How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
—Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

Like my grandmother, I have spent most of my adult life making my way to the kitchen — or thinking about what I’m going to do in it from somewhere else in the house, neighborhood, or city. As you may have guessed, this newsletter is about her. I haven’t written much about food this year, but death and loss have a way of bringing us back to what’s important. She was a second mom to me and helped crack me open to the wide world around me at so many junctions in my life. I lived with my Grandma for six years while I finished college and wouldn’t be who I am today without her. We weren’t ready to let her go, but she left us nonetheless on June 29, 2023, peacefully in her own bed in the house where she lived for almost 60 years.

The way my Grandma lived her life gave everything around her significance and sparked excitement and connection with everyone she encountered. She grew up in Chicago, but she acquired most of what she knows about food from her own curious creativity, a hungry Louisiana husband, and a very gracious mother-in-law who spent her life entertaining and feeding her family and community.

My Grandma continued that tradition with her own family, and eventually her grandchildren. My sister and I spent summers with my grandparents in Baton Rouge; swimming, doing chores, going to day camps, and learning how to cook from my grandmother. We would have post-breakfast meetings with Grandma to discuss what we wanted to make for dinner. Though at times our requests got vetoed, deferred to a later date, or morphed into just making hamburger helper (which we loved). We also rolled homemade pasta with her, baked cakes from scratch, and made stir fry in a big wok. We set the table every night while my grandparents had a cocktail (either a dry gin martini or an old-fashioned). We grilled chicken and fish with my grandfather on an old Weber grill (later balanced inside of a broken patio chair after its legs had rusted off - we don’t throw things away in this family, it still worked).

Sometimes we consulted a 1976 edition of the Better Homes and Gardens cooking encyclopedia – a physical, 18-volume set of books she kept and actively used in her library, and from which we still make “Favorite Pancakes.”

Sometimes inspiration came from a cooking show (which was often the television programming of choice until Jeopardy, local news, or Seinfeld interrupted), or myriad magazines, periodicals, or tutorial books my grandmother actively collected from the early 1960s until the day she died. They are all still there in her house. Used cookbooks made good birthday presents for us. I still have a 1956 Betty Crocker cookbook that she gave me. I struggled through it on my own in my parents’ kitchen in New Orleans. Since my mom loathes cooking and my dad worked long hours in the National Guard, I happily volunteered to make myriad dinners through high school (some better than others). I even made baguettes for my how-to speech in 10th grade and hoarded copies of Food & Wine magazine that came to our house as a freebie from one of my parents’ credit cards.

I spent many days between college semesters in the kitchen with grandma, especially after my grandfather passed away in 2004. She let me host dinners for friends, classmates, and coworkers while she disappeared to the back of the house and made rare appearances as “The Gmaw,” which my friends affectionately called her. She devoured books in her later years and traveled as much as she could (even taking me to London at the young age of 84). She admired wit and style and brains more than anything. She helped answer the phones on Mondays at the old church downtown (St. Agnes) and spent time with other folks her age (or older) who might otherwise feel lonely.

I moved home to help take care of her after a stroke in late 2020 - and ironically found myself maintaining her household and cooking for her daily. She was always appreciative of anything we did to help her - especially if it meant getting out of the house to listen to live music or eating something really special. She made everything fun.

Grandma always did what was right and made sure to sit in the back so she could cut up and get to the bar first. She always told me that you aren’t better than anyone else, but you’re just as good as the next guy. She also said that she majored in “fun” when she went to (and flunked out of) college. She married a kind, smart boy from Louisiana because she knew she wasn’t always kind. She saved so she could buy nice things and helped her family and friends when they needed it. She celebrated our achievements and always expressed her opinion (even if it was unpopular amongst recipients).

She loved to dance and could always find a song to sing for any occasion (and would serenade the nearest pair of ears, unsolicited). She mowed her own lawn until she was almost 75 and believed that wine tasted better when it was on sale. She was punctual to a fault and always made time for her grandchildren and a martini.

Though she has left us, her legacy lives on through her children and grandchildren. I hope my writing captures her infectious love for life. I hope to make adventurous cooking, learning about food, and sharing those experiences with others an exciting, accessible, and life-long endeavor - the way my grandmother did for me. She was 89. We loved her dearly and feel lost without her. But her spirit and tenacity live on in all of us, and in that we will always have her.

My sister and I make these often. They put me right in my grandma’s kitchen and are very special to all of us.

There’s something about a pancake that feels celebratory - I mean you are eating something called ‘cake’ for breakfast after all. They have a way of connecting people. We add lemon zest and vanilla to the original recipe - but the rest holds true to the original 1976 version from my grandma’s Better Homes and Gardens Food Encyclopedia.