GARNISH
By Amy Rogers
Everything is a food story.
The simplest bowl of soup when a child is sick.
The humblest meal made for you by the person who cherishes you most.
The lushest of desserts to celebrate when you are in love.
The tomato you grow with the wormhole in it.
The honey a beekeeper scrapes from thick combs and packs into jars, so you can taste clover and heather in the cold months to come.
The bumpy, misshapen satsuma oranges and Meyer lemons, at the same time both too fragile and too ugly to sell in stores, fruits that reach their peak sweetness as November gives way to December in Florida.
The blueberries and basil I can’t grow, no matter how I try, when I move for the third time in eight years and try, yet again, to learn how to garden.
The pomegranate seeds that I scatter atop a dish, the prettiest possible signature, because a garnish adds color and style – and it invites you to partake, which is the reason I do it.
The recipe card box that belonged to my mother, that’s traveled with me through dozens of moves over thousands of miles in the fifty years that’s she’s been gone.
The parsnip in the chicken soup my sister makes and brings to me in glass Mason jars when I come down with COVID, because everyone uses carrots and onions and celery but hardly anyone goes still buys the lowly parsnips we remember from our mother and nanas’ kitchens.
Everything is a food story.
It is SNAP, the supplemental nutrition assistance program for millions of Americans, although for many of them, it’s not a supplement. It’s their only money to buy food.
It’s the “WE ACCEPT SNAP” signs at convenience stores, which are the only stores to buy groceries for my rural neighbors in places where Publix and Kroger won’t build.
It’s the dignity of benefits loaded onto an EBT card so you no longer need to tear food stamp coupons out of a stapled booklet while busybody shoppers make assumptions or rude remarks.
It is massive palettes of canned beans and greens, as the lift gate on the truck lowers them, groaning from their weight, onto the driveway at Victory House food bank, where volunteers break down each box, then sort and bag and pack and load the food into cars that line up at dawn on distribution days.
Everything is a food story.
The memories of meals, wherever you call home. And when you venture far from that place, it’s the street food you find: the dumplings, poutine, banh mi. Elotes, arepas, gelato, falafel. Chaat. The sizzle, the smell, the sputter of fat over charcoal.
The Mediterranean groves of green olives, pressed into oil. Their bottles uncorked, and poured into pans and heated till shimmering, releasing their fragrance, grassy and warm, into kitchens on every continent.
The spice blend of sumac and thyme, called za’atar, that women grow and harvest and package and ship around the world from their small farm in the Levant, where they work side-by-side, despite religious and political differences and the strife that surrounds us.
It is the chick pea, Cicer arietinum in Latin. Or the Egyptian pea, the Bengal gram, the Hindi chaná. Pois chiche in French, hommos in Hebrew and Arabic, garbanzo in Spanish, ceci in Italian.
The garlic, the lemon, the salt; the sesame seeds ground into paste called tahini, items so plain on their own but when blended together – transform – into a dish so sublime, everyone wants to claim it as their own.
Everything is a food story.
The bowl, the spoon, the whisk, the knife; the hand that grasps them, year after year, now weak with age but still strong with purpose, because that purpose is to reach out and feed and sustain each other, no matter what life may bring or may take away, on this day, or on any day.
Everything is a food story.
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