Cooking in my mother’s kitchen again, and ‘Crying in H Mart’ by Michelle Zauner,

September 10th, 2023

Giving food to your loved ones has been a testament through time, a plate of food as, I love you. That I care for you. It’s the immigrant parent’s way of saying I’m sorry, cut fruit as nutrition. It’s the silent way of forgiving a sibling, the art of cooking for a friend. Stress baking and then handing it over, the waiting for the compliment, the happiness when you see someone eat what you made by hand. Food has been one of the reasons why I was so homesick. I missed being in my family’s kitchen. I missed cooking for them, but I missed them cooking for me more.

This entry is partially a response to thinking about the book, ‘Crying in H-mart’ a year on, as well as my own feeling of being back at my parent’s house. Michelle Zauner writes about how grief works in weird ways, unravelling a moment forgotten, and that we should be more grateful for our loved ones. The book is an autobiography of a mother’s legacy through food as love, a culture passed down through her daughter. A way of retaining her mother’s story through her death and the understanding that our immigrant parents (through their trauma) lacked how to say I’m sorry, I love you. Instead, they depict their love through care, and what’s the best way to care for someone than cooking for them as an act of love.

I am aware that mother/daughter relationships through any media will always stop me in my tracks, enchant me, and remind me of my own relationship with my mum.

My grandmother,

It would not be fair of me to discuss, ‘Crying in H-mart’, without talking about grief. My closest relationship to witnessing death was with my grandmother, my dad’s mother. I was lucky enough that I got to live with her for a little while in my second year of university. My Somali was not so great then, so I would listen to my grandmother talk instead, about memories she had witnessed when younger, her mind would take her to places she had left a long time ago. At times she would fall asleep, I used to just sit and read, and watch her breath, anxious that she would wake up needing something. Sometimes I would observe her behaviour and peculiar tendencies and smile because I realised how much my father mimicked her. They both laughed so similarly, and my auntie and my father had traces of their mother’s face. I could tell that although they were separated for so many years, my grandmother’s personality ran through my dad. A reminder of how the memory of someone could live on so strongly through their loved ones. I don’t think I ever cried that hard when I got the news of her passing. The night before her death, she had prayed and asked for us not to be sad, I think a part of her knew, which is why she had prayed for us instead of herself, a mother’s love. As an adult, death and grief are still uncontrable to handle and as I write this in my family sitting room, I’m trying to stop the tears from flowing, and my throat being hoarse. Grief is a never-ending process. I grew up talking openly about death in our religious house but I was still so unprepared for hers.

My mother’s favourite story to tell in relation to me and my grandmother is when I had stayed with my grandmother as a baby, for a while when my family decided to go to Somalia after making the decision of leaving Sweden, and then landing in the UK. I wouldn’t eat, and my mum struggled to feed me, I was the youngest of four and relentless in my refusal. We had visited my grandmother, and she had taken me in for a while, adamant that I needed to spend time with her to get better. My mother retains that she was shocked to see me a while later when I had changed from hardly eating to my stomach full, chubby and giddy, crawling or maybe waddling towards her.

Thinking about the book ‘Crying in H-mart’, is a constant reminder to keep the ones you have lost through memories and stories, and to learn to repeat their name. So I shall, nearly five years on, continue repeating my grandmother’s name. Tomorrow I think ill cook her favourite meal for dinner.

Cooking for/with others,

My favourite part of home is the kitchen. The communal dining, the conversations when you catch your sibling while craving a midnight snack. When I moved to a corridor from the studio I lived in for a year and a half, my roommates made me feel like I was home, they were my unhinged siblings. I was back to communal dining and late-night conversations. But I lost my ability to bake things (although I did still stress bake bread). So I turned to my mum’s favourite things. My mother’s steps of making traditional rice. The correct way to make spaghetti sauce. Pancakes on the weekends. (Malawax will always be my superior pancake to make, of how simple it is, and the versatility of things you can eat it with).

