Tag: Food

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.

The secret ingredient

Trader Joe’s sells mushroom powder, which is the secret ingredient in a lot of my recipes where you need an umami kick. In gravy, in soups, roasts…. anywhere you might use mushrooms.

Sadly, there is no Trader Joes for hours from us, so whenever we are in a town that has one, we stop in with our list of Trader Joe’s essentials.

Long slow suppers

Hi there. Each week I will post an excerpt of one of the thousands of things I’ve written in the last 25 years, and then follow it up with some modern context or point of view. Today’s piece from the archives was from my newsletter, and was written in summer of 2019. Enjoy! – HH

One consequence to the amazing sort of life I have had the good fortune to lead is that I know, and have gotten to work with, a lot of all different sorts of people who live all over the world. And this last week, one of those people happened to be in Jackson, MS, where I live, and so we had him over for dinner.

Eating with people is one of my most important spiritual practices. When I say things like that, I know I risk losing some people, but it’s true. I believe the Divine, the Universe, God, whatever you want to use as a metaphor for the organizing principle of the universe, is known in a unique way when we share a meal with another person.

So, when I found out Melvin was in town, then of course we will have him over for dinner. After all, our house was picked out with that in mind. The meal wasn’t fancy – red beans and rice, with a simple cobbler and good vanilla ice cream for dessert – but the experience of a long, slow dinner with lots of laughter, plotting future goodness, and sharing our victories and failures since we last laid eyes on each other was priceless.

His coworker thanked us for inviting her, and for the meal. And then, as sometimes happens, I said something off the cuff that was the right thing, and true.

“I think that we all agree that in the better world we dream of, there would be lots of meals like this one was. But the thing is, we don’t have to wait for that better world to come about – we can have those meals now. And by doing that, we build the better world we dream of.”

Here is to more long, slow suppers, and to the building of a better world.

Six years later…

COVID was 9 months away from kicking our ass when I wrote this. We went three years where we didn’t have anyone who didn’t live here at our table. And we were much poorer for it.

It may just be me, but I think the pandemic broke something in our fabric. I don’t get invited to peoples houses for supper nearly as much as I did before the pandemic. I hear that from other people too. And I think we are poorer for it.

Ross Barnett Reservoir

It was a beautiful, unseasonably warm day, so we went to the Chimneyville Arts Festival at the Waller Craft Center. Afterwards, we went to lunch at Cock of the Walk, which sits on the Reservoir named for our racist former governor.

I love the reservoir – it’s one of the best things about living here. But I really wish they would change that name, though.

Jose’s

For our Friday Date Night, we went to Jose’s Mexican in Pearl. They have great tamales (seen), and good prices. It’s a family business, and we get treated like royalty. We don’t spend much money in the suburbs, but we make an exception for Jose’s.

Moving from Raleigh (where there are many great Mexican food options) to here (where there were not) was a difficult transition, but once we found Jose’s, we quit looking for other options.

We found it based on a recommendation from one of my Dad’s friends. who mentioned it at Dad’s memorial service. That I get to eat regularly at a place he enjoyed makes it more enjoyable – like another way we can connect.