? What do we create for ourselves —and for others — one meal at a time?

This is the short description of a workshop I’ve signed up for today with Abigail Thomas and Darien Gee. How could I not? It fits so perfectly with what we’ve been trying to do with our Tasty Postcards here on Substack. It’s also perfectly aligned with what I would consider the driving force that has inspired and kept me in kitchens for so many years. Food. Our memories around food are such a powerful force. They transcend all cultural divides. From your mom’s chicken soup, to the fabulous meal you had on your anniversary twenty years ago, we all share memories of food from our past.

Whether it’s a wedding, a birthday, or a memorial, it often seems what we remember is what was on the table. As a chef, the most rewarding compliments came when something I had made reminded someone of a meal from their past. Maybe it was the Roast Chicken Grand-mere on the Bistro menu that brought them back to their own grandmother’s kitchen? It was never about the complexity or technique. It was almost always about the memory it carried.

Back to the workshop. The instructions are to bring a favorite recipe as inspiration for some of the exercises. I’ve got a book full, literally, but where to begin? I could start with what’s right in front of me, but sometimes what’s close at hand actually leads much further back.

Further than I expected.

I left college after three and a half years, realizing that nothing I had learned had really prepared me for the life I wanted to lead. The problem was, I didn’t have a clear idea what that life might be. What I did know was that I didn’t see it anywhere around me. Full disclosure, this was also the era of “tune in, turn on, and drop out.”

I had the sense that I would have to look beyond what I had already seen and experienced. At the time, I was reading Hemingway, Jack London, and Steinbeck, writers who seemed to live adventurous lives on their own terms. I wanted some of that.

Until that point, any “traveling” I had done only happened in books, real travel took money which I had very little of. How to make this happen and fast? Coincidentally, through a friend of a friend I got wind of a great way to actually make this happen. Legally. This was no scam, just hard work. With a bit of luck you could get hired as a deckhand pushing barges up and down the Mississippi River. The work was hard but it smacked of adventure, just what I was looking for. This was the deal…you worked for 30-45 days straight, living on the boat, room and board included. Six hour shifts, twice a day. Work—eat —sleep — repeat in today’s shorthand. That was it for a month or more. The best part besides the money was the food, it was rumored to be legendary as the cooks were usually from New Orleans.

I got lucky, was hired on and the rumors turned out to be true. Three squares a day. One morning it was country ham ’n eggs with grits, biscuits and red-eye gravy, the next it was fried brains with bacon and eggs. Imagine waking up to buttermilk pancakes with molasses, hash browns, chicken fried steak and eggs. And this was just breakfast. I was eating foods I’d only heard about, and plenty I hadn’t. It seemed like just about everything we ate had a story attached to it.

It was a real eye-opener for me, a young suburban-raised college boy thrown in with this crew of good ol’ Southern boys.

One morning the fog was so thick we pulled over and tied up along the riverbank. The next thing we knew the cook had hopped ashore. We could barely see him but he soon returned carrying a large trash bag. With a huge grin he announced he’d gathered polk salad greens and we’d be seeing them for dinner that night alongside fried chicken with all the fixin’s. The fog lifted and back out on the river it seemed like everyone had a story about polk salad. All day long people were arguing, good naturedly, but passionately, about what I don’t remember, but it all started with those greens.

Oops! The instructions were to start with a recipe. I only got as far as “food and memoir” and look where it took me, back to a foggy riverbank 50+ years ago, watching a cook emerge from the brush with a bag of wild greens and a story none of us would forget.

I’m looking forward to the workshop.