Scuppernong

Roots

My mom was obsessed with whole foods before it was a hashtag. I suspect the arrival of the internet had something to do with it. Before that happened, in my earliest, most foggy of memories, I recall eating the processed foods that are deemed “American.” McDonalds, delivery pizza, soda. Yet amongst these memories I find the first sparks of curiosity about the universality of food, the link between food and culture. It was lit by my father.

In my mind’s eye I can still see the farm, somewhere in the countryside of Virginia. Pick-it-yourself, as my dad would say, meaning you load up empty crates with as much produce as you want and pay by the pound. My most vivid memory of these excursions was picking peaches, peaches so big and perfect you couldn’t help but eat them right there in the orchard. Nothing compares to the sweetness of a ripe peach straight from the tree, or the way the juice drips down your chin. You’ll need a good wash afterwards but it will be worth it.

We picked green beans, strawberries, pumpkins, and monstrous collard greens. The collard greens always took over our life for a few days. The giant stock pot in the kitchen would stay fixed on the stove, softening the tough leaves and infusing the air with the stench of vinegar and salt water, a scent that makes my mouth water with anticipation to this day.

When I think of the days “before”, the distinct magic of the Scuppernong grape comes to me. It’s a grape that I didn’t know was local to the southeast United States until now. Every now and then I find my mind drifting off to the taste of those grapes, a taste that I haven’t encountered in years but will remember forever.

While we labored in the sun collecting fruits and vegetables to our heart’s content, my dad would tell me stories. Stories about his first job, picking strawberries in the fields of Oregon when he was a little boy. He was paid 25 cents per crate, he told me. He wanted to buy a bicycle, I think. Thus came the first lesson my dad taught me about food: food requires work. It does not magically show up on the shelves of grocery stores. But that work is rewarded, and food will bring people together like nothing else in existence. As our family grew to the extended size of 12, (consisting of my two nieces, two nephews, two brothers, three sisters, my mom, dad and myself) this lesson became more and more important.

“Before” became “after.” For breakfast my mom made us pots of grits or cream of wheat, and for dinner she started making meals that revolved around a huge pot of steaming jasmine rice. Curry and vegetables, oven roasted chicken, pinto beans. Anyone familiar with a giant silver pot on the stove - slow simmering dinner all day - will know that what comes out may not look like much, but it will taste amazing, the scent of it warming the house well into the night.

Some kind of delicious bread always came with dinner. Sometimes homemade tortillas that my dad taught me to fry on the cast iron skillet. Sometimes a pan of cornbread and jam or piping hot naan bread that my mom served with butter. The bread was always my favorite part, and I was generally a “save the best for last” kind of person, unless second helpings were at stake.

My mom started tinkering with raw, whole foods, adopting a mindset that shaped family meals throughout our childhood. She would blend concoctions into green smoothies that always tasted a little bit like dirt but were refreshing and satisfying nonetheless. She started buying apple cider vinegar, a staple that has been in our house ever since. She started grinding buckwheat into flour for wholewheat bread. She started giving us vitamins and omega oils, and she swapped out our soy sauce for coconut aminos.

It wasn’t long after my memories really started “sticking” before we ended up leaving Virginia and moving to the land of my dad’s stories; Oregon, and the mystical Pacific Northwest. 20 years later I can say with some certainty that this single event was both the cause of so much confusion about my identity and the most important thing to ever happen to me. It was the first change in my life that drew me nearer to the truest nature of my parents - wanderlust.

Discomfort

Leaving my birthplace and heading west was the most adventurous thing to happen to me up until that point. We drove nearly 3,000 miles from coast to coast, my parents stopping along the way to make meals out of a steel box in the back of the car affectionately called “the kitchen.” It was strange eating the same things over and over again. On this trip I developed my first food aversion; Oatmeal. Flavorless, mushy, disgusting. I was anything but a picky eater but oatmeal was that one thing that I would not eat. I don’t think my dad’s stories of Navy oatmeal helped in that department.

While in Oregon we lived in a double-wide with my grandma and grandpa. That blistering hot summer was the most time I ever spent with my paternal grandparents. As the Pacific Northwest was my father’s childhood “stomping grounds”, something was awakened in him by the mountains, rivers and forests. Once, while driving in a remote area my father pulled the car to the side of the road and showed us that fresh blackberries grew there. My sister and I set about collecting as many as we could and proudly returned them to our grandmother, hands stained red and blue. She was quite impressed and proceeded to bake us a pie with them.

There are plenty of food memories floating around my mind where I can recall the actual taste of something. The Scuppernong grapes are a good example, even if I can’t put the taste into words. Yet for some reason the taste of the pie eludes me. I know it was still warm and a bit tart. The filling was not mushy or gelatinous like some store bought berry pies. Instead the berries held their shape, and you bit into the crisp, mountain breeze with every spoonful. It seemed like magic that something so good could be created in a few hours. My grandmother was a goddess, and I wanted to cook like her one day.

