Food is many things to me: I grew up in New Orleans, which is shorthand for I love food, I love to cook, I love to eat, everybody I grew up with cooks, oh the dinners, the parties, the crab boils, the restaurants, Uncle Henry’s gumbo. … We used to go to restaurants and, while eating a great meal, talk about other great meals past and planned.
Now that I don’t live in New Orleans, much of my homesickness centers on the food.
Around the holidays — which to me include Mardi Gras — I cook up a storm. My homesick cuisine, of course, is Louisiana fare, Cajun and Creole. Oyster dressing for Thanksgiving, gumbo for Christmas, pork roast with Creole mustard and bourbon orange sauce for New Year’s, oh my god, talk about good! One day I’ll get the hang of king cake, but in the meantime, I’m close to perfecting a hurricane that passes for a fine punch with or without the rum.
In between holidays, when homesickness is at bay if not (ever) gone, food is there for me. The food, the eating, the cooking … all there. It’s entertainment, hobby, pastime, meditation, comfort, story. I talk about cooking and trade ideas with cooking friends (sadly, outside of Louisiana, not all friends are cooking friends). I have Opinions with a capital O about the meals I get in restaurants. I try something new and want to crack the mystery and go one better. I scan multiple recipes for a dish and combine ideas to come up with my own.
I’ve invented a Louisiana recipe or two, inspired by the mantra I heard as often as any nursery rhyme: Well, cher, you start with a roux. … Those inventions are just as nostalgic for me as the old standbys I recapture during and between holidays. I have no doubt that if I told my Louisiana friends I’ve created something I call Cajun meatballs, some would swear, truthfully, that they’ve done the same.
And then we’d talk about it over dinner.
Wanda Freeman 