Tag: Food Is Love

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.

Chicken and Dressing – Free Download

Considering the holidays, and some folks, due to no fault of their own, not knowing how to make cornbread dressing properly – I saw where one lady said she was gonna use Jiffy Cornbread Mix in hers! – my members are making a draft chapter of my narrative cookbook, Food Is Love, available for free download.

It gives you the story behind my memories of Chicken and Dressing and includes recipes for Southern AF cornbread, as well as Chicken and Dressing (and a variation if you want to use pork sausage, like my momma does, instead).

I’m working on a book full of meals and stories like these, and if you want to know how to support that work, get early draft copies of chapters like this in your inbox, and more, you should become a member – you can learn more about that here. If you just want to thank me, you can buy me a cup of coffee or share this post with a friend.

You can download the free PDF file here – no tricks, no spam, and no need to surrender your email address. It’s a pure gift.

I hope your holidays are marvelous, and that you get to celebrate them with the people you love.

Food is love.

If I were to make a list of the things I know for sure, that food is love would be one of them.

I have known that since I was old enough to know anything. That the secret ingredient in the biscuits Aunt Monty stood in front of the counter and rolled out every day of her life was pure love. That the tender pot roast after church on Sunday was as sincere a sign of my mother’s affection as she was capable of making. That I have never felt as at home in the world as I did all those years ago, in the fellowship hall of Emory Methodist Church, eating Miss VanHook’s chicken and dumplings.

I come from working-class stock. We did not have money for vacations or new cars or even health insurance, but by God, we could have green beans seasoned right and biscuits fit for gods and jelly that came from the efforts of women who loved you sweating over a kettle in the heat of summer.

It was the way people who loved me but didn’t have a lot of tools to express that love, showed it.

I don’t believe I am alone in that. I have polled large groups of people, and always end up with the same results: If I were to ask you your favorite memories of people you loved who are now gone, most of the time, those memories involve food.

Because food is love. It is the product of love, and it’s how we show love, and it’s how we feel love.

So, I’m writing a book about that. It’s a cookbook, in the sense that it will have recipes, but it’s also a book of stories because the stories give meaning and context to the food.

This has no commercial potential. Rachael Ray will not have some dude from MS on her show to talk about sausage gravy and the way it felt when his family had driven 8 hours through the night to get to his grandparent’s house and the weary travelers were groggy and sleepy but a hot breakfast was waiting on them.

But because I have members who support my work, I don’t have to worry about that. So I’m gonna publish it myself, with the financial support and encouragement of my members.

More information coming soon.

(Revised for accuracy and changing circumstances on 10/11/25)