Recipes and the Family Kitchen
Celebrating the heart of the home and the new season of Your Mama’s Kitchen podcast
It’s an experience many of us can relate to: when people come over for dinner, everyone ends up congregating in the kitchen—where the action and the enticing aromas are prior to the meal getting under way. Connection and cooking mingle there among the stirred pots and salad being tossed, bread sliced, glasses of wine poured, quick catch-ups while something’s finishing up in the oven—all with anticipation of a delicious evening to be shared.
When we remodeled our kitchen eight years ago, we did away with an annoying little peninsula of counter with overhead cabinets that left a hunk of minimally-usable kitchen space in front of a window. In its place, we now have a large woodblock counter (with a couple stools) where every party at our house starts, usually covered with bowls and plates of snacks as preamble to whatever’s next.
Only recently did I realize that those couple of stools at the counter echo the kitchen of my childhood home. We rarely ate in the “formal” dining room with its high ceilings and heavy furniture. Instead we’d perch in a stool at the area that extended out from the kitchen counter for most of our family meals. That may be why I’m drawn to one of my kitchen’s stools every morning, where I sit to read the newspaper, sip coffee, eat breakfast, and chat with my husband before the work day gets underway.
A breadth of memories, experiences, and associations can be tied to the kitchen, originally given the practical purpose of storing and preparing food. That its practical function has given way to housing, for many of us, such a core essence of who we are is an interesting reflection of the role food and cooking play in our lives.
So much starts there, in the kitchen.
Which makes the central premise of Your Mama’s Kitchen so genius. Launched in August of 2023 by journalist Michele Norris, I was hooked from episode one. And not only because of my natural affinity for anything ‘kitchen.’ It’s Norris’ innate ability to draw rich conversations from her guests that has made every episode a great listen.
Norris begins each episode with this request for her guests: “Tell me about your mama’s kitchen.” From there, the conversations can go in a thousand different directions: you just never know what kinds of topics are going to come up, what types of reflections and insights will be shared. Whether you’re going to laugh, or cry, or both. Often it’s the guests themselves who are surprised along the way, the unexpected memories and emotions that are stirred up.
The new season launched this week with an episode featuring Stephen and Evie Colbert who co-authored Does This Taste Funny: Recipes Our Family Loves, released in the fall. They share memories of their childhood kitchens, how they met and their cooking life as a couple, as well as reflect on Evie’s mom’s cheese biscuits that play a meaningful role in their lives.
“Honoring their mothers … and giving a gift to their children so they will always have these memories and these recipes going forward.” That’s how Norris describes the book at one point, encapsulating exactly the impetus of preserving recipes that motivates so many of us. Drawing from and honoring the past, tending to and appreciating those recipes in the present, so that the recipes and their stories can be carried forward into the future.
The kitchen-related stories shared on the podcast are not all cooking related, since so much of life is lived in that room, or at least passes through and intersects with it to some degree. Family dynamics, studying, playing games, intense discussions, dreams shared, comfort offered, crazy antics, along with the simple art of just getting by, one day at a time. Rich and varied, these stories are.
But yes, there’s plenty of conversation about food and cooking, too. In the episode featuring comedian Leslie Jones, she mentions calling her grandmother to get a recipe. “I don’t know what made me do this, one night I called her and said, ‘we’re going to sit on the phone and you’re gonna tell me every recipe.” She got her grandmother’s dressing, her cornbread, her ribs, her egg custard pie, her greens…she sat there on the phone with her grandmother to write it all down. And encourages everyone to call their grandmothers to do the same.
I was particularly charmed hearing the episode with Dorie Greenspan, celebrated author and encourager of amazing baking adventures. My seafood-loving self was thrilled that among her stories was that of enjoying crab sandwiches with her mom—who wasn’t much of a cook. We preservers-of-cherished-recipes can appreciate the caveat Dorie shares with the recipe she provided to accompany her episode : “This is less a recipe than a list of possibilities built on unreliable memories.” And then she goes on to make the best of her memories in recreating the process, peppering it with doses of other memories the recipe brings to mind. Pure delight.
Most of the podcast episodes have an accompanying recipe that’s available on the website. Or maybe two, as is the case with Dorie’s episode. (Wait until you hear the story behind the “Redemption Fries” recipe she shares.) After 40-plus episodes, that makes for quite a communal recipe box for us to flip through for stories and inspiration. It’ll be fun to see what more gets added with this new season.
I wish I'd had the foresight to do this with my grand mother from university. I was too young and not so worldly wise. A great post...think about my Grandmothers kitchen now.