Happy Friday, Blue Roomies, and Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate!
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because there’s no gift-giving involved; the food and the relationships are the gifts, and those things are most fully enjoyed in the moment. Yet they’re also timeless: food connects us with culture, history, community, and creatureliness (ya gotta eat!).
In that spirit, I’m excited to share that my friend Derrick Weston has co-written a book!
Derrick is a longtime friend of the Blue Room, especially the podcast—he’s appeared in three different episodes. His co-author, Anna Woofenden, is also a stellar human; their Food & Faith Podcast is always fascinating and nourishing. (I was a guest some time ago!)
This week, in advance of the U.S.’s Great Food Holiday, I’m sharing a Q&A and an excerpt from their book, The Just Kitchen: Invitations to Sustainability, Cooking, Connection, and Celebration. Let’s celebrate with Derrick and Anna, and also pay it forward. Share this post with a friend…
And/or leave a comment with your favorite Thanksgiving food, and you’ll be entered in a drawing for a copy of The Just Kitchen. And I’ll throw in a copy of Hope: A User’s Manual for good measure.
Take it away, Derrick!
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1. What inspired you to write this book?
When I came onboard as a co-host of the Food and Faith podcast, I mentioned to Anna and the other co-host at the time Sam Chamelin, that while there were a lot of episodes about how food is produced sustainably and quite a few about what happens around the table, there was very little said about cooking and the liminal space that the kitchen can be. When we received the opportunity to write a book, Anna and I saw that gap in the literature and thought maybe we could fill it.
2. What will people gain by reading this book that they won’t get elsewhere?
We’ve been clear from the beginning, this is not a cookbook... It’s a book about cooking. We want people to approach cooking with intention and attention. I think that’s what’s here that maybe isn’t in other books. We’re asking people to think about the ways that cooking connects them to neighbor, creation, God, and self.
3. What story/section of the book means the most to you?
That’s a tough one. I feel like it’s changing all of the time. At the moment, and you will probably connect with this, the part that is resonating most strongly is the final chapter on hope. We talk about composting. The rest of the book is very invitational and gracious. It’s only in this last chapter that we’re prescriptive at all. People should compost! Not only is it one of the best things we can do for the planet (if enough of us do it), but it is so rich with spiritual metaphors. I think in this season where life feels so chaotic, we need reminders of life coming up from the destruction and decay.
4. What’s a challenge (personal or professional) you had to overcome to get this book written or published?
I feel like I have had a charmed experience for my first book. I have so many author friends who have had horror stories. Broadleaf was a joy to work with and Anna was an awesome co-author. The biggest thing for me to overcome, and I’m still working on this, was the belief that no one wanted to hear what I have to say. The feeling that there is so much noise in the world and one more book just adds to the noise... that scared me. I think that’s why the format of the book is so important to me. In no way do we claim to be experts. We share stories, ours and those of people that we respect, and we offer invitations to different modes of being in the world. But, with the exception of composting, we offer all of those things lightly. I still feel like a fraud. [Derrick: join the club! -MAMD] No part of me feels like an “expert.” But at some point I had to talk myself into believing that I had something to offer. I’m still doing that, a month after the release!
5. What’s saving your life lately?
Ross Gay’s The Book of More Delights, apple cider, wrestling with Wendell Berry’s The Need to Be Whole, the start of seed catalog season, season 2 of Loki, autumn-themed cocktails. That’s a few things. [Couldn’t agree more on Loki! -MAMD]
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And here’s an excerpt from the book:
When you are young, food is food. It never would have crossed my mind as a kid to think of “Black” foods and “white” foods, but as I got older, and got to peek into more of my suburban white friends’ kitchens, it slowly dawned on me that what was happening in the kitchens of my youth was the preparation of Black food. Along with that realization came questions about the value of what was happening in my kitchen. Internalized racism asks, “If white people aren’t doing it, does that make it inferior?” Such questions didn’t linger, because what was coming out of the Black kitchens of my younger days was delicious! Though I ceased questioning the merit of the food itself, I was left with the observation that what was happening in our kitchen was a part of who we are, and that had value.
Over time, our family’s kitchen would become more “white.” Maybe a better way of saying that is that our kitchen became more middle-class American. More frozen things, more prepackaged things, more instant things. As time in the kitchen became more of a luxury for everyone in the house, convenience took precedence over culture. The casualty of this convenience was the loss of generational memory of what happens in Black kitchens. At some point, we lost sight of the kitchen as a place to preserve our culture. This, it seems, happens to a lot of us, regardless of race.
Though both my brother and I experimented and treasured our foods, our attempts to make fried chicken like our mom’s ended in grease fires. We wouldn’t have named it as such, but those failures were an attempt at keeping something of our past alive. I’m just now learning what to do with collard greens, thanks to the volumes on Black cooking. (I insist on growing them every year . . . for the ancestors.)
My early twenties were a blur of fast food. My late twenties and early thirties, though, were a time of slowly reintroducing myself to the kitchen space. I imagined myself a large-event chef, using as many pots and pans as possible to create elaborate meals (at least by my standards). That’s also when I began to love cooking shows. And let’s not forget the grill! I was thirty when I got my first grill. Grilling is an oddly gendered activity, an acceptable way to cook and still be manly. Though I’ve become suspicious of the gender dynamics that exist around cooking over fire, I still love grilling. And while the grill is outside, I consider it an extension of the kitchen.
Over the last decade, my cooking has been paired with an increased love of gardening, which has included an appreciation for African American contributions to the agriculture of this country. My interests now are around what cooking says about the people and cultures represented in the kitchen. I love shows like Chef’s Table and Ugly Delicious, and anything with the late Anthony Bourdain. Cooking has become for me a way of getting to know people, their history, and their values. This includes my own heritage. Some foods represent struggle and oppression. Others represent resilience and ingenuity. Still others represent celebration and victory. And you can have all of those experiences represented on one plate!
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What I’m Up To
I’m preaching this Sunday at 10:15 at Trinity Presbyterian Church, Herndon VA, in person and via livestream.
I did a new thing with supporting subscribers this week–a five-minute video sharing a favorite tidbit about anxiety and the brain. More videos and content to come on this topic.
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Link Love
I’m obsessed with a new Reddit community called What Is My Cookie Cutter. People share pics of their indecipherable cookie cutters, and others draw in what they think they are. For example:
could be dancing Jesus:
or Scoob:
You decide!
Happy Thanksgiving.
Steady on.
Green bean casserole. I make it with sliced almonds and canned French sliced green beans I don’t measure and add the cream of mushroom soup along with the milk and pepper. Then the French fried onions. I make enough so I’ll have leftovers for a week. I can eat it cold or hot. I don’t know why I don’t make it during the year. Maybe this year will be different!
When I saw the title this morning, it made me smile. The kitchen is mostly my domain in this family of 6, with 3 generations trying to coexist.
Sometimes I feel invisible and what I do is mostly irrelevant. Keeping the dishes washed and put away, food bought and prepared, the refrigerator cleared out, trash out, water filter changed, and the list goes on. These seem important to me but few others. I get it, the part about doing your work for the Lord😊
But day to day, sometimes it’s hard. What happens in the kitchen DOES matter!!