FOOD

SUMMER 2020: Joyful Summers of Mourning

This season’s food gallery is a reflection on the light and darkness of summer, with foods, people, and media that have memories of offering relief and indulgence during times of sadness and distress. A cool down from a sometimes unwanted heat.

The creation of this gallery has accordingly come together during what is shaping up to be another hard summer, and is a bit chaotic and fragmented. Some of the galleries will have a lot of words, others will not. Some will make sense, others will not.

Also check out Gallery #1: Delicious Religious Conditioning

Featured

Aug 2, 2020

Chapter 3. Biscuits

Aug 2, 2020

Baking in the summer is a delight when you have A/C, but if you’re a masochist, you bake with only the windows open.

Aug 2, 2020

Chapter 2. Cucumber, Tomato, Mozzarella Salad

Aug 2, 2020

And the making of a salad without a kitchen.

Aug 2, 2020

Jul 19, 2020

Chapter 1. Fried Chicken

Jul 19, 2020

The glow of fried chicken bringing peace and resolve during self-isolation.

Jul 19, 2020

Jul 18, 2020

Introduction

Jul 18, 2020

Where do you find relief in sustained moments of distress.

Jul 18, 2020

P.S. Pinky promise to not have chicken in the next gallery!

Thank Goodness for the Internet

Although there were periods when we didn’t have internet in the house growing up, around the age of 11 we had access to the internet pretty consistently.

Before YouTube was a thing, I got my on-demand culinary education from visiting the Spatulatta website, which produced a web series by two kids name Isabella (above) and Olivia Gerasole, both of whom I idolized. Aside from their cute personalities and recipes, I also loved watching them for a portal into what it was like to live with an abundance of food without a million siblings.

The Spatulatta web series won them a James Beard Award in 2007 which made them even cooler in my book.

Video Source: Spatulatta (Yakitori Recipe)

American Girl Magazine Summer 2007

More often than not AG covers featured White girls, and while I didn’t know why seeing Black girls on the covers made me happy, it truly delighted me to see them even if they were predominantly Black girls with fair skin and loose curls.

AG Summer Issue

It just occurred to me that this “rainbow” issue came out during May/June, and I think this may have been after the time when there was some controversy with the conservative, christian home-schooling parents who heard that American Girl supported LGBTQ+ girls. I now wonder if this issue was kind of a jab at conservative subscribers.

The Care and Keeping of You Book

The Care & Keeping of Me

I kept a lot of journals as a kid. Most of them got destroyed when my family started moving around and a flood damaged a lot of the items we were storing at my grandpa’s shed. This was one of my favorite journals, and I wish I still had it to see if I’ve become some of the things I’d written down when imagining adulthood.

Alice!!

To say I was obsessed with the Alice series between the ages of 8-14 would have been an understatement. Books about Black girls going through puberty either didn’t exist or just wasn’t on my radar, and I wish there had been. However, Alice offered me a door into learning about sex and romantic relationships during a time when the internet wasn’t a thing.

Hallelujah! The Welcome Table

My mom originally borrowed this book from the library for herself, but I became obsessed with reading it, as well as reading other biographical cookbooks she was into (e.g. Cecilia Chang).

Literary Escapes

Summer was for reading and frequent trips to the library to stock up. Most of my favorite things to read usually covered the following:

“being a girl”/”becoming a woman” (yikes)
different food cultures/cooking
horror books (e.g. R.L. Stine)
crafty books like those from Klutz (which operates under Scholastics Publishers now)
random facts (e.g. encyclopedias, world record books, etc.)