Your Mama's Kitchen Episode 21: Bryant Terry
Audible Originals presents Your Mama's Kitchen, hosted by Michele Norris.
Bryant Terry I think it's easy for me to romanticize the time that I spent in my grandfather's backyard urban farm and my grandmother's kitchen and her kitchen garden. But it was labor, so I don't know if it was necessarily fine. Shelling peas and shucking corn and weeding in the garden and harvesting the vegetables. But I do—when I ruminate on those moments, I feel happy. And so I have to believe that it was joyous. And I think it was more about spending time with my grandparents and being able to connect with them.
Michele Norris Welcome to Your Mama's Kitchen, the podcast where we explore how the kitchens of our youth shape who we become as adults. I'm Michele Norris, and in today's episode, we're joined by Bryant Terry.
Ever heard of that term multihyphenate—a label for people who do a long list of things? Well, that label certainly applies to Bryant Terry. He is a chef, conceptual artist, food activist, musician, highly-praised and critically-acclaimed cookbook author with titles like Vegetable Kingdom, Vegan Soul Kitchen, and, most recently, Black Food. Bryant is also a publisher in his own right, with his imprint called 4 Color at Ten Speed Press. That's the numeral four. Currently, he's pursuing an MFA at UC Berkeley, where his work combines studies in the Art and Black Studies department.
Phew! Does hearing about all that make you tired? Bryant obviously has some sort of magical, supercharged high gear that lets him keep all his burners on high, because in addition to all of that, he's a devoted husband and father who believes in active, hands-on parenting for his two beautiful girls.
When we spoke with Bryant, we found him working at his art studio in the Richmond Field Station. It's a remote part of UC Berkeley's campus where the buildings look like military barracks. His studio is an homage to his grandmother's kitchen, and that's because the foundation for all of Bryant's work in food justice can be traced back to that kitchen in Memphis, Tennessee, where his grandmother, Margie Bryant, held court. Bryant and his family affectionately called her Ma’dear. And when Bryant was young, he spent hours in Ma’dear's kitchen helping to prepare the syrupy bases for Ma’dear's preserves, shelling peas or peeling potatoes. Bryant saw how Ma’dear's love for her family came in the form of what she made in that kitchen, and it's that love that stays with him today and drives his work.
In this episode, we'll learn more about Bryant's journey to becoming a lauded and boundary pushing chef and artist, how a very specific 90s hip-hop song led him to veganism. Yep, you heard that right. A hip-hop song made him put down red meat, and we hear how the magic of Ma’dear's slow-cooked, soul-nourishing greens, along with the song she hummed as she made them, have been an anchor through it all. That's coming up.
Michele Norris We want you to close your eyes and imagine your mama's kitchen, and then describe it for us a few sentences. What it looked like, smelled like, sounded like.
Bryant Terry Let me ask you this. Can I take it in a different direction and describe my mother's mother's kitchen?
Michele Norris You can.
Bryant Terry Okay, so when I think about some of my favorite food memories, I think about the kitchen of my maternal grandmother, Margie Bryant. The first thing that always comes to mind is her cupboard. It was about seven foot tall and a foot deep, each shelf crowded with glass jars full of preserves, pickled pears, peaches, carrots, green beans, figs, blackberry jam, sauerkraut. Chow Chow. I think about our humble stove on which she would often slow simmer her dark, leafy greens from her kitchen garden. I think about the window looking out to the backyard. I see the mini orchard with pear trees and peach trees and nectarine trees. I see her kitchen garden with dark leafy greens, tubers, fresh herbs. Those are memories of Ma’dear, as we call her, Ma’dear’s Kitchen.
Michele Norris What did Ma’dear’s kitchen smell like?
Bryant Terry Ma’dear’s kitchen smelled like cornbread with pecans. Slow simmered collards with the piece of fat back. Ma’dear's kitchen smelled like sweet tea with lemon slices. Ma’dear's kitchen smell like pound cake. Ma’dear's kitchen smells like pecan pie, sweet potato pie. Ma’dear's kitchen smelled like ... earth. Ma’daer's kitchen smells like love.
Michele Norris How did that kitchen shape the man that you've become?
