Your Mama's Kitchen Episode 33: Dorie Greenspan

Audible Originals presents Your Mama's Kitchen, hosted by Michele Norris.

Dorie Greenspan So my parents were out to something very fancy, and one of my friends said, do you have French fries in the house? I said, yes, he said, let's make fries. And so French fries, you had to fry them. And the only thing that I knew was that water boils faster if you put a lid on the pot. And so I put a lid on the pot, brought it to a boil and whoosh! Flames. I mean, like ring of fire around the edge of the pot.

Michele Norris Welcome to Your Mama's Kitchen, the podcast that explores how we're shaped as adults by the kitchens we grew up in as kids.

Well, who would have guessed that a child who almost burned down their parents' kitchen would go on to become one of America's most respected and most beloved cooks? I'm talking about Dorie Greenspan. She's my guest today, and in the world of world-class bakers, you could say she's all that.

Dorie Greenspan has written 14 cookbooks. She's a five-time James Beard Award winner. Most recently, she's the author of Baking with Dorie, a cookbook that's considered a Bible of baking because it covers so many recipes and techniques. Dorie grew up in Brooklyn, New York. Her mother was decidedly not a cook, very glamorous, very sociable, but not a cook. And here's the thing -- Dorie's mother did love food. She just wanted someone else to prepare it, preferably in a restaurant.

Even though her mother was not a cook, a love of good food is part of Dorie's inheritance. Whether it's perfectly baked bread, a sumptuous meal, or the memory of the little crab sandwiches she used to share with her mom on the back steps of their house. I happen to be a big fan of Dory's, but it's not just because of her cookbooks or sinfully delicious cookie recipes, and they really are that good. I'm lucky enough to call her a good friend.

While I was hosting a show called All Things Considered on NPR, I used to do a regular baking segment with Dorie around the holidays, and in that period, we shared a profound earth-shaking experience that we will both carry with us forever. Today we hear about Dorie's fiery introduction to the kitchen. After a lot of trial and error. She eventually did teach herself to cook and to bake and to excel at both. At the highest levels, the kitchen became her domain, a place of deep comfort. And it's where she's made sense of all of life's challenges. I've witnessed that up close. We'll reflect on how her mother inspired Dorie to make the kitchen the centerpiece of her life in America and in Paris, where Dorie now spends four months of every year.

Michele Norris Dorie Greenspan, I am so happy to be with you. When we first decided to roll with this podcast, you were one of the first people I wanted to talk to because I thought we could have a reunion.

Dorie Greenspan Look what it took for us to have a reunion!

Michele Norris I see you all the time and, you know, on various devices because you're so active on social media, but nothing beats a real conversation. So thank you, thank you, thank you so much for making time to join us.

Dorie Greenspan I'm sending you a hug. Can you feel it?

Michele Norris I'm sending a big hug right back at you. So I ask all of our guests a simple question when we begin our conversations, but I'm going to ask you to be kind of cinematic, if you don't mind. So I'm imagining a drone, which would come to the neighborhood that you grew up in in Brooklyn, and what would it see in the neighborhood? And as it got closer to the place where you grew up, what would it see in that building? And then as it sort of swooped in a window, what would it see inside your mama's kitchen?

Dorie Greenspan Oh, Michele. So it's funny you said that. And I went immediately to the house we lived in in East 24th Street in Brooklyn, but we lived in many houses. My mother used to tease that every time anything needed to be fixed, we moved. But as soon as you said the drone coming over, it brought me back to that house. And so you would see a tree lined street. I'm imagining it in Spring. So leaves are just coming out. You'd see kids playing on the street. Oh, if it's spring, you'd see lilacs. You might see a magnolia. We had a fruit tree in the back and it was in bloom. And if you came in, you'd see the living room, and that would be nice. And you see the dining room, and that would be okay. But you'd come into the kitchen and that's where everything would be happening. You'd see my mother not cooking, you would not see her cooking, but you would see her in the kitchen and me there with friends talking to my mom. You might see some of our neighbors. The house was always filled with people. The kitchen was always filled with people.

Michele Norris Describe that kitchen for me. What did it look like?

Dorie Greenspan It wasn't big to me. It looked just right. And it did look big because it was big enough for all of us to be there. It looked like a kitchen of its time, which was the 50s and 60s.

Michele Norris And in the 50s and 60s we were suddenly introduced to convenience cooking. So that was when TV dinners started to sort of tip onto the horizon. Instead of making pancakes, you would get pancake mix. There was cake mix. There were things that you just would have to add water and stir instead of lining up all the ingredients. Is that one of the reasons that your mother didn't cook because she reached for convenience cooking or was cooking, just not her thing.

