First Food Love

My love for food started when...Post for Damaris's February Kitchen Corners Cook-Off.

It's hard to say exactly when my love for food began. I remember having a baking cookbook made for kids that I adored, and it had the most wonderful illustrations of cookies and jelly rolls. But as far as the first dish that I can remember completely loving and craving, it has to be my mom's "Blend of the Bayou" casserole.

My mom grew up on the Gulf Coast and whenever we visited my grandparents in the summers, we'd go fishing and help my grandpa set the crab traps with the mullet we'd caught. Their house was surrounded on three sides by water, and they had designed the house themselves into a pagoda shape. There were huge palm trees in front of it and an anchor in the yard. My grandpa had been a ship pilot and for them, the sea was part of their everyday. Once we had a haul from the crabtraps, we'd all sit outside at a round wooden table with benches with cardboard in front of us and the necessary tools and knives needed for cracking and removing crabmeat from the boiled crabs. A stainless steel bowl at the center collected the tedious but sweet meat we collected. Coming home, mom would have the crab meat as well as shrimp frozen in tupperware and ziplocs that she placed in a red and white striped insulated bag that would come home with us on the plane, or on the 10-hour drive back to West Texas.

The casserole that she made had that crab meat we'd toiled over, the shrimp we'd peeled, cream, butter, celery, rice, and other stuff I can't remember in it. I'm pretty sure there was a thin layer of cheddar on top. It tasted like pure heaven. It was the dish I'd ask for her to cook on my birthday or for special occasions. And because hours of digging out the meat from crabs yielded only enough for a couple of recipes, it was always a rare, and dear, experience to share it at dinner. The crab, though, is what came through the most. Creamy. Sweet. And so, so rich. To say this dish was indulgent is an understatement.

For me, seafood has always been a family experience, tied very much to my mom and her parents. We'd have fish frys in the summers and spend hours out on the boat hoping to catch something. The truth is, I never really liked fishing. But I appreciated the results. And those dishes -- the casserole, fried catfish, parmesan shrimp, flounder -- have always been the ultimate comfort food to me. The first and the last.

Here's the beginning of a poem I wrote about those mornings fishing with my family, called "Scales":

We rose in the darkness, fumbled with sunscreen

and grape sodas, filled the ice chest silently

with cold cubes as the horizon melted into gold.

Grandpa stood barefoot on the dock, cast his web

out on the water, pulled flickering shad over the surface

with the sun. His Choctaw nose carved out the orange

of the sky, skin gleaming like the just-oiled leather of a boot.

Passing under the railroad bridge, the day was suspended

on the line. The dawn paused, darkened.

Below us, the dusk of the water met the wet wood,

thinning as the ground rose toward us. Our held breaths

rippled and echoed between the pilings, low as a grave.

It was our dank portal, the boundary between stilted houses

and the maze-like flats, and we had to duck to make it through.

(Picture of casserole is from here, though I can't attest to how close this is to the recipe my mom used. I certainly don't remember Tabasco being a part of it.)