Bryant Terry My grandmother's kitchen in terms of the work that I've done over the past two decades, I would say that I am mostly inspired by the time that I spent in my grandmother's kitchen, supporting her in and whatever kind of age appropriate ways she would allow me to support, whether it was helping to wash some dark, leafy greens or turning the lids on the jars for her pickles and preserves.
Michele Norris Is that when her hands got a little weak and she couldn't do that herself, she needed your help?
Bryant Terry She did. She was older. She was, you know, spry and robust. But she needed support when she needed support. And that was one of my favorite things to do. I loved pouring the sugar into the pot when she was making whatever kind of base she needed for her preserves.
Michele Norris Big pot.
Bryant Terry Yeah. So, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the cast iron skillet. She had several of them, and those were her primary things she used for, you know, frying and sauteing and braising. But she had a big, I don't know, it was like a vat. Where she would cook her greens or, you know, boil her black-eyed peas.
Michele Norris The audio guides often serve up interesting sounds when you're doing an interview and you're talking about this distant space and there's this train in the distance. Did you hear that? Is that the kind of sound you might hear if you're at Ma’dear's house?
Bryant Terry Yeah, definitely. Because that neighborhood was one of those neighborhoods that was on the other side of the tracks, the Black side of the tracks. And I do recall hearing the train in the distance when I was spending time with her, especially at nighttime.
Michele Norris A quick word here. Bryant spent the first part of our conversation speaking with his eyes closed. He shut his eyes as he described his grandmother's kitchen and kept them closed for almost 15 minutes, as if he wanted to stay in that space he described so beautifully. As I listen to him talk about that sacred space, I understood why.
Michele Norris Was there a kitchen table?
Bryant Terry There was. It was a wooden table that was not big enough for extensive family meals, probably fit about 4 to 6 people. But it was definitely, I mean, the kitchen, the hearth that was the main gathering space at my grandmother's house. And I remember sitting there often supporting with the kitchen tasks of tearing the leaves of collard greens from stems, of shucking corn, of shelling black eyed peas. I remember that was a place where my mom and her siblings would play cards, trash, sing, connect.
Michele Norris They played spades. Bid whist. What was the game? Pinnacle?
Bryant Terry All of the above. But I feel like Spades was kind of like the the go to game for mom and her siblings.
Michele Norris How did you wind up pulling so much kitchen duty and spending that much time with your grandmother?
Bryant Terry I mean, so I think about this often. So when I think about the biggest influences, for me, it's my paternal grandfather, Andrew Johnson Terry, my maternal grandmother, Margie Bryant, and, I think it's easy for me to romanticize the time that I spent in my grandfather's backyard urban farm and my grandmother's kitchen and her kitchen garden. But... it was labor, so I don't know if it was necessarily fun shelling peas and shucking corn and weeding in the garden and harvesting the vegetables. And but I do when I ruminate on those moments, I feel happy. And so I have to believe that it was, you know, joyous. And I think it was more about spending time with my grandparents and being able to connect with them.
Michele Norris I relate to this because I was raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and I was sent to Birmingham, Alabama every summer until I went to junior high. I mean, really every single summer. And I think about the family dynamics at work. Was I there to get me out of the city? Was I there to help Grandma and Grandpa as they got older? Was I there because my parents were pulling so much over time that it was easier to send -- and a bunch of us went down south, you know, the cousins went down south. In your case you went across town. Do you, you know, understand what was going on in your family that you were sent to spend so much time with your grandmother? Or was it just that she lived around the corner and that's where you really wanted to be?
Bryant Terry I know that part of it was the fact that my parents were young. I think my parents, my mom was 21 and my dad was 20 when they got married. And so when I think about being a parent now in his 40s and how so often we just, my wife and I just need a weekend alone. And, you know, obviously grandmother is more than happy.
Michele Norris Send them over here. I'll take 'em! Send that baby over here, you're good.
Bryant Terry Yeah, it's all love, but I know that part of that was my parents needing their space and no judgment, now. You know, one of the most prominent memories of my paternal grandfather was my parents dropping us off on Friday. My sister and me, I have a younger sister. And I just remember getting upset. I was really mad because I just wanted to be with my parents, and I didn't want to be with my granddad that weekend. And I remember I used to have, you know, the little wrappers where you can wrap pennies and dimes.
