Baker - The seasoned life: food, family, faith, and the joy of eating well

G OOD FOOD has the power to make the moment. I grew up in a Toronto suburb called Markham, and my mom had a salon set up in the basement of our home. When I was 6 or 7 years old, I remember sitting in the kitchen of our home, watching my sitter, Dora, make Trinidadian curry and roti for my moms clients every Saturday. I would run back and forth from the basement to the kitchen passing out the warm, wrapped-up roti. Good food made everyone okay with the occasional wait.

Growing up in Toronto, I took it for granted that it was perfectly normal for people from every corner of the world to live together. In our neighborhood, there were northern Indian restaurants on nearly every corner. And if it wasnt Indian, it was a restaurant serving Ethiopian, Greek, or the best darn Chinese food youve ever tasted.

This melting pot culture made me feel right at home with my Jamaican-Chinese-Polish-African American heritage. (At school, kids called me The United Nations.) But when I was 14 years old, our family moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. It was a big change, but a good one. Im now a lover of biscuits and sweet tea! North Carolina is also where I first encountered the best barbecue Ive ever tasted. Today, I like to say that I am a passionate dual citizen: I love both my home countriesand their food.

It was back in Toronto, surrounded by amazing flavors from all over the world, when I first really started getting into food. By my 13th birthday, all I wanted to do was cook! So instead of a dance party, I threw a cooking party. Im certain my friends showed up expecting to dance and play games. Instead, I put them to work in the kitchen. My wonderful (and patient) parents provided all the ingredients so I could cook the day away with my friendsmany of whom Im still close to today. One memory stands out above the others from that day. I had one friend who decided she was going to rinse off the ground beef to ensure it was clean. Whoopslets just say that washing ground meat is not a good way to go! But it was hilarious. To this day I think about that incident every time I cook ground beef.

No matter where we lived, the highlight of my food memories was always my moms cooking. My mom and grandma were born in Jamaica, and although they moved to Canada when my mom was a little girl, they kept island flavors alive at home. My mom would meticulously prepare every mealbrown sugar chicken, soup, rice and peaseven though this meant cooking in big batches for our army-sized gang, including my siblings as well as the many family and friends who would often stop by.

If it wasnt my moms cooking, wed be treated to something made by my dad, who grew up in Buffalo, New York. I still think that my dads signature dishmeat loaf drizzled with a simple but decadent ketchup glaze and topped with a cross made out of green onionsis the best meat loaf ever. The kitchen table was the place where we had our best (and worst) conversations. Its where we spoke about our dreams, reflected on life lessons, and were, lets say, enlightened on how to correct our failures. I have two younger brothers and two older sisters, so you can imagine that chaos was a part of the package deal at dinner. Still, it was a beautiful thing that we could always press pause in our hectic lives and come together at the table. Its the reason I feel its so important to cook for my family today, gathering everyone around the table for a meal. I want to give my husband, Stephen, and our two baby girls, Riley and Ryan, time to disconnect from the world and connect with each other.

When I was 17, I moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting. For me, it was like going to college, and I had to learn how to fend for myself. In LA, I missed my moms home cooking, especially considering that my meals now included a heavy rotation of instant ramen noodles. It made me want to cook for myself even more. I had success landing acting jobs in LA, but ultimately it didnt feel like the place I was supposed to be. So, after a year and a half, I moved back home. Even so, I am grateful for having had that experience.

It was shortly before moving back to North Carolina that I went on my first real date with Stephen, who was in LA for an event. Wed known each other since we were 14 and 15 years old through our church in North Carolina, but we didnt start dating until many years later. Our interactions up until that point had consisted of phone conversations about Canadian candy (fuzzy peaches are both of our favorites), and the occasional nervous glance at Wednesday night church youth group. And then, out of the blue, he asked me (through Facebookdont laugh) if I wanted to hang out. We spent the day drinking chai lattes and checking out the stars on Hollywood Boulevard. It was one of the best days ever. A month later, back in Charlotte, he invited me over to his parents house for chai lattes. I walked into the kitchen and saw a pot on the stove simmering away. It looked like he had made it all himself, and I was impressed. And then his sister came into the room and asked him why he had an empty container of dog food on the counter. It turned out that the container was hiding the source of the lattestwo Starbucks cups! For a while there, he really had me going.