Food and Legacy: How Food Preserves Memories

Stephen Satterfield: I’m Stephen Satterfield. I am the co-founder of Whetstone Magazine and Whetstone Media. And today I’m here with my dear friends, Black culinary food scholar and historian Thérèse Nelson, and Osayi Endolyn, author, award-winning writer and journalist.

The first question that I wanted to pose to each of you is through this paradigm of health. Has there been any facet of this public and global health crisis that has made you reconsider the role of health in your own lives?

Thérèse Nelson: This moment has been nothing but reevaluation for me.

I think at the top of the year, everybody in the industry also thinks about what your year is going to be. The first quarter is always a little slower, and I had all these imaginings about what the middle of the year was going to be.

In my own health, I was so neglectful of myself, of my health and how I feed myself. It was so insane. I mean, I’ve been in the industry 20 years. Working as a chef, your first responsibility is to other people, to your clients, to that front-facing work.

To be in a moment where I was at home, having to consider feeding myself in ways that, weirdly, for the last decade I just never had, was so impactful. I don’t know that I was really naming it as neglect, but it’s absolutely what it was.

It’s been so interesting to sort of sit with myself and contend with the necessity of really caring for yourself. It’s been so interesting.

Osayi Endolyn: I agree. It’s been a lot of reflection and reconsideration, and I think just an intentional shift around the practices that we have around food.

Prior to the pandemic, I was moving around very fast. It was a lot of travel, and that goes up and down into different time zones. I’m just always on a screen. I had good practices before, but it was hard to normalize them around a very structured, unstructured schedule.

What emerged in the last few months is that we’re really leaning into our routines, whatever they are, and kind of confronting, “Oh, actually, this is my habit. I didn’t think this was my habit, but in fact, this is my habit.”

I was cooking a lot in the beginning. I think cooking became more of a taxing activity after Memorial Day weekend and George Floyd. It was almost just like, if someone could just bring food to me, I could probably eat it. But conceiving of putting things together was difficult.

I had a lot of single-ingredient plates in June and July, I feel like.

And I think now I’m in this place of finding access again, frankly, through the local produce and the farmers market near my apartment. Kind of forcing myself to engage with what’s actually happening, and then using that as a premise to create healthy structures in terms of how I’m consuming things.

But I feel like it’s been a long life these past few months.

Stephen Satterfield: It’s so true. And I think one of the things that has been revelatory for me is, as food professionals, we could very easily get up on a panel and talk about the relationship between our own health and our diet. We could tell you how you should be eating and what’s good for you.

And yet, when it comes to our own lives and practices, it really forced us to reconsider the hard truths in our own lives, which you both alluded to.

And especially from the point of view of Black health in particular, because we saw at the onset of the pandemic, unsurprisingly, a disproportionate volume of death in Black communities, which was tied to health disparities leading into this.

Again, these are things that we know intimately. How are you all caring for the Black people in your families and communities, and again, for yourselves? How have you cared for your emotional health?

Osayi Endolyn: You come with all of the loaded questions.

Okay, so I’ll start, I guess. This functions on a lot of levels. And I think it requires us to consider what we consider care, self-care and healthy behavior.

Some of the things that immediately emerge for me are creating boundaries, refining what I do and don’t want in my various relationships, recognizing dynamics at play that I perpetuate versus things that are being brought to me, which I can then choose how I engage with.

Some of that is, I think I’m just talking about energy. Those are some of the more emotional ways that I’ve been trying to support myself and other Black people in this moment.

It’s not directly related to what we’re consuming in terms of food, but I think it is part of the cycle. If you’re being conscious about what is in your space, then it’s an extension of that to be conscious about what you’re putting in your body, what you’re stacking up in your fridge and pantry.

Thérèse Nelson: Honestly, for me, I have been, struggling is the wrong word, but maybe contending with my relationship with healthcare professionals.

The thing that has been so impactful to unpack in this moment, to your point around disparities and how disproportionately we are affected by these sorts of crises, is this thing about health. This trust, or this relationship you should have with your doctor, with your mental health professionals, with just the healthcare mechanism.

We deserve quality care. We deserve to advocate for ourselves. We deserve to have space where we are, I don’t know, cared for, just like we care for everyone else.

Stephen Satterfield: So much of what we have been able to garner to sustain ourselves in a tumultuous year has come from our ancestry and our teachings.

Can you all talk a little bit about how your research and scholarship of Black foodways has provided sustenance for you in this difficult year?

Osayi Endolyn: For me, there has been comfort in getting information.

So much of what I feel like we experience as Black people in this country is just a lack of context and a lack of framing around why things are the way they are.

When you start to understand all the different elements that came into play, the many ways people have made their lives in this country or been forced to adapt to circumstances that were placed upon them, it really starts to shift the power dynamic in one’s idea of themselves and their history.

We are really a miraculous people, is what you kind of come away with. That’s what I come away with.

And there’s great comfort in knowing, to me, that it has always been harder than it is right now. And that, as hard as it can be, predecessors of ours overcame so much.

That gives me a sense of carrying the torch forward and figuring out, okay, how do I rest and care for myself so that I can keep that torch going?

Thérèse Nelson: So good.

I’ve come to this place, at least for myself, with this idea around why I was so unclear about how fly we are, how empowered we are, how much history we have and how much we’ve been bequeathed this legacy of food in this country.

And I know once you know better, you are immediately empowered to do better. It just changes the posture of the work you do. It changes how you engage the food system and changes the way you tell stories and the way you craft narrative.

Stephen Satterfield: I guess, for me, my great hope for the world is that we can look at how we are all connected through our health and through food, and begin to look at food as part of an organizing principle for our wellness.

Care for ourselves. Care for our families and communities. Food becoming a means of connection, political engagement and ways to express love for each other as we deepen community in a time where it’s harder to access than ever, but also more important than ever.

Thérèse Nelson: “Your kitchen is the one place where you are complete.”

And just before saying that, she said that when she was in the midst of her art, she was complete, lacking no essential characteristic.

I just think about this so often as I’m really thinking intentionally about feeding myself. Your kitchen, the space where you are feeding yourself and other people, is the one place you can be perfect and complete.

And I don’t know, you get to a place where you can be entrenched and involved in culture as well, and feel full. That’s the simplest, most beautiful experience you could possibly have.

And in this moment, we need all the beauty and attention we can get.

Stephen Satterfield: This has been a really interesting conversation, and I’m glad to have had it in a moment like this.