[Upbeat string music] CRAIG SEWELL: Ask someone about their grandmother and chances are the story will quickly end up in a kitchen.

And once there, the real story begins.

Her strong hands dusted with flour, the food and aromas beckoning, lives change, but the food, the food will always be with us.

Food is powerful.

It nourishes our bodies.

It excites our tastes.

It is infused and marinated in emotion.

And it provides us with a solid connection to our past.

For generations, our grandma's hands have made memories, continued traditions, and blessed us with a knowledge of who we are.

Throughout the peninsula that is Southern Maryland, people have cooked and gathered for centuries.

The food and the recipes are messengers from whence we came.

Food and recipes can define a family, a region, even a culture.

They speak of a heritage learned from our grandma's hands.

I'm Craig Sewell.

I am fascinated about what goes on in kitchens.

Large ones like the locally sourcing restaurant I owned and cooked in for many years.

Or in small home kitchens where the hundreds of people I taught in cooking classes cook in every day, and these days, so do I.

Our kitchens are our places.

That is where we cook.

I wanted to tell the deeply human and intimate stories that only grandma's hands and recipes can tell.

Along the way, I was privileged to meet six people who opened their kitchens, their recipes, their stories, and their hearts to me.

They are as different as Southern Maryland has to offer, but all realize this very simple but vital tenet, that the kitchen is the heart of the home.

There is power in those flour dusted hands of our grandmothers.

Their recipes speak to us of life and joy, love and struggle, and our past.

And it all happens in a kitchen.

[Blues guitar music] CRAIG: LaWann Stribling wrote to me about her grandmother and food.

She said, "I feel it's ancestral when I'm cooking and baking so much, that I began a search for my heritage and ancestry because I'm so curious to know where my gifted hands came from."

So that's where we begin, with LaWann and her Grandma Bailey's macaroni and cheese.

LAWANN STRIBLING: My grandma was born and raised in Northwest, D.C. [Water trickling] LAWANN: Just hearing the stories of... ...the struggle, you know, their lives.

But yet, things like this, continue on, the food.

The food just, it will always be here, right?

LAWANN: And I am here at my home in Greenbelt, Maryland.

I am a wife and a mom to six.

I'm definitely the magnet and...

I love that I am there to be able to be that for them because I- I really longed for that growing up not having a mother.

You know I longed to have that feeling so I'm happy that I'm able to do that for them.

[Salt crystals sifting out] LAWANN: My grandmother passed away on Juneteenth 2021 so, sometimes it's hard to talk about her and not get teary-eyed.

[Clinking of kitchen utensils] LAWANN: I can see myself on a red tricycle.

I'm a little girl and we're in the basement on our house on Q Street.

She had like these wooden chairs in the kitchen.

And I would sit there and just watch her.

And I could just remember smelling that pepper.

The pepper smell.

CRAIG: How old were you the first time you did this?

LAWANN: I was... 19 years old the first time I made macaroni and cheese.

CRAIG: Really?

LAWANN: Mm-hmm.

I had to call my grandmother um, to prepare myself for having a child, I was pregnant.

But I called my grandmother because I needed to learn how to make her macaroni and cheese.

Like I'm like, "Grandma I'm a about to have this baby... and I want to be able to, you know, eat good with my kids and have them eat good and feel what I felt when I ate your food.

So, Grandma how we make this macaroni and cheese?"

LAWANN: So she taught me how to make, actually a whole dinner, it wasn't just the macaroni and cheese.

It was macaroni and cheese, barbecue ribs and green beans.

So that's what I learned that day.

But what was special to me was the macaroni and cheese because this is what I think of when I think about my grandmother is how her macaroni and cheese smelled and tasted.

Every time.

No one's macaroni and cheese amounts to Grandma's macaroni and cheese, I don't care where we go so.

I need to learn how to make her macaroni and cheese.

[Folksy guitar music] CRAIG: What's special about this room for you?

LAWANN: In this room?

Well... CRAIG: This to me, this is your home.

LAWANN: This is my home!

And this is my sanctuary.

This is my space.

And this is where I spend the most of my time in the house is in this kitchen because if I'm not cooking, I'm baking or I'm preparing something.

I do, I bake, I love baking.

That was the- what really drew me to food because I was curious about baking um... and producing with my hands, like my passion for this, I needed to learn how to do it the right way.

Like I needed to learn all what goes into making the ingredients and feeling it.

How, how it feels to make the pie crust like [rubs hands] you know?

CRAIG: While we were cooking, I was reminded of Chef Thomas Keller's statement that, "A recipe has no soul.

You, as the cook, must bring soul to the recipe."

And no one I've ever cooked with in a kitchen brings more of her soul to a recipe than LaWann.

LAWANN: Yeah but it's all connected, I think if people take the time out to learn things, and it can just slow down their life a little bit give them to learn some patience.

And then also can work on your well-being like your self-care, you know, 'cause you can't always keep doing this and that for other people.

Sometimes you just have to stop and take a pause out for yourself, and to me I can do that in the kitchen.

[Spoon gently scraping pot] LAWANN: And you see we got our good pepper.

[Quiet metal clank] [Pot clanks] LAWANN: But again, that was a journey that I had to get there to find this place, because I was very sad for many, many years.

But food always made me happy.

[Laughs] Food always made me happy.

Um... And I knew that I wanted to have this gift to share with other people because I wanted it so much growing up and I didn't have it so- [voice breaks].

To be able to produce so much great food and it makes people feel good.

And I have people come to my house all the time who want to eat my food and I love it because...

I know that it's real and it's natural.