Michele Norris Oh, the little sleeves that you would put the money inside?
Bryant Terry Exactly. My dad would encourage me, you know with all the loose change, you know, like organize it, keep it in those. And then we could take it in the bank and you can convert it into some greenbacks, and we could put it in your account. And I just remember I got so frustrated that I threw one of these little penny sleeves at the fireplace, and it broke all over the ground. And my grandfather came in and he didn't get upset with me. And this was such an amazing modeling in terms of child rearing, parenting, because he sat me down and he explained to me that, you know, your parents work hard, they're working every day. They're putting a lot of energy and effort into ensuring that you and your sister are well educated and safe, and they need time. They need space. And I remember he kept saying to me, you know, I just want you to know, I'm not fussing at you. I just want to explain to you what these dynamics are. And it's—I think about that a lot when I am kind of engaged in child rearing and those moments when I'm not in my reptilian brain and I'm just like, but when I can be rational? And I repeat that often to my daughters, you know what, I'm not fussing at you. I'm not upset. But I just need you to know that this is what's going on, and I'm just trying to help you, you know, be a good parent, and this is my job, so.
Michele Norris I love that t. It's like an exclamation point, you know, at the end of your thoughts.
Bryant Terry That was granddaddy saying.
Michele Norris That was. Yeah, that was right on cue that the train has a little rhythm section going on. And the conductors.
Bryant Terry Thank you for that punctuation, Papa.
Michele Norris You are a culinary ambassador and an historian and an artiste, and you explore Black food, that you have published a book called Black Food. And one of the things you do is you remind us that when we think about Black food, soul food, we often think about big food, heavy food. Holiday food. Collard greens. Candied yams. Mac and cheese. Smothered chicken. Fried chicken fricassee. Chicken gumbo. I could go on, I'm getting hungry. But that was not what we ate every day of the week. What did you eat every day of the week? And what do we get wrong? We, you know, America, the capital We, what do people get wrong when they think about soul food? When they think about Black food?
Bryant Terry OK. One thing that I've been pushing back against for more than two decades as I've been engaged in this work around health food and farming issues, are the very reductive ways in which people think about and imagine, talk about, write about Black food. You know, in terms of my own family, I always say that we were eating food that was as local as our backyard gardens. It was always in season, and oftentimes we'd literally go harvest food right before the meal. You know, going out and picking some sugar snap peas and preparing them. And that was a meal. And so that was a part of the way that we ate. You know, I often think about this slow food movement that came from Western Europe. Carlo Petrini, the organizer and activist in Italy. But I feel like when people hear that, they often imagine this kind of like European or even like an American context, it's very affluent white practices. And I tell people, look, when my grandmother was in the kitchen cooking all day for Sunday supper the next day, that was slow food practices right there. And so I just I really try to help people reimagine the brilliance and the practices that were done because they were survival practices. Like, I don't think my grandmother thought anything about, like, you know, I'm canning and pickling and preserving. I mean, that's what you did with all the bounty you had.
Michele Norris Because you didn't waste anything you do. You were never going to waste anything. And it's interesting, I'm talking you, you've got all these jars up here on the wall, displayed so beautifully as part of your sacred larder.
Bryant Terry Yeah. I mean, those were the things that... Because, you know, in the leaner months, we're not in California. Like I was in Memphis, where I grew up. In the wintertime, it was wintertime. Things froze over. You didn't have a garden in the winter. And so you were able to take a lot of the bounty, the okra, the peppers, the cucumbers or whatever it was. And you could preserve that. So you can have a lot of that bounty from the more abundant months and the leaner months when everything was kind of like resting. My parents, they had gardens, but they weren't as extensive. You know, I think my parents would grow some tomatoes and they would grow fresh herbs.
Michele Norris If they were working, it's hard to maintain a garden. Yeah, there's a lot of work. You have to be a constant gardener.
Bryant Terry You have to be a constant gardener, and you have to be present with the food. They were doing what they needed to do and so they were busy. But it was this moment where industrial food was kind of having this ascendancy. And so it's not like it was just as kind of purist. We only ate from the earth, you know, we would eat convenience food sometimes. But my mom was very intentional. And to this day, my mother makes meals from scratch. Maybe she incorporated some canned vegetables if she was in a pinch. But it was this mixture of the best, kind of like farm fresh. And then the things that make sense for busy working parents trying to get food on the table for their busy kids.
