On Nov. 24, 1997, I had been married for six weeks and had been living in Iowa for less than one. Huddled in a drafty rental house with a foot of snow outside and the wind howling around the gaping eaves, my husband and I bravely decided to tackle our first Thanksgiving, breaking out the family recipes for dressing, sweet potato pie and seven-layer salad that had been passed to us from grandmothers and great-aunts.
Lonely but excited, separated from our clan but together as a couple, we embarked on our first holiday journey. It was a short trip.
After making all of the pies and casseroles, after carefully checking the bird, we tried to light the ancient gas stove. Nothing. We tried again.
Nothing but dangerous fumes seeping into the chilly kitchen air. Repeated attempts brought us closer to an explosive death than to a romantic holiday meal. In desperation we called my boss (the only person whose phone number we had in the entire city of Des Moines) and asked her and her partner for advice. After trying to talk us through the ignition process they finally, and kindly, told us to come to their house to eat. Disappointed but grateful for the invitation, we slid along the icy streets to her warm and inviting home and shared our first married holiday with a table of near-strangers.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I will forever appreciate the hospitality of my former boss and will always remember that Midwesterners welcomed us just as quickly and openly as Southerners would have. But that food we ate was another story. The dressing was made from white bread—a gummy concoction that lacked the rich texture of the cornbread dressing I knew—and everyone called it “stuffing.” The green beans came from a can, as did the corn. Nothing was made from a sweet potato, nor were there any deviled eggs, homemade pickles, limas or ham. It was decidedly not like home.
It was at that table, 800-plus miles away from Birmingham, with a plate full of food utterly devoid of any character or soul, that I learned the lesson of local cuisine. It may be turkey and dressing, but if it doesn’t come from where you come from, it isn’t really yours. And what is the icing on the cake—the chow chow on the peas—is when the food comes from where you are when you consume it. If your egg is from down the road, if your turkey is from three counties over, if your sweet potatoes are from your backyard, well, that’s something for which you should definitely be thankful.
Make food from Alabama. After all, we are what we eat, right?
Bon appetit!
