Post from October 17, 2020

My mother was a foodie. She wouldn’t have referred to herself as that. She didn’t dabble much with cooking: never owned a cookbook: in fact she did very little cooking in the home. But when she did, she loved fancy. She loved to improvise and come up with her own creations. Her food had to be extraordinary. She was an extraordinary woman. And she loved to feed people. Boy did she love that. For her birthday our house would be filled with boys/men from a boys home, her close friends, and an army of former maids who would come from across the country to cook on that day. On Christmas it would be her students from a school she built in on the banks of the kirulapane canal. 2 years ago she was diagnosed with cancer. She battled hard and succumbed to it last month. Since her death I’ve found it hard to post anything with regard to my cooking. I am still cooking but my heart is not truly in it. Last October, just before chemo, I was blessed to go back to her and spend 10 wonderful days just cooking for her. Each meal I would ask her what she would want for the next. If she felt too tired to eat by herself, I fed her. After the chemo, she lost her appetite. In her mind would want certain food, but couldn’t palate it physically. So to be there at the time she could eat was truly a blessing to me. In this picture she’s eating what she called “thing-a-Ma-jig” 😄 rice mixed with a myriad of ingredients, whatever is at hand; but ginger-garlic, celery, soy sauce, and Worcestershire sauce was a must.

My mother died on the 21st of September 2020, one day after her 77th birthday.