Foodlore Library

Mom, thank you–for teaching me how to cook and how to serve. Rest assured this tradition will continue … for generations to come. From the examples of you and grandmother, I have learned that sharing food is the ultimate act of service, and that receiving is the ultimate gift.

Double Dipping

I vividly remember walking the five blocks home from Rigby High School in Idaho, so hungry and tired I couldn't wait to get home and have a snack and take a nap. When I walked through the back door, more often than not, I was greeted by the smell of fresh bread, cookies, cinnamon rolls, or soup. This was a regular occurrence, one which consistently meant two things: Mom was baking, and someone in our small community needed help.

More than 25 years later, nothing much has changed except that two more generations of my family have also picked up the tradition of cooking and serving. I bake cookies, banana bread, or make fresh salsa and deliver these to neighbors, the college students I teach, colleagues, and members of my church congregation. Likewise, my daughters make desserts, soups, and salads, and my mother is still baking goodies, particularly cinnamon rolls, for anyone in need, whether the need be physical, spiritual, or emotional.

Most women, whether they work inside or outside their home, know that actions speak louder than words. I am a folklorist by profession and so over and over again I ask the women around me questions, trying to discover what drives them to serve. One everyday aspect of a woman's life is the connection between serving food and serving others. For many women, preparing food and sharing it is a sacred act — one in which they give of themselves. Proverbs 31:31 states, “Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates.” By giving of their food, produced by their own hands, a woman’s works are praised.

I began to learn about service with that first batch of Cowboy Chocolate Chip Cookies, still warm from the oven, lifted and placed onto a plate. My mother said, “Run these over to the Dinsdales, I know the boys love these cookies.” And in turn, eating Mrs. Dinsdale’s cookies, sent in the same manner back to us.

Cooking in Grandma's Kitchen

As a young mother, I repeated those same acts I had learned at home, and began to do the same with my own children. “Please take this plate of Peanut Butter Bars over to Mike and Barb, tell them thank you for being our neighbors,” I’d say, or “Let's go pick some tomatoes from the garden and take a bag to Jordan’s.”

Cookies, zucchini bread, sourdough rolls, jam and garden vegetables take on new meaning as they pass from one hand to another, and the giver and receiver are of one heart. My sister-in-law, Kristin, put it this way: sharing food with one in need can be one way of saying, “Let me worry about the mundane; you worry about what is going on.”

Many of the women I have spoken with about this tradition remarked that giving food is their way of saying, “I love you,” “I care about you,” “I’m thinking of you,” and “I want to celebrate you.” My sister Maria mentioned, “I think when you do cook for someone else it gives you a sense of sharing yourself with them that isn't too encroaching, but maybe it will open the doors if there is more of a need there than what meets the eye.”

Megan, a young mother, writes that one evening her friends offered to bring her family dinner. “They brought sandwiches from Subway. It wasn't hard, but it showed they cared, and it helped ease our burden after a long day.” Of course, the difficulty of the food’s preparation has nothing to do with how heartfelt the gift is. My friend Holly finds that giving of herself through her food was relatively easy. “I don't think [twice] about making an extra casserole or a cake or whatever while I'm already in the mess,” she says.

Noelle, a college student, shares this about the time she was the recipient of food: “When I broke my elbow, some of my neighbors showed up at my apartment with cookies. It touched me, even though the gift was not a meal. It was nice of them, and I felt like they truly cared.” Sharing food is a safe way to cross boundaries without the fear of being rejected, and it often means the sharing of both the fruits of one’s hands, and often the offering of one’s heart.

“if you want food to go further and taste better, you must give some away”

The food we make, eat, and give away feeds our bodies, but the stories and people behind the food and recipes: these feed our souls.

As a child, I learned to cook by “helping” Mom by stirring the batter for pancakes, tearing lettuce for a salad, or measuring water for a pan of spaghetti noodles. I saw my mother serve her family daily through her cooking, whether on paper plates with deli sandwiches or on Sunday china complete with roast beef, mashed potatoes and homemade rolls.