But I think in most people's mind when they hear Black food, or if they think, you know, the food they think Black people eat, in their mind, it's often synonymous with soul food, you know, in the popular imagination. What I found is that they're kind of like two different threads. So people often think about their kind of antebellum survival foods upon which many enslaved Africans had to rely. You know, I often hear pejoratively describe as slave food, the worst part of the vegetable, the discarded parts of the vegetables or the worst parts of the animals the parts of the plantation owners would discard, you know, the leftovers. And oftentimes people romanticize it, you know, this is showing ingenuity. We know how to take, you know, something that was discarded and make something of it. But there's just a lot of historical inaccuracy. I mean, first of all, let's start by saying that every person of African descent wasn't enslaved. There were free Blacks in this country, you know, in the antebellum period. But, even a flattened idea of what enslaved Africans were eating does recognize that institution of slavery wasn't a monolith.
The way that enslaved Africans might grow food, cook it, and eat it in the Black belt of the South looked different than it did in the coastal Carolinas. Looked different than it did in Louisiana, looked different than it did in Bahia, Brazil. We're talking about a vast diaspora. That's the first point.
But then the other thing that I find people imagine Black food, soul food. They're thinking about the kind of big flavored meats, the overcooked vegetables, the sugary desserts that one might find at a soul food restaurant. And, as if Black folks are just eating red velvet cake every day and mac and cheese and ribs on a daily basis, you know?
And so here's my thing. I'm not denying that either of those strains are part of this larger, more diverse and complex cuisine. Yes. When you talk about chitlins and pig feet and hog butt all those things, that's a part of the cuisine and so are macaroni and cheese and ribs and red velvet cake and over sweetened sweet tea. But what about collards, mustards, turnips, kale, dandelions, sugar snap peas, pull beans, sweet potatoes, butternut squash? These were all the foods that my family and many of the families in that community were eating. The foundation of traditional Black diets. We're talking about just simple, vegetable-driven meals, because the reality is that before our food system was industrialized, most Black folks who are working class or working poor couldn't afford to have meat at every single meal. This was something that was there for holidays and special occasions.
But one thing I also don't want to do is to vilify the way that Black people, traditionally, we can look at a mini diet in West and Central Africa and the Caribbean and Latin America and American South, and many of them were largely vegetable based, obviously, depending on the geography. Right. But the fact that people put a piece of fat back in the greens, what is it, vegan no. But what did that do? It was a quick way of adding a lot of nutrient density, a lot of flavor. And I'm not mad at that. I'd rather have some slow simmered collard greens with a little piece of fatback put into it to give it flavor and nutrient density and removed then some Frankenburger that is made in a laboratory.
Michele Norris Manufactured plant-based meat product. That's what we're talking about when you say Frankenburger, in case people didn't pick up on that term, I just want to explain it.
Bryant Terry Yes. This trend of creating these meat analogs.
Michele Norris OK. The train didn't like that. There's a train again.
Bryant Terry Amen brother.
Michele Norris That's your grandfather. I will not—stay away from that. And you don't know what that comes from that...
Bryant Terry Listen, I get it for ethical reasons. I'll say that I understand that people who are trying to avoid eating animal products, how that can be an alternative. But I think all that to say, I encourage people to diverse us, as you know, Black people and our fullness and our complexity, our diversity, we aren’t a monolith. And the way that we've eaten traditionally, the way we grown food, the way we cooked it, the way we've eaten it traditionally, it's diverse and complex as well. And I want us to embrace all of it.
Michele Norris Bryant Terry, I want to talk to you about your vegan journey because you grew up eating meat. Meat was on the dinner table at your parents’ house at Ma’dear's house, just around the corner across town in Memphis. The way the story is told is that you heard a certain song and you had an epiphany and you said, no more meat for me. Is that too simple a telling of that story?
Bryant Terry I think that's a fair telling. It wasn't just a clean break. I always say that's when the journey started.
Michele Norris Okay, tell us about the song. What were the lyrics? What happened inside you, was a hamburger on the on the table when you heard the song. What happened?
