A Practical Walk

I don’t quite know how to put this into words, but something happens in my family when I cook certain meals. Last night I “cooked” creole etouffee sauce (it was already made sauce I found really cheap). I served it over rice.

Even though we’d never had this particular sauce before, it reminded us of African meals. No wonder, because African cooking is one of the influencers in this cuisine. The way my kids kept saying it smelled good, the way my husband ate it. I could just tell they were enjoying it, but it felt like more than “this is a yummy meal on my tastebuds” kind of thing. It felt like “this is feeding my soul, it feels like Africa, a place that has formed so much of who we are.”

Last week I made African peanut sauce. It’s the first time I’ve made it in the 8 months we’ve been back. Which is a long time for me, I made it multiple times a month when we lived there. While I was cooking it I had a sad tugging on my heart, I guess it was grief over missing Africa.

Food’s a funny thing and the memories and feelings it evokes.