And it's a talent that was gifted to me, naturally.

Um, I call it gifted hands and I- I'm blessed by my ancestors to have these gifts because again, I have no proper training, but I can do this... very well.

I mean, I feel it though I don't know how else to say it or explain it.

I'm entirely blessed because I have this gift.

Trust and believe that my grandmother is going through me, her grandmother went through her, and their grandm- we are all linked.

And it's gonna continue on to my children it's already happened with my son because I told you I taught him how to cook.

[Hopeful mandolin and guitar music] LAWANN: In 20 years, I- I used to think that those ages, I will really be old at that time, but being 46 now I understand that I'm still not going to be old at that time.

My body may be a little bit old but...

I'm- I'm just going to continue to blossom and grow and my kids, I hope that they follow their passion and their dreams for whatever they see me doing and be encouraged to follow their passion.

So that's all I teach them to do.

I can see myself being a grandparent, and my grandchildren are here and they're eating this food that I've learned how to cook from my grandmother, you know.

The plan is to homestead so, however that journey takes us and wherever my kids will end up.

I know it's gonna be great because we're going to be all together still, but maybe have our own properties on that land.

But we'll still be together and that's all that I could hope for.

And I really, really feel that that's what our ancestors want us to do.

I miss my grandma.

[Bright acoustic guitar music] CRAIG: When Ms. Webb and I first met, we talked about the foods she remembered cooking in her grandmother's farm kitchen.

While we talked, it was clear we were talking about quite another time.

MARY LOUISE BOOTH WEBB: I'm very fortunate to have lived on this large farm here on the Zekiah Swamp.

It fed me, gave me pleasure, and uh taught me many lessons.

CRAIG: The farmhouse that she grew up in with 21 in her family now sits hidden in a copse of maples at the end of the road.

This is understandable since Ms. Webb is now 98 years old and was midwifed by her grandmother on the same property where she lives today.

And this is where we cooked her recipe, on Ms. Webb's historic Booth farm.

CRAIG: How much do you think we're going to use for... Cracklin bread, this much?

CRAIG: I arrived at Ms. Webb's early in the morning with a five-pound piece of freshly butchered pork belly fat by courtesy of the Amish butcher shop down the road.

She had seen it all before.

I laid the fat on the counter, Ms. Webb grabbed a big meat cleaver and off we went.

MS. WEBB: Man, I'm gonna- I'm gonna have to... CRAIG: Can I help you?

MS. WEBB: Yeah yeah I'm gonna have to...

This helps...I'm trying to think.

CRAIG: When Ms. Webb and I first sat and talked, we spoke about Cracklin bread.

No, not the fancy way now with buttermilk and seasoning.

This Cracklin bread was born from using what was left from butchering the annual pig on Booth farm.

[Knife scraping] MS. WEBB: Now I'm gonna turn the stove on.

CRAIG: So, when you butchered the pig on the farm... you take that whole week to process that whole pig?

MS. WEBB: It took, yeah because we had uh eight of us.

CRAIG: Eight of you working on that one pig?

MS. WEBB: No, eight eight- CRAIG: To feed?

MS. WEBB: Uh-huh, yeah.

[Loud sizzling] MS. WEBB: It looks like this don't wanna brown!

But I'm gonna, what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna turn it down a little bit.

Yeah cause it, it- it'll brown, yeah.

CRAIG: Well- well while you cook that why don't you let me cut up some of this for you because we brought you a lot today.

MS. WEBB: Uh huh.

CRAIG: And that's enough for one... for one serving of Cracklin bread?

MS. WEBB: Yeah one serving.

CRAIG: Okay.

MS. WEBB: Depending on how many- how many you got.

CRAIG: And then your Grandma Mellie taught you how to do this?

MS. WEBB: Uh-huh.

CRAIG: So Ms. Webb, how old were you the first time you did this?

MS. WEBB: Oh, hm...

I guess in my teens, I guess.

The pan is good and hot!

CRAIG: Are we going to use any of the meat?

Or are we just gonna use the fat?

MS. WEBB: No, we just gonna use the fat.

CRAIG: Okay.

[Mellow Blues music] CRAIG: On this farm, you used all of the gifts you were given.

Everything from the pig was used and this recipe was simple.

Pork fat, corn meal, water and a cast iron skillet... and grit a lot of grit.

CRAIG: That's beautiful.

MS. WEBB: Looks mighty good.

CRAIG: So did you girls work the farm at all?

Or you'd mostly stay inside?

MS. WEBB: No we- we stayed at home.

We stayed in the kitchen, we stayed in the garden, we stayed um- [Click] black- picking blackberries, strawberries.

CRAIG: Uh-huh.

MS. WEBB: Uh-huh.

CRAIG: Well I have a feeling when you were growing up that you- your family's meals were made out of food that you produced.

MS. WEBB: Mm-hm, definitely.

CRAIG: It- it wasn't bought at the grocery store.

MS WEBB: Nope.

[Laughs] Only the salt.

[Sizzling] [Metal scraping on metal] CRAIG: No waste.

MS. WEBB: No waste.

CRAIG: No want.

MS. WEBB: No want.

That's right.

CRAIG: Your grandmother taught you the golden rule.

MS. WEBB: Uh-huh.

CRAIG: But in your book you also say as she taught you about "Plenty of food to eat.

Plenty of room to roam... MS. WEBB: Uh-huh.

CRAIG: ...and love galore".

MS. WEBB: That's right.

CRAIG: Kind of sounds like you.

MS. WEBB: [Laughs] That's me.

[Laughs] Yeah, that's me.