Bryant Terry Well, I grew up. Can I talk a little bit about my family and their musical kind of like history?
Michele Norris Sure. Of course you will, because your cookbooks include playlists. So of course you're going to talk about music. There's a turntable to our right as we're having this conversation.
Bryant Terry A turntable right next to a...
Michele Norris A hot plate.
Bryant Terry Induction heating where one could make food. Music has just been central to my practice, but it's because I come from a musical family. My maternal grandfather, Margie's husband, Edward Bryant, started a traveling gospel quartet in the 30s in Memphis. Eddie Bryant and the four stars of Harmony, was the name of the group. And because of...
Michele Norris Can we just linger in that for a minute? Eddie Bryant and the four stars of Harmony.
Bryant Terry Oh yeah.
Michele Norris What kind of music was it?
Bryant Terry It was gospel. They were traveling gospel quartet. And they were, in fact, one of the first, if not the first black groups to play on Memphis radio. So because my grandfather loved music, all of his children were brilliant musicians from my mother, who is the director of her choir. To my late aunt Tina used to sing at a lot of regional jazz clubs to my uncle Don, who is the breakout star of the Bryant family.
And so there's that history. But in terms of like the way that we gathered as a family, music was always present, you know? And that's why for me, music, art, culture, food, they're inseparable. Because when we had family gatherings, uncle Don would be playing a piano, his brothers would be harmonizing. Mom and her sister, you know, would be singing. And so it was just so central to the way that we built community. And that's why it's been so central to my practice, because food is so much more than just something that we just kind of stuff our faces with for energy.
But this is a big part of the story. I'm going to get to the hip-hop song that inspired this vegan journey for me. You know, my cousins and I were all hip hop heads, so we were hip hop aficionados. We collected vinyl and growing up in this period that's often described as a golden age of hip hop in the 90s, where a lot of hip-hop music was politically charged and socially conscious and talked about issues for me and so many of our generation. We were politicized, we were activated hearing groups like Public Enemy and X Klan and Boogie Down Productions. And so Boogie Down Productions had this song “Beef” from their album Edutainment.
Michele Norris When was the first time you heard it?
Bryant Terry I guess 1990. I feel like my best friend, Sean Jacobs introduced me to that song. He played it for me and I listened to it like 50 times. I feel like to this day, it's still one of the most succinct and articulate ways of talking about the ills of factory farming and the violence that animals endure, the impact it has on the environment, on human health. But it goes like this:
“Beef. What a relief. When will this poisonous product cease? This is another public service announcement. You can believe it or you can doubt it. Let us begin now with the cow, the way that it gets to your plate and how. The cow doesn't grow fast enough for a man, so through his greed, he creates a faster plan. He has drugs to make the cow grow quicker. Through the stress, the cow gets sicker. 21 different drugs are pumped into the cow in one big lump.”
I'll stop there. It gets a little graphic.
Michele Norris You can go on! I was right there with you.
Bryant Terry It gets more graphic. But, you know, I think a lot of people had this idea that animals are just running around the field and they just kind of like, go to sleep and end up on our plate. So it was a shock to me that animals had to endure so much violence in our industrialized food system. And for me, once you hear that, there's no turning back. So that's where my vegan journey started.
Michele Norris As you continued your vegan journey, you are now, as I say, an ambassador, an educator. You don't tell people you're not dogmatic, but you introduce them to another way of thinking, and you use your cookbooks and you use all of your various media platforms, your work at the Museum of the African Diaspora to teach people in a different way. What is the message that you want people to take from your work? Overall.
Bryant Terry I guess to start with, we have a broken food system. We have a food system that's inequitable. There are over 800 million people globally who are dealing with hunger and food insecurity issues. Here in the United States there are communities across the country that historically have been described as food deserts, but that term has largely been replaced for a lot of food justice activists by the term food apartheid.
Michele Norris Because food deserts suggest that it just happened...
Bryant Terry It just kind of happened naturally.
Michele Norris In an anaerobic fashion. It just, food just never showed up here.