We spent six months with my grandparents, and then made the trek back across the country to Maine. We got to Maine right before winter descended, staying in a little vacation town called Old Orchard Beach. During the winter the beach past the pier was deserted and empty, the sky usually gray and foggy. On these shores my dad taught us how to hunt for clams, although I’m almost certain we didn’t end up eating them.

It was in Maine that I drank my first cup of coffee. It was the coldest hours before the crack of dawn. I was eight years old. My dad was getting ready for work, and I was up. He poured me a cup, a little bit of milk turning the brew to the color of leather and muddy waters. It had a hint of cinnamon, the way my dad liked it. That first sip was all it took. I was hooked for life.

When we lived in Maine my mom was always baking. My mom can cook anything but there’s nothing she does better than bake. She always said that it’s good to bake in the winter so the oven can warm the house. During this period my mom didn’t obsess with whole foods or go to the health food store. We existed in the path of least resistance. She told me later that the winter made her depressed.

My Hometown

In the spring, after a year of uncertainty, we left Maine and drove to Florida. Florida was to my mom as Oregon was to my father; away from the cold my mom seemed to thaw and come back to life. Her curiosity about whole foods returned, and suddenly our kitchen was never without white buckets of bulk palm and coconut oil and honey with the honeycomb on top, which she would scoop out with a spoon and dip pecans into to eat as a snack. She swapped sugar for stevia and maple syrup, parmesan cheese for nutritional yeast, and sprinkled kelp flakes on everything. She eliminated high fructose corn syrup and food colorings from our diet completely.

There was one habit she could not kick. My mom always seemed to be trying to “quit coffee.” Sometimes she would switch to decaf, sometimes she would stop drinking it all together for a little while. During those stints is when I discovered tea. Of course in Florida, sweet iced tea is the top tier drink, an ever present reality in southern households. This community addiction spares no age, race or religion. But I can still remember my mom bringing Yerba Mate home to run away from her true love, coffee, consequently starting a whole new craze in our household.

Every chance she got she fed us fresh fruit. Often it was star fruit from the tree in the front yard or oranges from our neighbor who always shared at harvest. Whatever wasn’t eaten was juiced and devoured immediately. The result was basically liquid gold. The fruit became popular with the neighbor kids too, and my mom always made sure to have enough for everyone. My favorite was watermelon, which she would carry onto the lanai and cut into triangles. She always sprinkled salt on it. I didn’t understand how she came to think of such a thing but the taste of this combination is so exquisite I decided it didn’t matter how it came to be. I should have asked, though, since she told us stories everyday. She told us the story of why our grandmother was a vegetarian (pigs crying real tears on the way to slaughter) and the story of how she learned to cook (borrowing dozens of library books while my dad was out at sea.) Most of the time though, she told us stories of how hungry she was when she was a child and the people who gave her food.

She started encouraging us to make our own foods; I remember asking for Cheez-Its in the grocery store and her telling me to make them at home, which I did with decent results. With her egging us on, my sisters and I experimented with all kinds of baking. We grew a garden and collected okra for seafood gumbo, cucumbers for pickles, and basil for pesto. When we discovered 4H my mom was all too willing to let us raise dairy goats and chickens. We learned to make yogurt from goat’s milk, everyday we had fresh eggs, and eventually my siblings learned how to butcher chickens themselves, an activity I would take no part in.

My dad would bring home white fish to smoke and hunt wild boar with his buddies. Cooking the boar always made the house smell disgusting but it was too delicious not to eat when it was done.

When my siblings, nieces, nephews and I became teenagers it became a morning and evening routine to brew a pot of coffee and mix a little bit of Hazelnut flavored Coffee Mate creamer into it. We usually had an obsession with whipped cream as well. I don’t know how we would drink coffee so late and still go to school in the morning, but we would. We would come home from work, school, sports or band, and congregate in the kitchen, waiting for the pot to drip the last drop so we could be brought back to life.

This became our family tradition. A cup of coffee, or two, or three. A trip to Starbucks drive-through together when we are having a bad day. A fresh pot brewed in the morning.

Coffee, in my family, is sacred and beloved.

Since moving away from my parent’s house I have experienced more new food than I could have ever imagined. I have immersed myself as much as I possibly can into the food of Hawai’i. But it was Florida that drew me closer to food to begin with. I connected with Mother Nature and the food I ate like never before, using all of the random skills and quirks instilled in me by my parents. These days created the food culture I think of when I try to put myself into a category. When I’m homesick, it is the strange combination of southern produce, foreign spices and mom’s incessant need to eat as raw as possible that I dream of. When I really miss my family I catch myself wondering if they are drinking coffee at the same time as I am, thousands of miles away, and I think about my mom as I tell myself daily I need to cut the caffeine.