[Oil popping in pan] MS. WEBB: Sometimes we would go to church and uh, a a grown up— not a grown up I would say a teenager at their house and they would see my grandmother.

They would come running over and say to my grandmother “I don't want to go back over there.” So my grandmother would bring em bring em home with her.

I usually just- I just put a little in to sample it and then when I'm just about through I'll just pour the rest of it and make one large one.

MS. WEBB: Oh.

CRAIG: One of the reasons for using Cracklin bread is to use every part of the food that you- that you're blessed with.

MS. WEBB: Uh-huh, food- food- yeah use every part of the hog, yeah.

CRAIG: Use your leftovers.

MS. WEBB: Uh-huh, use the leftovers.

CRAIG: Now, when you make Cracklin bread do you make it just for special occasions or do you make it?

MS. WEBB: No, no, no...

I make it whenever I feel like eating it.

[Laughs] I make it anytime.

CRAIG: Does it brings back memories of when you learned to make it back in the day?

MS. WEBB: Oh, yes, yeah it brought back memories.

[Spatula scraping] MS. WEBB: Oh, this other one ain't quite ready.

Cool, when it cools you may have it!

[Laughs] CRAIG: When your grandmother told you to learn to paddle your own canoe.

What she mean by that?

MS. WEBB: [Laughs] Do for yourself... Don't be asking people to do things for you.

Get on out there and paddle it.

Go all across the water.

You know, you're telling me your story and I'm listening.

And so I'm listening.

I'm learning from you about your grandma and what she cooked.

CRAIG: She was very important to me.

MS. WEBB: Uh huh.

MS. WEBB: That's that.

Hm-hm.

You can just put that in the sink.

CRAIG: Yeah.

MS. WEBB: Let me see.

Is there a, there's a top over there too.

CRAIG: My grandmother had a saying that you never learn anything with your mouth open.

MS. WEBB: [Laughs] Now, why did she say that?

Mouth open [Laughs].

CRAIG: Because once your mouth's open- MS. WEBB: Your mouth when you're talking, your mouth open?

Uh-huh, okay.

CRAIG: You never learning anything when you're doing that.

MS. WEBB: Just talking.

CRAIG: Yeah.

MS. WEBB: That's good uh-huh.

MS. WEBB: I put it up on there, yeah.

And say, "That's it!"

CRAIG: You are publishing your second book... MS. WEBB: Yeah.

CRAIG: And it's a book of poetry.

And you read a poem to me earlier today and I'd like for you to read it now.

Can you do that?

It's right here.

MS. WEBB: Wait a minute.

It says, "My early thoughts, come to the farm where your ancestors lived and where your roots began.

Don't be alarmed it's not the end.

We will tell you how it all began.

Stand on the land where your ancestors stood.

Listen to the stories that have never been told.

Hear it from the young and hear it from the old.

Meet your neighbors and the new neighbors too.

Folks, there is unity here.

It has always been and always will be.

Land, land, God's gift to man.

Trees stand so straight and tall.

Imagine the Zekiah swamp where ancestors fish and hunt so that we could be survived and keep us alive."

Good enough?

CRAIG: Beautiful.

[Laughs] [Calm Blues music] CRAIG: Cooking food grown close to you is not only true on Ms. Webb's Booth farm, but it's also currently true on the Griffith family farm.

With Ms. Webb's, "Land, land God's gift to man," lingering in my mind, I visited the gift that is the Griffith family farm.

Meeting with Mom Chris, Daughter Kayla and Granddaughter Estelle on this third generation farm.

KAYLA GRIFFITH: There's something special in the soil.

That we take care of it and it takes care of us... and produces some just delicious food.

Um, so we call this farm Griffith family farm.

We've been here for 100 years this year.

CHRIS GRIFFITH: And I live here and my two children live on the farm here with us in their houses.

It's very nice to have them nearby, everybody can just drop in.

You know, it's nice to everybody run in here and have a meal.

Head back out the door, in five minutes they're home.

Now with four grandchildren and everyone else, you know, the table's starting to shrink.

[Laughs] So, but it's fun.

It's noisy.

It's crazy.

You know, we have two high chairs and booster seats and accommodate everybody.

CRAIG: There is a humbleness, a strength, and a quiet joy that emanates from people who farm and touch the soil each day.

KAYLA: Basically, my- my dad is teaching me everything that I need to know about farming.

I grew up on the farm and I grew up working on the farm um, but we used to be a tobacco farm.

Um so, I'm almost starting from square one by learning and my dad is very, very patient with me and he's a very good teacher.

CRAIG: I talked about breakfast on the farm with Kayla.

Her as a youngster waking from spending the night with Grandma Lillian and making sweet potato pancakes from sweet potatoes raised as a marketable crop right here.

KAYLA: I- I think many people associate their grandmothers with cooking and baking and all those sort of things and I do have those associations with my grandmother.

Um, both of my grandmothers.

[Chopping] [Metal changing] KAYLA: Um, but I had approached this from like Southern Maryland, sort of like Lillian's cooking and sitting down to family meals at her house.

[Potatoes squishing] KAYLA: And then I thought, well, the sweet potato pancakes are perfect because, you know, when I was little we had pancakes every morning with Grandma.

When we were little, she would make- what would we call 'em?

Dollar pancakes?

CRAIG: Oh yeah, silver dollar pancake.

KAYLA: Silver dollar pancakes and she would put chocolate chips, and whipped cream and sprinkles.

I mean, she went the whole nine yards um for giving us like treats when we were over there.

Oh, that was always the funniest because she could not sit down for more than a minute or two and she'd get up, make sure everybody had something on their plate.

