From Her Kitchen to Mine

The Power of Food to Connect the World

Photo by No Revisions on Unsplash

She stood in my kitchen 7,600 miles from her home. She smashed bananas, mixed in oil and eggs. She explained how she always adds vanilla and salt even though the Clueless in the Kitchen recipe doesn’t suggest it. I remember my now-recycled copy with oil stains on wrinkled pages and tell her, “I never trust a baking recipe without salt.” I am not as clueless as I was when she gifted me the cookbook during my first year of marriage to her son.

Flour made a small mountain in the bowl intended for dry ingredients. Sue paused with shoulders hunched over the counter. Her hands clutched the granite base holding up her jet-lagged frame. “I have had this memorized for years. I don’t know why I can’t think of whether it takes baking soda or baking powder.” Muscle memory may be dependent on time and place. Perhaps also adequate sleep.

I pulled both contenders out of the spice cabinet and slid them through a puddle of spilled milk. We talked through the properties of each and went back and forth on which might be the necessary addition. Finally, I pulled up a blog from the early 2000s spelling out the recipe in Comic Sans. With a light hand, she smacked her forehead and said, “I should have known.”

She slipped the loaf pan into the preheated oven. 45 minutes later, the aromas of sugared vanilla and overripe banana filled each cobwebbed corner of our flat. No Yankee candle can compete with the slow reveal of flavors unfurling from baking sweets.

She noted how the finished loaf sunk in the middle, evidence of our ranges not operating exactly the same or the ingredients having slight differences in quality. We shared the treat at brunch, and no one paused the feast long enough to notice. Butter covers a multitude of sins.

I finished the last slice this morning, reckoning with the reality of being left on the other side of the world. Honored to live among the family we’ve found, at home in our host country, happy to have my feet on the ground. Yet, feeling the sting of abandonment just the same. Tight hugs never equate a year of connection.

As our departed family flies over oceans, I crush banana pulp between the prongs of a fork. My hands shake with over-caffeination since we didn’t share the full pot of coffee with anyone else this morning. My sigh makes a layered chorus with the whisk scraping the steel mixing bowl. Oil merges with eggs. The batter thickens as I fold in sifted flour. I check the recipe she sent to my e-mail the day before. Oh yes, it was baking soda.

I will write, “From Grandma’s Kitchen” at the top of the recipe card I borrow from my daughter’s stash. I will cut the confection longways down the middle before making horizontal cuts. This doubles the pleasure— a single serving looks like two. Maybe I learned from her. Maybe I stepped into the habit as I sloughed off my cluelessness and created routines to ground our family here.

Still finding my way, I started Cooking Club with my mother-in-law and sisters-in-law, one serving in Japan, one church-planting in Taiwan, and one breaking the glass ceiling in Cincinnati. Each Thursday, we made the same dinner recipe from the Skinnytaste website. One of our members was dieting, and the rest of us were surprised how good the cilantro lime fish tacos and unstuffed cabbage rolls were.

The Asia girls were 12 hours ahead of schedule, sending pictures of grilled bourbon chicken and fried rice to Stateside members eating bagels and getting ready for work. We compared notes in a Facebook messenger group. We staged amateur photos of pasta dishes and once-a-month desserts while our hungry families waited for permission to eat the food.

Cobbling the ingredients together in the third world was a scavenger hunt. My texts told the story of my shopping woes. Instead of lime, I used lemon. Instead of canned tomatoes, I used fresh. I couldn’t find poultry seasoning, so I made my own. Did anyone else make homemade gnocchi?

We cackled over flops and fails and flooded our messages with emoji-laden texts when the results exceeded our expectations. We gave our tips: Double the salt. Don’t forget to cook off the flour before adding chicken stock. The peach cobbler took an extra ten minutes in my oven. READ THE RECIPE BEFORE YOU START COOKING.

And more than any other time during my era overseas, I was connected to family. Even when we couldn’t sit around one table, we savored the same flavors. The scents sailing from the stoves in our distanced kitchens wrapped our sagging shoulders in memories of holiday meals passing around Mom’s party potatoes.

I scraped the last crumb from my plate with the side of a fork still holding bits of clingy scrambled eggs. At once I remembered and shared a long forgotten link. I wrapped up fresh loaves of banana bread, perhaps without salt and vanilla, to neighbors in Civil Homes before returning to the States for home assignment. I wanted to say, “I will remember you. I will miss your daily presence,” but my language wasn’t strong enough yet. The sweet cake¹ spoke for me. A shared recipe became a warm hug to a global neighbor from a grandmother across oceans.

What a marvel.

We are all on mission to love and serve our fellow humans, designed to connect in meaningful ways for the glory of God. There are few better ways to join hands than to pass the plate.

We can close the distance between us and our sisters, between us and our neighbors with the magnetic properties of butter and sugar. Passing coffee cups through puddles of spilled milk, we will sip the pleasure of God’s favor filling the room. God’s grace is best received with food and drink.

Take encouragement from my kitchen, emptied out after a busy season:

Comfort your tender heart with the daily bread of delicious memories. Stand tall in your sunlit pantry, blessing those who lift the sunken middle, who roll out a straight line from their home to yours. Adorn the recipe from Grandma’s Kitchen with a brand new smudge and relish the gift of emotional connection through physical nourishment.

I want to hear from you:

• Tell me about a time food closed the distance between you and another person.

• Share your favorite family recipe with me.

• Do you use cookbooks, blogs, or passed-down recipes?

• Make a plan to minister to someone through hospitality this week, and share the results.

On that note, I recommend:

1. The Cook’s Book by Bri McKoy

2. The Life Giving Table by Sally Clarkson

   

   Banana Bread
   From Grandma’s Kitchen*

   Ingredients:

   1 1/4 cup flour

   1 cup sugar (I use 3/4)

   1 teas. Baking soda

   2 eggs

   2 ripe bananas

   1/2 cup oil

   1 teas. Vanilla ( I just guesstimate)

   Dash salt

   Directions:

   Smash bananas, mix in sugar. Add eggs, oil, vanilla. Mix.

   Add flour, baking soda, and salt. Mix. Bake in loaf pan for 50 to 60 minutes. Cool in pan for 10 minutes then remove and cool on baking rack.
   
   *This recipe was adapted from Clueless in the Kitchen by Evelyn Raab

1. Calling something that resembles cake ‘bread’ is endlessly confusing to our local friends.