Bryant Terry Yeah. And, you know, I mean, not to mention, deserts are thriving ecosystems. But they almost paint this vision that it's just like there's nothing there. And I think it erases a lot of the kind of activism and activity that's been happening in these communities, even in the kind of like face of the ascendancy of the kind of industrialized food system, people are still growing their own food. You have immigrants from different parts of the world coming from different shores who are, you know, staying connected with their cultural foods by growing fresh herbs and vegetables and, you know, people who have migrated from the South to the West coast or up north were still holding on to those traditional foods from the south. And so to call them food deserts, I think, just gets it wrong.
But food apartheid put squarely in our faces many of the physical, the economic, the geographic barriers that prevent many people in these communities from accessing healthy, fresh, affordable and culturally appropriate food. And so I guess one of the big things is I want people to know that it's not your fault, because a lot of people like to blame the victim. When we think about the high rates of preventable, diet-related illnesses among African Americans. You know, it's almost because of this narrative, like, if y'll just start eating better, if you just get rid of that soul food. But what about access? What about the fact that you have people who have to travel outside of their own neighborhood just to get fresh, healthy food, oftentimes.
But I also want people to know that there are ways that we can resist. Whether it's growing food in our home, if we have the green space, or connecting with urban farms or community gardens. So we're in a good place. I'm excited about the fact that more people understand the way in which our actions as consumers can change these realities. Knowing that when you go to the corporate owned supermarket, typically $0.90 on every dollar goes to the corporation. When you go to the farmers market, it's the actual inverse. Every dollar that you spend with these local farmers who care about their customers, and who growing food with integrity and care for the earth and care for our health. They're getting like $0.90 on every dollar. But what's troubling is that so often people will stop at consumer action. And I think that people need to understand that we have to be involved as community members in supporting these groups, the master gardeners and the urban farmers and the people who've been really trying to ensure that we have thriving local food systems for decades. Give them your money. Give them your time. Give them your support so that they can do the work well. And I'd be remiss if I didn't say that so many of these issues are structural. We know that they're public policies that prevent many small farmers, or small to mid-size farmers from thriving, their public policies that make the choice not to give funding to these kind of community groups that are doing work, educating young people around food systems and growing food. And so we have to be active as citizens as well. I would say even more on the local and state level, even more than the federal level, and ensuring that policies are in place that are in the best interests of everyday eaters, and not just the multinational corporations that largely run our food system.
Michele Norris So when you think back on all those hours you spent in your grandmama's kitchen, what is the strongest food memory that would lead you to a recipe that we might be able to gift to our listeners?
Bryant Terry Oh that's easy. Just slow cooked mustard greens or collard greens. Any type of dark leafy greens like I love eating greens that have been cooked into they’re meltingly tender. And then adding like some hot pepper vinegar because that was always on the table. Because my friend Samin Nosrat reminds us, salt, fat, acid and heat. You have the kind of savory, salty, umami flavor from the greens. The hot pepper vinegar would give it that heat and that bright pop of acidity. And the thing is, the elders know that when you eat your greens like that, you have to also—drink the pot liquor. That's where all the magic was.
Michele Norris Never threw away the pot liquor. Never threw away the pot liquor. It was always in a big mason jar.
Bryant Terry Yeah.
Michele Norris Did she do collards or mustards or did she sometime mix?
Bryant Terry I'm not sure if it was like a melange of greens or she just had, like, different ones that she would cook. I remember the big vat of greens, that she would put a piece of fatback in there and cook them all day.
Michele Norris Onions.
Bryant Terry Oh yeah. You know, she'd have her base of, like, some onions, little garlic.
Michele Norris It's so interesting to listen to you talk about Ma’dear in this space, because she is all around us. And over your shoulder there's this wall of—are they ball jars or mason jars?
Bryant Terry They're ball jars.
Michele Norris Because, you know, you chose to use. Yeah. So there's all these canned items, these jars on the wall. It's part of your what you're calling your installation called the Sacred Larder. You're trying to hold on to those memories in any way you can.
Bryant Terry Holding on to so many other memories with the preserves, with the soil.
Michele Norris And you're talking about her canning and her singing and her work in the kitchen. Ma’dear was probably listening to music. There was a radio in her kitchen. Probably.
Bryant Terry She was always singing. When I'm presenting, I often will recite the song that I remember vividly, her singing so often.