Um most of- most of us she would say, "Oh, you don't have enough," but, "Earl you're eating too much!"

That was my- that was my grandfather.

[Peaceful acoustic guitar music] KAYLA: She probably, she probably would have worked at soil conservation or in her flower beds, you know all the time if you didn't have to do those things like eat and sleep.

And so for her to be at home cooking she really, she really cared for us that she did that because it took so much of her time.

You know, but food was so I mean it's more than just nutrition it's, it love, it was love for her.

CRAIG: Well see now you have a responsibility to teach this one how to do that.

KAYLA: Yeah, so we are going to work on that and I actually think we'll um be learning from our grandma too, yeah, yeah.

[Sizzling] KAYLA: I'm starting from square one almost at learning how to cook and my mom is teaching me.

[Laughs] And she's patient, but also I have to do things her way when I'm learning [Laughs].

CHRIS GRIFFITH: No, she's not, she's not big on the extensive cookings like I- I enjoy.

CRAIG: As Kayla and I were talking Mom Chris from across the kitchen chimed in and started talking about the doughnuts her mother and grandmother would make once a year for Fastnacht, the night before Lent.

The more she talked, the more animated she became.

Kayla and I exchanged glances, could we convince Chris to get up at 2am to prep the dough?

Sunday pancakes on the farm with freshly made donuts?

The morning came for us to make sweet potato pancakes with baby Estelle outfitted in her sweet potato onesie.

And I found Chris had gotten up early for us and was finishing her second dough rising.

We were doing donuts too.

Time for kitchen joy.

CHRIS: The salt, I already got one teaspoon of salt and then we need one egg.

[Egg cracking] CHRIS: So, I always double check it.

CHRIS: I love to cook, always have.

I think I picked that up from my mom.

Um she started helping me with cooking when I was young, which she did with all of us.

Some liked it better than others.

But you gotta scrape everything out of the bowl.

CRAIG: Everything?

Even all of that?

CHRIS: Everything out of the bowl.

[Laughs] [Scraping] That was the one thing, my mom always made sure you get everything out of the bowl that's in there.

CRAIG: Was she a waste not, want not kinda person?

CHRIS: Uh-huh.

Oh yeah, definitely.

Well, she was born in 1920 and grew up during the Depression.

CHRIS: So that kinda- CRAIG: There you go.

CHRIS: Answers that question.

And she was the third born of 14 children.

CRAIG: Holy smokes!

CHRIS: So... [Laughs] CRAIG: Am I good yet?

CHRIS: That's good.

That's good.

[Bowl clanking in sink] CHRIS: My mom was always in the kitchen.

The kitchen was like the gathering place of our house.

Mom stayed home took care of all seven of us.

She did not go to work.

Uh, my dad worked at the railroad for 40 years, so he was the breadwinner, so to speak.

Mom did all the cooking, and the taking care of children and everything else.

Um, so we enjoyed her cooking.

I mean she was a fabulous cook.

She learned from her mom.

We'd have a meal, but the meal wasn't just sit down, eat and go.

It was you'd sit there afterwards and you talk and you know you may not clean the dishes up right away.

But you would sit there and you would talk.

And if you weren't in doing- having a meal you would just sit at the kitchen table and have conversation.

And we just to this day, a lot of us make a lot of her recipes.

CRAIG: So we're making a kind of donut that your mom used to make for you and what's the name of that donut again?

CHRIS: They're called Fastnachts and it was tradition in in the Hagerstown area, which it still is today!

CRAIG: It was tradition in these and other Germanic communities to empty their larders of sweets and sugars in observation of the fast before Easter, hence the donuts... and as any child will attest, there is no more joy in the kitchen than making fresh donuts.

CHRIS: That's what my mom did.

I watched her all my life make donuts.

And I just one day after I'd gotten married I said "Mom, I wanna make some donuts."

So she gave me the recipe and I just started making 'em.

[Gentle scraping] [Spoon clanking on counter] CHRIS: I think of her anytime I make any of her meals.

You know, ever- anything and everything she's given me recipes for or taught me or... CHRIS: When I was little, this is what we would help our mom with.

She would let us, she would set the cutter on the dough, like this, and then tell us to push.

[Craig laughs] CHRIS: So that's what I did with my granddaughter the other day when she was here.

I'd say "Okay, Evie push!"

and then she really enjoyed pulling the little hole out.

I love to make things and give to people.

Myself and my one sister, I know I think are the ones in the family that like cooking the most, you know, but they all have picked up certain talents of my mom, um from the cooking aspect.

And of course the eating aspect we all do real good at.

[Laughs] [Epic Western music] CRAIG: Early in this journey, I was gifted two cookbooks, The Treasured Recipes of Old St. Mary's 1634 to 1958 , and 300 Years of Black Cooking in St. Mary's County, Maryland .

It is clear from reading these books of recipes from Southern Maryland home kitchens, that many different food ways were nurtured from the same soil, with one learning from the other.

And I began to search for a place, a recipe, and a touch of Grandma's hand.

Where all the food ways could and did meet and I found that place in Serenity Farm with Franklin Robinson.

FRANKLIN ROBINSON JR.: I am Franklin A. Robinson Jr. We're here at Serenity Farm, which is um the family farm.

In the working life, I teach at George Mason University.

I teach playwriting, as well as, script analysis and then I'm also an archivist for the archive center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.

In and amongst other volunteer duties that I do throughout the week.

CRAIG: And for me, you are my resident historian.

FRANKLIN: Oh!

[Laughs] Oh, thank you.

