Rosie Mayes - I Heart Soul Food: 100 Southern Comfort Food Favorites

In the world I was born into, biscuit dough is the best toy, and children teethe on oxtail bones: soul food runs through my family tree like kudzu vines in the South. On my blog and YouTube channel, I Heart Recipes, and now in this book, I bring those Southern roots into my Seattle kitchen and share everything my mom taught me, everything my grandmother taught her, and all of my inherited, long-nurtured love of soul food with the world.

I was just three or four years old when my aunt Frances first brought me into the kitchen, plopped me on a stool, and let my chubby little baby fingers dig into the flour, salt, and spices while she cooked. I patted the pork chops through the breading, following her on how much I needed of each ingredient, then handed them over to her to deep-fry. It was the first time I cooked soul food, but it certainly wasnt the first time I ate it, and it was only the beginning of my lifelong love of making the kind of food that sticks to your ribs and warms your heart.

From the moment I could walk, I followed my mom along with her mom and sisters to the Parkside Nursing Home in Seattles Capitol Hill neighborhood, where they whipped up grand batches of macaroni and cheese, meatloaf, and gumbo for the residents, and I took the scraps they handed me and mimicked their actions, building my own pretend dishes in a corner of the commercial kitchen. It was probably illegal, and I know they wouldnt let you do that kind of thing today, but there was nowhere else for me to go while they workedand nowhere I loved to be more than making trouble at their feet as the smells of soul food wafted around us.

By the time I was five, I stepped up to the stove to make real food, cooking up a big ol batch of my favorite spaghetti, and that became my dish. Everyone in the family has something theyre known formy moms is her potato saladthat they always have to bring to family picnics and holiday parties. I still make my spaghetti just the same way, and it still brings the same Southern mentality to my Pacific Northwest kitchen, just like it did when I wasnt even tall enough to stir the sauce without a little bit of help.

Because even though I was born and raised in Seattle, my cooking is firmly rooted in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. My grandmamy moms momand her husband, my grandfather, left Baton Rouge during the Great Migration and headed north for a better life, pregnant with the first of what would be eighteen children. (Yeah, you read that righteighteen kids. Thats why Ive got so many aunts that made sure I knew how to cook!) My grandma found that better life in Seattle, where my mom was born the youngest of the six girls, along with twelve brothers, and my grandmother took over as the queen bee of an always-busy kitchen. When those kids grew up, they all had a few kids of their ownthats why Im always known as Cousin Rosie and she fed them too. She never lost her role as a Southern belle, whipping out Creole and Cajun cooking that fed her familys heart and soul (and a lot of the neighbors too) and kept them remembering where they came from.

With a giant family like that, every gathering was an event. Sunday supper always drew a crowd, and there was never any shortage of hungry mouths, so anyone who wanted to cook a dish was always welcome to step into the kitchen. But there was one day of the year that took even our familys big appetites beyond their wildest dreams.

Christmas with my family was the biggest, most delicious celebration youve ever seen. We would have a turkey, a ham, and a giant pot of gumbo on the table. There were collard greens, candied yams, and my moms famous potato salad, which might be the best everexcept for mine! There were cornbread rolls and my grandmas special fried chicken made with waffle batter. But the best part was dessert. Or, rather, all the desserts. See, my grandparents didnt have much money, and they couldnt possibly afford gifts for all those children, so the present was the Christmas dessert table. By the time the next generation rolled inmy cousins and methe tradition had solidified, and anything less than every dessert imaginable would have let the crowd down. Buttermilk chocolate cake, sweet potato pie, peach cobbler, pineapple upside-down cake, and tea cakes (those were my great-grandmothers recipeshe wasnt a great cook, but she made these so well that nothing else mattered) all spilled over the top of a table in the living room. It was a sweet feast that seemed to have no end.

My beloved grandma died when I was only two, but I carry on her legacy as a cook in my kitchen and in my name: she was Rosa Mae, and I was named Rosemary after her. Funny, the name Mayes actually came from my husband, though! I grew up eating the recipes shed passed on to her daughters and was somehow the only kid in my generation that dared to step into the kitchen (though you better believe my cousins call me up when they need a taste of home). Her husband, my grandfather, cared for me and raised me on photos and stories of my namesake and the wonders that came from her oven and stove. There was never any question that I would follow in her footsteps, right into the kitchen.