The First Story: Folk & Fare

Folk & Fare is a place for me to talk about what it means to connect with your past through folklore, food ways and storytelling.

I’ve always believed that food is more than just something we eat—it’s a thread that ties us to the people who sit at the table with us and to the people who sat at the table before us. 

Family recipes, old cookbooks, half-remembered stories told around the dinner table—these are the things that linger, even when names and dates start to fade. 

Folk & Fare was born out of that idea, a way to trace the connections between food, history, and the stories we carry. It starts with my own family—immigrants, mill workers, home cooks—and the meals that shaped them. But like all good stories, I suspect it will wander.

I love genealogy. I love it so much that I landed on the PBS show “Genealogy Roadshow” in all my awkward glory in 2017 and just kept trucking up that family tree ever since. I love feeling connected to the ones who came before and I love telling the few stories I know to my own kids in hopes that one day, they’ll want that connection, too.

I also love to eat. And I love to talk about food. I love visiting other people’s families and homes and watching the little kitchen rituals other families and cultures pass down to one another and the thought sort of struck me that I don’t have a ton of food stories from my own family. My mom and dad had some great dishes that showed up now and then on the menu, but for the most part, food wasn’t something we lived as a family. It was a topic of discussion (homecooking, at least…growing up in Austin for a while, my family ate out A LOT and those were always great discussions) and there certainly aren’t any memories of me or my cousins baking in the kitchen with a doting grandmother.

My grandmother read bodice ripping romances left all over her camper and served my grandfather things like plain ground beef and boiled potatoes for their afternoon meals.  There just wasn’t a huge connection between food, family, and the generations that came before and that disappointment follows me like a cloud sometimes. 

I found myself wondering if any of the things my mom made that I loved to eat (whoopie pies, fruit pizza, apple tarts) came from her mom or dad or any of her grandparents. Even the food I hated (the sardines, the liver and onions)...did any of that come from the ancestors? 

I’d spent a lot of time learning about the ancestors over the years, but in my race to uncover names and birthdates, I don’t think I ever slowed down enough to ponder the daily existence of the individual. 

What was their life like? How did they connect with their loved ones inside their homes? What did they eat? Did they teach their children to cook the same foods? 

There were no recipes handed down from a great-grandmother who made this special meal ever Sunday. No phenomenal cookie recipe jealously guarded by a well-meaning great aunt. Those stories and those foodways weren’t spoken of in my family.

I spent about a year in this sad, restless, and food culture-less state until I stumbled upon a gem of a man named Michael Twitty. He has a MasterClass called “Tracing Your Roots Through Food” and out of nowhere, this little powerhouse of a class kickstarted me on a journey to do my own research, find the food heritage of my own people, and make connections with the past where I thought no connection could grow.

I went on to read Twitty’s book, “The Cooking Gene” (highly, highly recommended) and knew I’d finally arrived at my next big project.

I kicked this little kernel of an idea down the road a few times over the next few months and would start a post and then abandon it, never knowing the perfect way to enter the story.  

But the truth of the  matter is that there isn’t a perfect point to enter the story. The story will tell itself once you give it time and space and that is where you are now: the time and space it takes for me to find and tell the stories that I need to tell and to encourage you to do the same.

Maybe it’s not food. Maybe it’s fashion. Or gardening. Or keeping a home. Whatever it is, there are stories in your family tree just waiting to be told

I’m telling mine. I hope you tell yours one day, too.