CRAIG: From the bluff, a broad plain expands down to the Patuxent River.

With its fertile farmland and access to abundant game, fish and oysters, this has been a gathering and cooking place for literally centuries.

Fire circles have been found here with artifacts dating back 13,000 years.

FRANKLIN: Uh, we sit today on lands that once the Piscataway Conoy were all over.

My family's been lucky enough to have been given this land for however long we're able to hold on to it or work it or farm it.

You know, it's just but a mere a second in the huge timeline of the history of this place.

Every day you walk out of the door it's just thinking about that, you know?

CRAIG: Cooking our food is what made us human.

It vastly improved our diets and it encouraged us to gather together to share and it's my belief that these early people were very much like us.

They grew or gathered their food.

They cooked.

They ate as families and groups as today.

FRANKLIN: When we do have school tours and things come here.

I always tell the kids, I said the ground that you are walking on people have walked on this for thousands of years, thousands of years.

We're just a a blip.

CRAIG: Yes, Serenity was and is a place of gathering.

For 350 generations, cooking has gone on here with the first people, white settlers, enslaved people, the British Army in the War of 1812, everyone cooked here.

I also think that at every gathering, there was a best cook and a best recipe that everyone wanted to know.

FRANKLIN: I learned to cook from... well, a little bit from my mother, but not much, she died very early.

But mostly from my grandmothers who learned to cook from their mothers who learned to cook from their mothers.

So how many thousand years of cooking history reside in me right now?

So yeah, all of that, you know, you just like I said, it's just it's been passed down, and passed down and passed down.

And so you have this literally thousands of years of cooking history that reside in each one of us.

CRAIG: And when it came time to select a recipe that could speak of these things, Franklin and I kept coming back to the harvest wagon in the field, at the end of the tobacco harvest.

CRAIG: Do you want me to cook stuff?

FRANKLIN: I do, I want you to do something.

[Laughter] [Knife cutting] FRANKLIN: So this came from my grandmother, Elizabeth, born Robinson and she was born and raised on a farm in Calvert County, near Cheney Hill.

At the end of the tobacco season, we would all get together with um whoever had helped us that year uh and have- everyone would bring their best dish or something to eat, a big potluck, right?

So this was always- this is always something just easy to bring as a condiment.

So um, we all used it and um Black, white, in between and uh was something that uh, like I said, you can use on chicken, you can use on ribs, whatever.

Um so it was a point of coming together for all of us.

And that can go right in- yep, perfect.

You're much faster than I am.

[Knife scraping cutting board] CRAIG: So I'm guessing she would make this once a year?

FRANKLIN: Yes.

Yep, when uh... [tapping] when tomatoes would come in.

CRAIG: So this was end of the season.

This was harvest time.

FRANKLIN: Right, right.

Yeah right, which coincided exactly with tobacco, right?

CRAIG: And so this was end of the harvest.

Can you kind of paint that picture for me?

FRANKLIN: Sure um, so the flat that you see on there uh literally would have been stripped of all of the tobacco plants.

So you have just everything is denuded, but you could still of course see um the stalks where they had, you know, been cut off.

The tobacco would go up.

You'd push it up in the barn and get that all hung... um and finally, then your reward was a lovely meal.

Uh you know, just- just a nice sense of community of coming together and having- you're going to make me cry now uh- [Voice breaks] There was a sense of community, you know, that uh... CRAIG: A task completed.

FRANKLIN: Yes, work well done.

CRAIG: Work well done.

FRANKLIN: And um, and that everybody had a hand in it.

CRAIG: Growing tobacco was a Southern Maryland mainstay.

It is hard physical work and it required working together on Serenity to get the tobacco harvested and hung to dry.

Then they would pull the wagon back out into the field and everyone brought food to share and the star of the show was always Franklin's grandmother's chili sauce.

FRANKLIN: This will render for about two to three hours.

Um, but the smell with those spices is just amazing.

Um, and she had- she cooked a lot on her home comfort wood range um so anytime I smell wood smoke, all of those, memories just flood back um... CRAIG: Wood smoke and chili sauce.

FRANKLIN: Okay, now I'm going to put you to work again.

[Sniffles and clears throat] These three need to go in a sachet.

And, so this is cinnamon, in the stick cinnamon, and I usually put three of these and they just go right in there.

Of course, those will come out at the end.

[Folksy guitar music] FRANKLIN: Alright.

And...I'm going to add a little bit more celery seed just to make up for- CRAIG: It is remarkable and I am struck by the commonality that sitting here at Serenity Farm and knowing what limited amount that we actually know about what happened here.

FRANKLIN: Yeah.

CRAIG: Uh makes us stop, I think, and- and realize that around food that uh there's a commonality to humanity.

FRANKLIN: Right.

CRAIG: The history of enslaved people having worked the land of Serenity with tobacco, wheat, livestock and other crops was revealed when an unmarked cemetery of 22 enslaved people of both genders and all ages was discovered in 2012.

Tenderly investigated by archaeologists, we learned of these people, how they lived and what they ate.

All were reburied with respect.

And it is central to any visit here to give full measure to the ones who have lived, worked, eaten and passed on at this place.

FRANKLIN: In that burial ground there is, there are men, women, and children buried there and infants.

So in one of the infant's graves, um they found a fish scale.

Now, we all know that a fish scale probably about yay big right?

But they were able to tell that that fish was a perch, a white perch, caught here in the Patuxent.

So then you start thinking, so was that the child's last meal?

Was that the mother had just been cleaning some fish and had to go bury her child?

