Snack Cake and Searching

I knew that this was the summer I wanted to finally cook something from Edna Lewis’ The Taste of Country Cooking. I first came across this book in a senior year seminar on southern foodways a decade ago and have been marveling over its beautifully curated seasonal menus ever since. With menus boasting names like “An Early Summer Lunch of the Season’s Delicacies” or “A Dinner Celebrating the Last of the Barnyard Fowl,” how could I not? My curiosity was renewed this year after reading Dr. Sara Franklin’s The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America. As it so happens, it was Sara’s class in 2015 that first introduced me to this cookbook, and in some ways, the South; the region I’ve now lived and worked in for a decade.

An editor works behind the scenes, and the name of literary giant Judith Jones may be less familiar than those she published. You may recognize, for example, culinary trailblazer Julia Child or fiction greats like John Updike and Anne Tyler. You may also have not ever heard the name Edna Lewis. Edna grew up in Freetown, Virginia, a town co-founded by her grandparents, who had been born into slavery. She would go on to become the famed chef of the Upper East Side’s Cafe Nicholson, among other ventures, and deserves credit for elevating southern cuisine in the public eye through her cookbooks. She was hugely influential, though she didn’t—and still doesn’t— always get her due. 

I was deeply impacted by both The Editor and by Edna’s story within it. Her cookbooks don’t represent a romanticized “easier” way of life, but they possess a certain beauty, the idea, for example, that one would break for a “A Late Spring Lunch After Wild Mushroom Picking.” But along with the menus, history and descriptions of Freetown, I was struck by something else. I was struck by the fact that this is a cookbook without photographs. There are lovely illustrations scattered throughout, but in contrast to today’s glossy and expert food photography, to cook from a cookbook with no photographs feels distinct.

I originally thought I’d write just about Edna Lewis and The Editor for this post, but in the interim between making the cake and sitting down to write, two things happened. First, I read another book that hit me hard; Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age by Vahuini Vara. Vara is a former tech reporter, author and journalist, and her book was not only experientially the most interesting one I’d read this year (she shares excerpts of her book with an AI Chatbot as she’s writing), but struck a nerve for me as a cusp millennial/not-quite digital native who feels increasingly on shifting ground with technologies like AI.

Searches is not only an investigation into the technologies—AI, social media, etc.— that shapes our lives, but an exploration of the author’s ever-evolving relationship to them. It left me in a state of soul-searching that quite frankly hasn’t come to an end. Vara makes a strong argument for the ways in which technology companies impose themselves whether we want them to or not. This book really made me ask: what agency do I have to participate or remove myself from certain digital habits or platforms? What choices can I make for myself? 

And it made me think of a phrase that has been driving me nuts recently.

That phrase is, “the phone eats first.”

I’ve probably only noticed it because of my heightened tech sensitivity as of late, but four or five times recently somebody has said this to me while taking a picture (or, admittedly, watching me take a picture) of a meal. Now..  hold that thought.

Because the second thing that happened in the interim, since reading The Editor, was that my great-Aunt Lynn passed away; peacefully, in her home of sixty-five years. My Aunt Lynn was the most loving person you’ve ever met. I loved her deeply and I’ll miss her terribly. It feels a bit full circle to write about her in this post because it was a decade ago, in that class on southern foodways with Dr. Franklin (who wrote The Editor and introduced me to Edna Lewis' work among others), that I reconnected with my Aunt Lynn, while exploring my own family’s histories as Jews in the American South. I flew down to Tennessee for a research trip in the fall of 2015. That trip that turned into an independent study and a collection of oral histories and a move to Alabama and a whole life that I can’t really imagine without all of those domino pieces falling into place. And without that class and that project I certainly wouldn’t have had the precious time with my Aunt Lynn that I did over the last decade.

Now back to phones. My Aunt Lynn was famous for her long voicemails. She’d call and tell you everything you needed to know in one. And her voicemails weren’t just winding, they were sincere. They ended with a series of “I love yous” so long it was almost as if she couldn’t make herself get off the call you weren’t even having together. I saved dozens of them and after her passing I went back and listened to a few, including one she left me just a few days before that trip to Memphis in 2015. She ended that message with another phrase that’s been bouncing through my head since; “Sweetheart,” she said, “we’ll do good things.”

Every time I spoke to her we always seemed to be looking to the good things ahead. I’ve tired to retain that ethos in what has felt, in many ways, like a tough month. And I've tried to embody this not just in looking forward, but in noticing the good things all around (she was good at this too)—moments of connection on a trip just Stu & I, sweet instances of fall delight and holiday joy with E, and all the good comfort meals that carried me through October—sweet brisket and round challah, hot pizza on a cold walk, the first borscht.

One for voicemails, my Aunt Lynn was not one for smart phones. She never had social media. I’m not even entirely sure she had a computer. And here’s the thing, she never let the phone eat first. She loved food, she loved family, she loved being together. And I thought of her as I looked back at the "Busy-Day-Cake," I pulled from The Taste of Country Cooking in late August.

This was an idea I found completely charming; a cake not for an occasion as much as for living, pulled warm from the oven, scented with nutmeg and sticky with fresh jam. Eaten quickly, with tea, crumbling down the arms of a toddler (whose face is no longer appearing on the internet), eaten together, a few pictures snapped only after first bites. 

It’s hard to believe that it has been ten years; since the class, since the trip, since I bought this cookbook. If you want to see some long ago work, you can read about that trip here (don’t judge!). It feels like forever and like yesterday; the hustle and bustle of family, fried ravioli at Pete and Sam’s, driving over the rolling Mississippi on a grey day. We stopped on the way into Osceola, Arkansas for fall apart ribs at the Hog Pen and then continued on to an empty downtown street, where my Aunt Lynn and grandmother, Gigi, pointed out all the places that once were. They painted a picture of a life that I imagine felt like forever and like yesterday to them too. I had only owned an iPhone for three years. Forever and only a moment ago. 

I’m still searching, but if there’s one thing I’m taking away for now it’s that life is long, but it’s also short. We should do good things. Make a cake and eat it with someone you love. And we should always eat first. May her memory be for a blessing <3

Busy-Day Cake or Sweet Bread

As featured in "The Taste of Country Cooking" by Edna Lewis

8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, at room temperature

1 1/3 cups granulated sugar

3 medium to large eggs

2 cups sifted flour

1/2 cup sweet milk, at room temperature (aka whole milk)

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons vanilla

4 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder (or what you've got)

1 light grating of nutmeg (of course you can use dry if you don't have fresh)

1. Preheat oven to 375.

2. Blend the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

3. Add the eggs one at a time, beating them into the batter after each one.

4. Add in 1/2 cup of flour and a splash of milk, alternating the two (she notes it should take you three parts with the milk and four parts with the flour) until they are incorporated.

5. Mix in salt, vanilla, baking powder and nutmeg. Stir after each addition, but avoid over-stirring!

6. Butter and flour the bottom of the pan, then add flour.

7. Bake for 40 minutes, cut into squares and serve warm.

NOTES:

• The original recipe calls for a 10 x 10 x 2 cake pan. I used a 9 x 9 and that worked just fine

• The introduction notes that the cake can be topped with fresh fruit or canned berries, or eaten plain. We had it with strawberry jam and it was a delight.

• Otherwise, I've made no alterations (it doesn't need it), but I've left a few notes for contemporary clarity.

Bonus recipe: Find my Aunt Lynn's spinach casserole at on my last post: https://www.margaretwnorman.com/post/back-to-brisket-