When Stefani Renee Thibodeaux Medley started her food blog, she wanted to share the complexity of Southern cuisine.
Her research led her to Michael Twitty.
I had no idea what to expect from the session and was a little nervous.
Simply Recipes / Amistad
Even though it was virtual, it felt like I had met long lost cousins.
It was that cooking gene.
The Cooking Gene is filled with the history you dont learn about in school.
It brought back memories of conversations I remember interloping on, where I would eavesdrop on grown folks conversations.
It shares the forgotten recipes I heard elders talking about.
It centers the art of oral storytelling.
It weaves the intersectionality of food, politics, health, and other social conditions.
It is a telling of our ancestors' story in a way that had not been told before.
In an excerpt of the book he writes:
Full confession: I am not dispassionate and unbiased.
All I ever really wanted was a recipe of who I am and where I come from.
I will forever be audasiously and unapologetically proud of that ancestral legacy, the cooking gene.