[Voice breaks] That one little thing, just gets you going... ...into what was that fish?

What was that fish to them?

And- and the fact that it ended up and is and was still intact enough to be studied 200 years later, just blows my mind.

CRAIG: Absolutely.

And it was food.

FRANKLIN: And it was food, right.

CRAIG: Franklin, thanks for doing what you do.

FRANKLIN: [Laughs] Oh, well my pleasure.

CRAIG: This has been a great day.

FRANKLIN: Uh-huh.

[Music with harmonica] TEANDRA THOMPSON: I'm Teandra Thompson.

I reside here in Lexington Park area and welcome to my kitchen!

[Oven rack clanging] TEANDRA: Hm, hm, hm... that right there.

[Laughs] CRAIG: Teandra occupies a very special place in my heart.

She teaches people how to cook and even more, she teaches kids how to cook.

Teandra first attracted my attention when she described her Nanny Theresa Young's bread pudding as, "A masterpiece dessert using a few ingredients and her hands."

Things just got better visiting Teandra for the first time.

There were big handwritten recipes taped to the wall for chocolate chip cookies and other desserts.

Those were for the local children who came to her home for cooking classes and then to top it off, she asked me if I had seen the book.

The book turned out to be the 300 Years of Black Cooking in St. Mary's County , saying on the cover, "Come in, Sit Down, Make Yourself at Home."

CRAIG: You gave me one of my favorite books now.

Which is... TEANDRA: Oh yeah.

CRAIG: This one here.

Now, is that bread pudding that we did today in here?

TEANDRA: It is.

CRAIG: Can you find that for me?

TEANDRA: [Laughs] Oh yeah, putting me on the spot.

[Laughs] And the beauty of this book is that there's every you know, men, women of all ethnicities, backgrounds and they decided to come together and put it put it in here.

Yeah.

I'll get to it soon.

There we go.

Mm-hm, that's it.

[Laughs] Right there.

CRAIG: The book is a cornucopia of delights and a glimpse into the day-to-day lives of African Americans in this part of the South.

So it was with delight that I found the recipe that I would be doing with Teandra in the cookbook.

CRAIG: [Sighs] So bread pudding.

TEANDRA: Mm-hm.

CRAIG: From Theresa Young in Leonardtown.

TEANDRA: Yes.

CRAIG: So let's talk about her.

TEANDRA: Hmm.

CRAIG: For a little while.

TEANDRA: [Laughs] Sure.

CRAIG: Okay?

TEANDRA: Oh yeah, I like talking about her.

TEANDRA: One and a half cups of raisins.

[Laughs] Which I'm sure she didn't- she didn't use measuring cups and spoons and she did it by sight.

[Laughs] I'm not that daring yet.

[Laughs] I just remember her, I was, I mean young girl but just always in that kitchen.

Now she, between meals prepping and cooking, she would play- play Solitaire, but I just always remember her being at the table, being at the stove, like I said, putting ingredients together.

Creating these dishes that just were so good to our soul.

Some of my fondest memories of course would be Christmas, the holidays.

Where it would be, you know, the cookies, chocolate chip, black chocolate- black walnut with chocolate chip cookies, um Russian tea cakes, and family, all of her children, her grandchildren and we would just all huddle into the living room, half the size of this kitchen, in the trailer.

And it was nothing but smiles, love.

We would just sit around the table or wherever you could find a seat.

TEANDRA: And you just, you dove in.

TEANDRA: Mm, still hot.

CRAIG: But when you talk about her, you mostly talk about her baking.

TEANDRA: Mm-hmm.

CRAIG: And now baking is what you do?

TEANDRA THOMPSON: Yes, mm-hm.

CRAIG: So you're following in her footsteps.

She's taught you a lot.

[Tin lightly scraping] TEANDRA: Hm.

[Laughs] CRAIG: Now you're gonna take your hands, and you're just going to stick your hands in there and you're gonna mix that all up.

TEANDRA: No.

[Laughs] I'm not.

I'm one of these new age bakers.

I use the fork and do it.

Now she might have put her hands in it to do it.

I'm sure, but no.

[Laughs] CRAIG: I think it's roll up your sleeves time.

[Laughs hard] CRAIG: Do you know this woman?

Edna Lewis?

TEANDRA: Mm-mm.

CRAIG: Edna Lewis, uh was the first celebrated New York City African American female chef.

TEANDRA: Wow!

CRAIG: Yeah.

She's an amazing woman.

There are so few people that actually teach this love of cooking.

TEANDRA: Mm-hm.

CRAIG: And, and I see that in you.

TEANDRA: Well, first thing we're gonna do is we're going to cut up the bread, tear up the bread, so.

CRAIG: We just gotta tear it up and leave it in this bowl?

TEANDRA: Yep.

I'm leaving gloves on, of course, because that's just me.

The baker in me and it doesn't have to be fancy and cute.

CRAIG: Are we're doing like one inch squares?

TEANDRA: Let me show this man how to do this.

This is all I do.

See, look, see what I'm doing.

I'm just tearing it up.

Because that's what she did, yeah.

[Laughs] I... am spiritual.

So it was Spirit who told me to combine what I love, which is- passion is my- is children.

I grew up watching my mom take care of children too, right?

So it was that- combining that with, baking, what I do now.

And so on her birthday, my mom's birthday I was like, I'm not going to be sad.

I'm going to celebrate her birthday.

So I hosted my first baking class with the children that I previously had taken care of years ago, years before that, and it was phenomenal and I've taught over 10-15 classes.

TEANDRA: So I'm gonna stir this up and then... if you'd like to crack the eggs for me please?