One of my most prized positions is a recipe for cinnamon roles that my mum gave me before I moved. It was written in the year of my birth, 1998. A memory from her living in Sweden days. I baked it and then felt immersed that I lived in the moment of one of my mum’s memories. Using the same recipe, baking the same way. That I had recaptured a moment. As a teen, I was so obsessed with cinnamon rolls, that I would bake them weekly and then hand them out on the bus to secondary school. I slowly got out of it when I realised that my baking could extend outside of it (or maybe I got sick of it?). I’ve noticed the same patterns with my other siblings, that their love for the kitchen starts with making something over and over. A part of me thinks it’s our way of perfection but also persevering a moment of comfort. That your food was so good, of course, you had to make it twice. A repetition.

AAFRA as an organisation was my solace when I no longer had the space to cook properly in Sweden, I moved from a bigger kitchen to a smaller one. The student organisation meant we could cook without worrying about the cost of it, and aren’t students the best to cook for (hungry and away from home). The first time, we cooked Somali-style spaghetti, I was so shocked that my mother’s favourite dish could be represented without her, that it felt like we were eating our parents’ food, in their kitchen. The smell, the aroma, the spiciness. My favourite meal I think, maybe because we were fasting that day, was Olivia Nigerian spinach stew. It was so good, we all nearly cried when we realised we couldn’t go for seconds. AAFRA allowed me access to food that was not that accessible for me on a student budget, although I did have my favourite Ethiopian spot. And seeing Aurora food drunk after eating Somali food, at a restaurant in Malmö last year was the highlight of my semester. Food and cooking are so intrinsically important to who I am. Throughout the years it has allowed me to connect, and build a community. Which brings me on, to my need to share.

Eating off your/my plate,

I realised, an epiphany last year that I always order more than I can eat, always a side of fries if the plate comes with it. Not because I try to eat more than I can spare. But because I like sharing my food, it’s sort of become a ritual of mine. A testament to my love for my friends and family. Rejecting food offerings has always been frowned upon in my culture, although we are taught quite young to say no until we are forced to say yes. (Something that I had to stop myself doing with people who didn’t grow up that way. What do you mean you won’t convince me to say yes after the 10th time?). Sharing my fries, or my dinner, or allowing you to taste a slice of whatever’s on my plate, is allowing you to trust me. It’s a way of sharing. Comfortability. The food also always tastes better, and although it might seem that I’m advocating for stealing someone’s food off their plate, I mean of course when applicable to share. I have learnt to share and to cook for others. I still replicate tips and tricks I have learnt through being in the kitchen with someone, and recipes I have memorised just observing. I am always so in awe of people’s capability while cooking/baking and although ‘The Bear’ has stressed me out about ever owning a food joint, I hope to continue my love for learning new recipes.

A picture of my so-called ‘Instagram made me do it Wall’, I don’t know why I never posted this, but I remember being so determined to be a bookstagrammer. In the image, I am reading, ‘Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine’, which is itself a depiction of grief. This was taken, 10 days before my grandmother’s passing. (November 17th 2018).

Journal entry to and about my mother and cooking:

‘Making homemade pizza and a small focaccia, I feel whole again. Cooking for you is my whole identity/the holidays’ (December 2022)

‘I have this thing that I must feed people, I tell myself my love language is cooking. I think it’s because it reminds me of you. I don’t know when it happened, the time in your life when you realise your parents are human beings too. That they had a whole life before you.[Redacted]. At my own apartment I wake up on Sundays and make malawax, the smell helps me calm down. During holidays my favourite part is your cakes. When it was just you and I as adults for a while, I loved that we could communicate without talking. Once I made carrot cake and you sang a song, and told me I read your mind. You made me lasagne the day after, that was exactly what I wanted. We have a love for the kitchen and when I left for Sweden you gave me a recipe that you adapted on the year of my birth. It’s my most favourite gift. You mean so much to me, I can’t even describe…’ (November 2022)

This entry is dedicated to my grandmother, may her memory live on. This post is also dedicated to everyone who has ever cooked for or with me, thank you.

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 5 out of 5.

[Crying in H Mart: A Memoir is a 2021 memoir by Michelle Zauner, singer and guitarist of the musical project Japanese Breakfast. It is her debut book, published on April 20, 2021, by Alfred A. Knopf. It is an expansion of Zauner’s essay of the same name which was published in The New Yorker on August 20, 2018]