These days, I bake muffins. My mother bakes bread; my daughter bakes brownies. We all give a portion away because my mother’s mother, Geneve Jensen, said that if you wanted food to go further and taste better, you must give some away: it’s that fishes and loaves adage. My mother, myself, my daughters, friends, and sisters; we all give of ourselves. The women in my family are all known as as women who share, and all “Walker Women” have a reputation for their baking and cooking abilities. I’ve even heard someone exclaim, “Oh, Walker food, you're lucky!”

Food has become a part of our identity: Mother can be defined by her great bread and her talent for making a little go a long way. Sheri for her creative cooking, and Maria for her down-to-earth, wholesome, hardy food. I, meanwhile, am known for taking a recipe and making it my own.

Passing Down a Recipe

I have the blessing of living next to my parents and my aging in-laws. I watch my mother as she bakes and delivers rolls, bread, muffins, desserts, and garden vegetables to her neighbors (I’m so glad I’m her neighbor!), and my daily meals are now my in-laws meals as well. I don't think twice about this — the sharing and the receiving, this all is a part of who I am. And the beauty of this “deep-in-my-bones” type of service is that my children are doing likewise: my daughter Jenna makes wonderful salsas and main dishes, and her photos of food make my mouth water. Meili makes desserts that are creative, tasty and beautiful, and she is teaching her three-year old daughter (my beautiful granddaughter) to see time spent in the kitchen as time for togetherness, enjoyment, and an opportunity to bless someone’s life. We do this all without a second thought, and often we cook, serve, and share, together.

For generations women have been encouraged to help each other by sharing of their time and energy so each woman’s life run a bit more smoothly. A friend of mine, Shirlene, wrote, “I loved it when my mom took food into another home, because she always made enough for our family too! I think that's important to do. As a child I felt my mother was serving her own family also. And it made me feel special along with the family she was serving.” My neighbor JoAnne told me that her “desire to serve” is her motivation for caring for others.

In a poem written by Virginia Newman in 1962, and published in the “Relief Society Magazine,”

No Half Loaf, This

Friendly were the words you said,
Tendering the loaf of bread,
Oven warm and savory;
How much that gesture meant to me,
Almost a stranger, lonely too,
And gladdened by the sight of you.
I would repay you if I could.
Oh yes, the bread was extra good.
(I'd like the recipe some day.)

But let me ask you if I may,
How you acquired the finer art
Of nourishing the hungry heart?
I never had the knack, somehow.
(I'd like that recipe right now.)

Today the pattern of serving others with food continues through repetition, imitation, and adaptation. Though the gifts of food have changed over time (we may not be sharing casseroles and home-made bread, but instead a plate of bakery cookies made from frozen cookie dough) yet giving, whether of homemade bread or a bag of fresh garden vegetables, is still appreciated, and will never go out of style.

And in that tone, below are two family recipes– from the Walker hands to yours, with love.

My mom makes these Cowboy Cookies often, sometimes weekly. She has a cookie jar just as we walk into the kitchen, and that jar is always, I mean always, filled with fresh cookies. She usually bakes a regular-sized batch, freezes the cookies, and then pulls them out and pops them into the cookie jar – just in time for family! She’s been baking them for years. She tries other recipes, but nothing is as good as these cookies.

Cowboy Cookies — Alice Walker

1 cup shortening (or margarine)
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
½ tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. vanilla
2 cups oatmeal
1 cup chocolate chips

Mix, bake at 375 degrees for 12–15 minutes.

Banana Bread

½ cup butter
½ cup white sugar
½ cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 cup mashed bananas
3 Tbsp. milk
1 tsp. baking soda
2 cups flour
½ tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla

Pour into 1 large loaf pan, 2 small pans, or into 2 muffin tins (greased).
Bake at 350 degrees for 25–35 minutes.
When you get this recipe down, start creating — nuts, chocolate chips, coconut, pineapple, orange juice, yogurt, ww flour, and flax seed!

Peanut Butter Bars

1 cup margarine
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
1 cup peanut butter
2 eggs
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. vanilla
½ tsp. salt
2 cups flour
1 ½ cups oatmeal

Pat out on an ungreased cookie sheet
Bake at 350 degrees for 15–20 minutes
Remove from oven and sprinkle with 1.25 cups chocolate chips.
When chocolate is softened, smooth out over bars.
Let cool and serve.