CRAIG: And right in here?

TEANDRA: Actually, you're going to crack it in that bowl there.

Just in case it's a bad egg, shells and all the good things.

The children within they've come into my home, some that I know, some that I've never met.

I've done camps, baking camps, where we take weeks long, you know, weeks- weeks long timeframe.

We've made homemade bread, homemade butter, um cakes, cookies, brownies.

I do a baking therapy class for children.

Um teaching them coping skills like baking therapy.

To um cope through the loss of a parent or just- just a time where they can come into a place where they feel safe.

[Spoon scraping the bowl] TEANDRA: [Laughs] Hmm... it smells so good.

TEANDRA: But like I said, then it was like I just grew a love of it and was so filled by it.

So I'm like, let's do camps.

Let's do this every day!

[Laughs] Like honestly, five years, even if it's not that brick and mortar at that time, but to be able to teach classes every day.

CRAIG: So now we're going to do the sauce for the bread pudding.

TEANDRA: Yes, mm-hm.

CRAIG: So what, we boiled some water, we've added some butter.

TEANDRA: Sugar.

CRAIG: And now we're adding some sugar.

Now all of this is also in the 300 Years of St. Mary's County Cooking too, right?

TEANDRA: Yes, the exact [Snickers].

CRAIG: Thinking about her I was reminded of a quote from the great Julia Child, "People who love to eat are always the best people" and Teandra is best people.

She brings a joy and a message to her cooking which will hopefully inspire young ones to also make their kitchens their place in their home.

Nanny Theresa Young would be proud.

TEANDRA: She just exemplified love and it was just always around her.

Um no matter what she- there was no judgment.

She made you feel welcomed.

Um if anyone, I was always told, if anyone needed something to eat.

They knew they could stop by her house to grab a plate.

She always made sure that you left you weren't hungry.

And she just loved her family.

She really did and anyone that came her way, they'd say the same thing.

I couldn't have been born into a better family.

CRAIG: I think she'd be proud of you.

TEANDRA: I think so too.

[Laughs] I think- I'd like to think so too.

And that's the thing, like she she just inherited that baking through her mother.

Who owned a hotel, who she said she baked all the time.

And desserts- she would rather have a dessert before she would have a main course...so.

CRAIG: A woman after my heart.

TEANDRA: [Laughs] Right!

There's nothing wrong with bread pudding for breakfast and you know with a cup of coffee, it sits well.

CRAIG: Exactly.

[Slow rhythmic Blues music] CRAIG: Anthony Bourdain famously said, "food is everything we are.

It is an extension of your ethnic feeling, your personal history, your tribe, your grandma.

Food is inseparable from those."

That is the way food is used at Tiffany Barber's Grace Haven Farm.

In my visits to Grace Haven, I have appreciated the peace and the kitchen that Tiffany has created.

It's finally good to be able to cook in this magnificent space with her and be included in the big family she feeds in so many ways.

CRAIG: Five years ago, I met you.

I walked through that door.

TIFFANY BARBER: Mm-hm.

CRAIG: Well, what did I tell you?

TIFFANY: You said we're gonna cook together in this kitchen.

CRAIG: We're gonna cook together in this kitchen!

And it took us five years.

[Both laughing] But we're gonna cook together in this kitchen!

TIFFANY: I'm excited.

CRAIG: And we're gonna do your grandmother's recipe, because this is the greatest written recipe I've ever seen.

TIFFANY: Yeah, the cablegram.

CRAIG: The cablegram recipe.

TIFFANY: Probably the only piece of paper she could find, I guess, in the moment and she typed out her recipe for the family.

CRAIG: So we're [claps hands] making her tomato sauce.

We have pork, and beef and lamb.

That we're all doing in this- TIFFANY: All in one dish.

CRAIG: All in this dish.

So we're making spaghetti and meatballs.

TIFFANY: Absolutely, with sausage.

CRAIG: With sausage.

TIFFANY: Yeah.

CRAIG: Cutting onions.

I excel at cutting onions.

TIFFANY: Perfect.

CRAIG: So I shall do that.

Do you wanna... TIFFANY: I'll strip the sausage.

CRAIG: You wanna unleash the sausage?

TIFFANY: Absolutely.

CRAIG: Now, how do you remember this dish?

TIFFANY: Well, I can remember being in my grandmother's kitchen.

And she uh would have a big pot on the stove.

And I cou- you'd walk in and the first thing, you know, you'd smell it.

And so what she would do, is she would take out a piece of Wonder Bread.

Put it on a little tiny plate.

Slather it with sauce and- and then layer it on top of that with some parmesan cheese.

CRAIG: You've thought about a few different recipes that you wanted to do.

TIFFANY: Yeah.

CRAIG: And you'd settled on this one.

Why?

TIFFANY: Well... my life I feel like parallels my grandmother's in some ways.

My grandmother was... she had six children.

I birthed six children.

We adopted two more.

My grandmother's recipes, really just were the center of my childhood and it's something that I carry forward with my kids.

CRAIG: And I'm not crying because of the story that you just told me.

TIFFANY: [Laughs] My onions are that good?

CRAIG: Your onions are that good.

And you use cast iron?

TIFFANY: I do.

Um, these- this actually was from my other grandmother.

This is my Grandma Ruby's.

CRAIG: That's exactly where I was going.

TIFFANY: Yeah, this was her cast iron pan that she, you know, raised her kids on.

CRAIG: And when you pick that out of your cupboard every time you think of her, don't you?

TIFFANY: I do.

CRAIG: So Tiffany, as we sauté off the sausage now and the onions and we're gonna do a little bit of garlic.

