Food Is Love—The Book

In December of 2021, I wrote a blog post about biscuits. I had been on a long road trip, coming home from a friend’s memorial service, and I was all in my feelings. I stopped for a biscuit at a fast-food joint.

As I drove home, staring at the gray asphalt in front of me, I thought about how, in the midst of my deep sadness, I sought comfort not in a whiskey bottle, or illicit chemicals, or retail therapy, or any of the other ways our society connects with its feelings, but instead, I sought out a biscuit.

This led me to reflecting on all the ways food and memory and feeling are intertwined—how safe I felt at that potluck dinner in that church basement, how loved I was when mom made my favorite meal, the comfort at having the same three deserts at every family celebration.

It occurred to me that food is love, and that I have known this as long as I have known anything. The people who loved me in the rural hill country of Mississippi didn’t have many tools to show that love, but, by God, they could make sure I was fed food that nurtured my soul as well as my body. We might not have health insurance or name-brand clothes, but we could have cobblers and fudge pies and biscuits that flake like a pastry from Paris does.

After a long hard day at work, a pot of beans and ham and a slice of rustic cornbread give you strength to get up tomorrow, to take care of the people you love. And the health, energy, rejuvenation and even joy that comes from simple food, prepared well and with love and intention, can give downtrodden people enough margin in their lives to keep going and sometimes inch forward, even when everything around them seems to conspire against them. 

So, I wrote a book about that.

It’s 30 essays about food, love, and care. Interspersed, there are 25 recipes of foods that matter to me, and that have stories attached to them. Along the way, you will learn how to season a cast-iron skillet, the makings of a perfect barbecue bologna sandwich, and we will go hunting for muscadines in the thicket so we can make jelly.

But mostly, I hope this book will help you reflect on the foods that are tied to memories for you, and that take you back to the people you love, again and again.

You can buy a signed copy from me, or get an unsigned paperback of Food is Love at Bookshop.org, Amazon , on Kindle, or at Barnes & Noble. You should also be able to order directly from your local independent bookstore.