Speaker 4 Glory, glory, hallelujah. When I lay my burden down. Burdened down. No more. Monday. No more Tuesday. When I lay my burden down.
Bryant Terry So I know you have to run. So I just want to play one snippet for you because -- so I just happened to be giving a talk at the Birmingham Museum of Art, and my parents live in Huntsville, so I invited them to come, and they did. And then I went back and spent a couple of days with them. But I convinced my mom to embody my grandmother and record her in the kitchen, and she was really channeling. It was funny because she was like, well, so the version I want to sing, it's not like the one that you typically sing. And I say, mama, do the one that you and Ma’dear would sing and she sang it. It is just angelic.
Michele Norris What am I hearing it background? Somethin's on the skillet
Bryant Terry That's mom sorting onions for the dish.
Speaker 4 Bryant, come in here and start peeling potatoes
Bryant Terry Similar to the way that Ma’dear would be at her stove.
Bryant's mom and Bryant singing Glory Glory, Hallelujah, since I laid my burden down. Glory Glory, Hallelujah, since I lay my burden down. No more sickness, no more dying, when I lay my burden down.
Michele Norris You know, this is your mother, remembering her mother. But I think anybody who listens to it, no matter where you come from, California, Korea, or you think of your mother and the language of love that is so unique to the kitchen that you really only get in the kitchen. And I don't know, that's a powerful elixir you have there in that song. I don't know if it's just it's not just the music, it's the, it's the onions. It's that that busy work that hands are always at work with utensils. And I don't know if she's cleaning or scraping, but I was in a kitchen I remember when I listened to that.
Bryant Terry The kitchen, our kitchen, I'll end by saying, you hear a lot about what's your love language? And I know that for the women in our family and to the certain extent to men as well, which I can talk for days about that—cooking for people and feeding them was our love language.
Michele Norris Yeah. That's how you say I love you without words. Thank you Brian.
Bryant Terry Thank you.
Michele Norris And, I'm going to get you for ruining my mascara [laugher]. Came in here looking cute and now my mascara is all over the place. So, Brian, I've loved talking to you. Thank you so much.
Bryant Terry Thank you.
Michele Norris It was delicious.
Bryant Terry Always good to connect me to.
Michele Norris Woo Lord, that music got me and made me think of my own grandmother's kitchen and tugged on all kinds of emotions. What a beautiful conversation. Bryant learned early on how the power of food, the power of song, and the power of family all combined give us the sustenance we need to live our healthiest and most just lives. I'm so honored to have learned more about Ma’dear and the art she created with her stove and her jam packed pantry, and through that haunting rhythmic song channeled by Bryant's mother.
Michele Norris I know we can all take for granted the meals we eat throughout our days. But Bryant reminds us that behind each of those meals are entire ecosystems that are, sadly, sometimes invisible to us. I want to thank Bryant for reminding us of that reality, and serving up information that can help make sure that we make good choices to nourish our plates and our souls.
Michele Norris If you want to fill your plate with Ma’dear’s very own slow cooked greens, make sure to check out our website, YourMamasKitchen.com to get step-by-step instructions. We'll also have some tips on my Instagram page at Michele underscore underscore Norris. That's two underscores, and I don't know about you, but I might just be humming that tune when I'm at my stove.
Michele Norris Thanks for listening to Your Mama's Kitchen. I'm Michele Norris. See you next time. And until then, be bountiful.
Michele Norris This has been a higher Ground and Audible Original produced by Higher Ground Studios. Senior producer Natalie Rinn. Producer Sonia Htoon. Sound design and engineering from Andrew Eapen and Roy Baum. Higher Ground Audio's editorial assistants are Jenna Levin and Camila Ther de Koos. Executive producers for Higher Ground are Nick White, Mukta Mohan, Dan Fuhrman, and me, Michele Norris. Executive producers for Audible are Nick D'Angelo and Anne Heppermann. The show's closing song is 504 by the Soul Rebels. Editorial and web support from Melissa Bear and Say What Media. Our talent broker is Angela Peluso. Chief content officer for Audible is Rachel Ghiazza. And that's it. Goodbye, everybody. Make sure and come back to see what we're serving up next week.
Copyright 2023 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC. Sound recording. Copyright 2023 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC.
