She loved food and had the best palate of anyone I’ve ever known, but she left the field when friends convinced her that being a dietitian was too close to domestic work. She worked briefly in the field at Bennett College an African American women’s institution in Greensboro, North Carolina, and as a private dietitian for wealthy family in New York City. My mother was a master teacher as she actually had been trained as a dietitian and had an associate’s degree in dietetics from Pratt University. Of necessity, my mother became my culinary instructor teaching by example and by demonstration. As she was a working mother with an active only child, my being in the kitchen served two purposes: childcare and instruction. I remember the radio where I listened to children’s shows on Saturday mornings and watching attentively as mom made biscuits and pie crusts and seasoned roasts and chopped vegetables. I remember sitting on the bottom step of the step stool that my - dare I say it - short mother used to get to the top shelves. I learn to cook in that kitchen while watching my mother. I vividly remember its layout and how the table in the breakfast nook, where we had dinner on weeknights served as the prep zone when my mother cooked. While I am very comfortable in the present, my culinary true north is the kitchen on Anderson Road in Queens in the house where I grew up. Sometimes it is a place in their present, sometimes it is a place in their past. With this column, " My Culinary Compass," she is taking people all over the world - via their taste buds - with recipes inspired by her extensive travels.Įveryone has a place they define as home, a place embedded in their DNA so tightly as to be a part of their matrix. Harris is an award-winning culinary historian, cookbook author and journalist who specializes in the food and foodways of the African diaspora.
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