Matriarchal lineage mapping

Becoming like my grandma

Motherhood x2 activated a deep memory of the matriarchs in my lineage. I have begun to cook as my grandmother did: using all burners on the stove; steaming foods, freezing abundance; rehydrating lots of dried mushrooms, dried scallops, and dried shrimp; keeping the fridge organized and packed.

There was a time when I tried to cook many of my grandmother’s recipes , but they never seem to taste or evoke the same satisfying tastes as when she prepared them. I realized that part of the hold-up was that I cooked from what I wrote down. The 2D writing in a notebook did not evoke her hands, her heart, her movement in the kitchen. The transmission was there, but it’s not in the recipe. To cook in a non-mechanistic way, I needed to call in all my senses, and become her.

So, I shift my frequency, dusted off the kitchen altar, tuned in to the unseen, guided by my cultural inheritance.

婆婆, My grandmother, didn’t use written recipes. She didn’t use measuring cups or measuring spoons, as we know them to be. Bowls were her cups; all spoons could measure. Her hands always did the mixing. She had very few kitchen tools outside of a knife, a cutting board, a food processor, a scissor, and strainers.

Everything she did, she embodied.

My grandmother lived as a master alchemist. Her mastery shone in making the ordinary extraordinary. Food didn’t just fill your belly. Food could change your mood. Food could anchor memories. Food could be so vivid that the details wouldn’t blur with time.

My cells have been coded for this.

Professional kitchens gave my muscle memory volume training. Cooking at home refined my purpose.

I’m here to share the things I’ve learned as a student of kitchen alchemy.

Remember walking over the rainbow bridge and join me at Kitchen Alkemii.

Here is the first writing: We need more devotion.

I will still be writing here, with Kitchen Alkemii focusing on cooking at home.