until now

In the beginning:
Granny’s lemon tarts with their sour and sweet lemon curd filling and flaky butter-laden pastry shells that somehow crunched and melted in my mouth all at the same time.

There was also:
Ranch stew on school nights.
Mom’s grilled cheese.
Dad’s lentil soup.
Westminster fried chicken on Thursdays.
Dindo’s toffee walnut cookies*.

And of course:

Our small five and seven year old hands planting our first garden into the damp backyard Baltimore soil.
Baking “english muffin” bread every week from the same starter.

Good, bad and funny. (Our family’s nightly dinner conversation starter).
Watching my grandmothers entertain with flawless grace.
My ice cream birthday party.

And then there was Ohio. I moved to a one-horse, no-stop-light town snuggled into the intoxicatingly beautiful rolling hills of the Ohio farmland with a young bright-eyed view of the world.

In the summer, those Ohio hills shine bright lush chlorophyll green.
In the fall, they scream a I-can’t-stop-looking buttercup yellow.
In the winter, the sky tucks them in under glistening blankets of snow.

There I first ate strawberries out of the patch and tomatoes off the vine.
There I made batches and batches of strawberry jam with my farm mom Kate H.
There I stood in my garden with my bare feet digging into the warm July soil gathering sungold tomatoes with one hand and bunches of basil with the other.
There I learned that food could be work and work could be life and life could be food. 

And then there always was and is now the world and its tastes.
cascara atole.
gado gado.
pozole.
fresh squeezed o.j for five pesos.                                     (mexico)

korean coffee.
jeju tangerines.
friday afternoon jook (korean rice porridge).
samgyapsal (korean bbq-pork belly).
soondooboo (korean tofu soup).                                      (korea)

oysters for breakfast on the south african coast.
my first sip of stellenbosch pinotage.                             (south africa)

hendrick’s gin.
pho with d.
mendoza torrontes.
fernet branca.
knowing every.single.person. who grew my food.
really working in the trenches with food and drink, farms and farmers, chefs and sommeliers.                                                                             (atlanta)

*Once, while going through airport security en route to Atlanta for a visit, Dindo (my paternal grandmother) shared the aforementioned treasures with the vested security officers who insisted on peeking in the tupperware to “inspect” its contents.