The Stories That Simmer In Our Kitchens

Nana muffins were a staple when visiting my paternal grandmother, Anne Nicolosi. Not to be confused with my mother Ann (no “e”) Nicolosi, her daughter-in-law, Nana lived down the street from us when I was growing up.

We enjoyed Nana’s self-titled Queen of Muffins, while seated at her canary yellow Formica dining room table in St. Pete, or at another yellow, but round, table in her summer cottage in Salisbury Beach, Massachusetts. Warmed in the toaster oven and slathered with butter, these simple but delectable treats were just dry enough for a good coffee chaser, but not too sweet.

The origin of the recipe is a mystery; she may have concocted the butter, sugar, egg, milk, flour, and baking powder combination that is inscribed in perfect cursive on the yellowed 4”x6” red-lined index card.

Everyone called them Nana Muffins. If a neighbor helped her with a household task, she’d thank them with Nana Muffins. When I took her grocery shopping while my daughter Jordan was in ballet class, Nana always insisted we stay for muffins and coffee (always Folger’s with a hard “g”) after everything was put away.

Nana Muffins were the unnecessary payment for favors, and for her, it was precious time with her 3-year-old great-granddaughter.

Nana would fold her arms, lean across the table, and look directly into Jordan’s bright blue eyes as she picked apart the muffin. She’d ask her about ballet class, our dog Abby, and the letters of the alphabet.

We’d leave with 6 muffins stacked on top of each other in a transparent plastic newspaper bag. The rationing, saving, and reusing was part of the DNA of the eldest of 8 kids, born in 1908, grew up during World War I, was a bride then mother during World War II, and survived the Great Depression while working as an OB/GYN nurse.

Nana crafted this recipe because it included only pantry staples, not fancy syrups, or obscure ingredients. Queen of Muffin is simple in origin, but superb to consume.

Food is not only sustenance for our bodies. It has the power to transport us to specific times and places. Memories over shared meals - or even a simple muffin - are unlocked. We reminisce, miss, appreciate, and even try to recreate those moments. Nana died in 2002, shortly before her 94th birthday, yet our family still tells anecdotal stories about her other famous dishes, like meatballs with raisins (delicious, by the way), lasagna, and an iceberg lettuce salad with tomatoes, vinegar, oil, and salt and pepper that tasted like a dish from a 5-star restaurant.

Food is one of the most powerful tools writers can use to unlock memory.

I know exactly how our house smells when Rick makes the herb-stuffed turkey with orange ginger glaze, a recipe ripped from the November 1994 Bon Appetit magazine. Preserved in a collection of favorites I keep in a plastic sleeve in a white binder, I can remember every Thanksgiving we ate that turkey. Who was there, where they sat at our dining room table, marveling at Snoopy in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in morning, then watching the Detroit Lions game in the afternoon.

If I were writing about holiday traditions, this most certainly would be a chapter. I would tell you how the magazine page is now splattered with apricot glaze stains. I’d mention the sweet aroma of butter and onion cooking that would later be pureed with savory turkey drippings to make a thick gravy. I’d tell you about the sage that tastes like the woodsy earth that Rick mixes with real butter, then slathers underneath the bird’s skin, which is later painted with a mixture of heated apricot preserves, ginger, and apricot nectar. The Butterball Turkey Talk-Line was always on speed dial in the early years. “Breast side up, or down?” we’d wonder. Eventually, we’d learn the recipe by heart.

Can you see where I’m going? My brief walk down this culinary memory lane returned me to the moments, the conversations, and the feelings that resided around meals, cooked, shared, and devoured.

The power of food to transport you to a place and time is a catalyst for memoir. Food unleashes our senses so that we can be active characters in the story of life. Just as we invite others to our tables, sharing our stories through memoir invites our readers into the world we inhabit, navigate, even survive.

In describing the muffins, so simple in their ingredients, I introduced you to my grandmother, daughter, mom, and husband. After reading about what we lovingly nicknamed “Nana Muffins,” you might decide that you want to stay on this journey and learn why that recipe was the one she chose to consistently share with us. You might want to know what it was about those muffins that made them so worthy and delicious. Reading about my experience might remind you of your relationship with a beloved grandparent. Your heart might be warm, but your curiosity is piqued.

Because I allowed myself to return to a time I’d stored away, I might decide that my next memoir would be a collection of essays about my grandmother. I might decide to share anecdotes from conversations I now remember word for word – because I started with one recipe that was more than a muffin. It was meaning, and it was love.

When we cook, we aren’t just feeding ourselves. We’re conjuring people, places, and moments we thought we’d misplaced. The recipes we love are layered with time, history, and emotion, and all of that belongs to our stories.

That’s why I’m planning a new workshop: Savor and Remember: Writing Memoir Through Food. Learn all about it HERE. If it sound delicous and whets your writing appetite, sign up. I’d love to have you.
We’ll use cooking and eating as a bridge to memory and then put those memories on the page.

This workshop will be part teaching, part guided writing, part sensory adventure, designed to help you experience your life in a whole new way.

If you’d like to try using food as a catalyst for sparking memories that could become the foundation of your memoir, or if you simply want some writing practice that we can all relate to (who doesn’t love food?), download my free guide: The Recipe of Your Life.

Wherever you are in your writing journey, I hope you continue to keep showing up and consider using food memories as a way to unlock your unique story.