[Sizzling] CRAIG: Well let's talk about your farm.

TIFFANY: Hm, Grace Haven Farm.

CRAIG: Grace Haven Farm.

TIFFANY: Well, we have our sign up front that says, "We plant hope, we grow faith.

and we harvest love."

And I think that's really symbolic of what we try to create.

This is not a home for just us to build this great big house for us to enjoy.

It's a place where people come, and cook and eat.

CRAIG: Now what role does the kitchen play in all of that?

TIFFANY: You know, when I brought my daughter home from China... the first night home, we couldn't sleep because of the 12 hour distance.

And I put her in a chair because she was so little and I threw her at the island with me and we made- we made um muffins.

Because cooking together is connecting.

So I had this grand idea that we were going to make muffins together and she was gonna love the muffin.

But she took a bite of the muffin and she was like, "No."

[Laughter] So, uh but I- but the memory is still sweet.

You know, my intention was to try to build connection with her.

Um, what I experienced was learning about her.

I realized that I was going to need to consider what mattered to her.

Not just what mattered to me.

CRAIG: So did you come up with things that she liked to do after that?

TIFFANY: It took a long time.

It did, but yeah.

We did.

We eventually found, um how to feed her in a way that made her feel safe and- and things were familiar to her, but it was awhile.

[Sizzling] [Banging of spoon] TIFFANY: That, looks good.

[Clanging] Let's make some meatballs.

TIFFANY: All right, I'm gonna pop some eggs in while you're doing that.

[Metal bowls banging] CRAIG: And we're using your ingredients here.

We're using lamb from your farm.

TIFFANY: Yes.

CRAIG: We're using beef from a friend's farm, Earl Lumpkin.

TIFFANY: Yeah!

Part Green Hill Farm.

CRAIG: Part Green Hill Farm, which is on the other side of the river from here.

TIFFANY: And then I'm going to add... CRAIG: And to that, we're going to need to do our breadcrumbs.

TIFFANY: Mm-hm.

TIFFANY: Okay, ready?

CRAIG: Go for it.

TIFFANY: And then we're gonna add the... [Metal clanging] ...basil.

And then I'm going to do a little bit of salt.

And, I feel oh, yeah, I like to add some parmesan cheese.

There you go!

TIFFANY: That looks good.

Let's just see if it's gonna- Yeah, that's fine.

Yep, we're going to make those into little meatballs.

When they're dry and, you know, really hard.

They don't tend to be as tender.

These will be great.

CRAIG: In good kitchens, everyone is welcome, everyone is equal.

There are no titles.

There is no yelling, or screaming, or anything, but light hearted competition.

Everyone works together towards the common goal, making a meal together.

And we celebrate at the end by collectively eating the same foods.

Our bodies responding in the same ways.

Making donuts, making macaroni and cheese or making Tiffany Barber's Great Grandmother Rose's tomato and meatball sauce, it nourishes our bodies and our souls.

[Spoon scraping metal pot] TIFFANY: And then it's just going to steam it.

It's going to start to have some... um steam come off the top, but not a boil.

And as that happens, it's going to thicken and- CRAIG: Yeah, you want it to reduce.

TIFFANY: And all of the meats are going to flavor that sauce and it's gonna be so good.

Plus, the uh meatballs will continue to be more tender than the sausage, as it cooks really slow.

[Metal banging] CRAIG: And at the end, the meatballs and the sauce can only be truly appreciated when folded into a slice of soft white bread.

CRAIG: I just kind of had this feeling when you were a kid you just sort of folded it over.

TIFFANY: You know...

I think you're right.

I think you're exactly right.

I just folded it over.

It's hard to remember.

[Eating noises] Oh, it's good.

CRAIG: I think it's everything mixed together here.

TIFFANY: Hmm it's really good.

I think I need another meatball.

[Craig laughs] [Upbeat string music] CRAIG: As much as I loved the people highlighted in this short film I have a feeling that if we were going to go down virtually any street in America I think we would have the same rich opportunity to find equally compelling stories.

It's those floured hands that I remember about my grandmother's kitchen.

Those hands were the hands of a strong woman and reflected a lifetime of hard work.

She learned to cook on wood stoves, she was the daughter of a traveling pastor, she would hum and tell me stories of her childhood, her parents and her grandparents, she connected me to my family's humble past.

Her name was Lattie.

She had sisters named Maddy, Hattie, Bonsey and May and brothers named John, Elmer, Homer and, the twins, Cordell and Oradell.

She was a country woman.

Sunday morning breakfast with her was fried chicken, chocolate gravy and buttermilk biscuits.

I tried to replicate her biscuits for years.

I tried using leaf lard or Crisco, raw or buttermilk.

I made very good biscuits, but it was always missing something.

One evening as I was scanning some old home movies that my daughters and wife had digitized when I was startled to see my grandmother making buttermilk biscuits with my mother and my aunt along with my little sister and a skinny little blonde kid acting goofy in the background.

Lattie was stirring the biscuit batter in the hot sauce pan, while the others patted the next dough and the rounds for the oven.

And now I make perfect biscuits because I found out what I had missed.

I had missed my grandma's hands.

Remarkable stories from Grandma's hands are born in every kitchen across the planet every day.

And these hands speak to me of one truth, that inside each of us is a quiet place where our thoughts and our memories mingle with aromas and taste and define for us a place of belonging.

A place of comfort.

A place of love.

The place where we came from.

Lives change, but the food, the food will always be with us.

Okay now, everybody in the kitchen.

[Groovy guitar music]