Dorie Greenspan It was a combination. So my mother, my mother loved food. I think she's the reason that I love food so much. She didn't want to cook. My mother grew up poor. She grew up during the depression. She saw her mother trying so hard to feed a family and working so hard with so little, and cooking all day so that she could make food for the family. That when my mother didn't have to, she didn't want to. And so part of it was a sense of freedom from what she saw as not pleasurable. And my mother worked. She built a little clothing store, but she loved being out in the world, and she didn't love cooking.

Michele Norris So when you say your mother loved food, how did that manifest?

Dorie Greenspan My mother would travel to taste something new. My mother loved to get dressed. She loved to put on makeup. She loved being out in the world, and she loved going out to eat. She loved to go out to eat! And she loved to take me with her. My mother would get us in the car and we would drive, because there was a place that made soft shell crab sandwiches that she loved, and we could sit on high top tables on stools and have these sandwiches, just the two of us.

Michele Norris What was your mother's name?

Dorie Greenspan Helen.

Michele Norris And describe her. What she look like?

Dorie Greenspan Oh, so she used to tease and say she didn't know what her natural hair color was, and I didn't either. And her nails were always done. Her hair was always done. She always wore makeup. Did I see my mother without lipstick? Maybe a couple of times. She loved getting dressed up. She wore perfume, and it smelled as she walked out of the house. There was always a little trail of perfume near the door. And she was the mother who let my friends come over and permanent their hair, dye when we weren't supposed to. Just a little peroxide on the bangs. Everybody loved being with her.

Michele Norris It was the cool house.

Dorie Greenspan Yeah, and it was fun to be her daughter.

Michele Norris Yeah. I'm falling in love with her just listening to you talk about her. I love that image of leaving a trail of this wonderful scent behind you as you sallied out of the door.

Dorie Greenspan As she sallied out. I'll think of her that way, she sallied out of the door... she would wear -- there was a name for these coats, I don't remember, but they tied at the waist, and I can see her taking down her coat, putting it on and tying it, and giving that last tie just a little tug before she she sallied out.

Michele Norris Oh, that's just beautiful. Because you and I know each other, and because I have a whole library of your cookbooks at home. I bought a stack of them with me in the studio. And one of your many seminal cookbooks begins with this introduction. Until I was a junior in college, my sole cooking experience consisted of burning down my parents kitchen when I was 13 years old. So we're going to talk about that, Dorie. We're talking about burning down the house. We're going to talk about what happened when you were 13 and how you burned down the kitchen. What were you doing?

Dorie Greenspan Attempting to cook! [Laughter]

Michele Norris And were you unsupervised?

Dorie Greenspan Yes. So my parents were out to something very fancy, and we had a babysitter with us for my brothers, not for me. And one of my friends said, do you have French fries in the house? I said, yes, he said, let's make fries. And so French fries, you had to fry them. There were three of us. Not one of us looked at the back of the box to see that you're supposed to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you see that? You're just supposed to put them in the oven. So I put a huge pot of oil up to boil, and the only thing that I knew was that water boils faster if you put a lid on the pot. And so I put a lid on the pot, brought it to a boil and whoosh! Flames! I mean, like ring of fire around the edge of the pot.

Michele Norris Did you get...

Dorie Greenspan Everybody, everybody. Everybody was safe. Everybody was safe. So I think after we screamed and after the babysitter came down, I think, I think we put a towel over it? I wouldn't have put a towel...

Michele Norris Oh, no. You put a towel over or please don't tell me you...

Dorie Greenspan Know, I didn't I was yeah, I know, I made -- I only made one stupid mistake, and that was putting the lid on it. My friends left, and there must be a word for friends who leave when there's a fire house.

Michele Norris Yes. What's the French word for that? Fairweather friends. I don't know.

Dorie Greenspan So when the fire people came, they put out the fire, but they wouldn't leave us. They said we have to talk to your parents.

Michele Norris How did they reach your parents? Because...

Dorie Greenspan They didn't!

Michele Norris There were no cell phones!

Dorie Greenspan There were.. no they didn't. They waited with us until.

Michele Norris Oh, oh. You had to sit with the fire crew?

Dorie Greenspan Yes! When my parents drove up, I can't imagine what they must have thought. Seeing the fire engine in front of the house, seeing us sitting outside. So at least they knew we were safe. Seeing the rather stern firemen behind us. My father was in a tuxedo. My mother was in a white strapless cocktail dress that was all poofy and filled with sequins and sparkles and shiny, and her hair was blond, white, blond then, and and she walked in. She said, are you okay? We all said we were okay. And then she went upstairs and cried.

Michele Norris So you think, she cried tears of relief more than anger, because that could have ended so much worse than it did.

Dorie Greenspan She might have been very frustrated because did I mention that the kitchen had just been renovated?

Michele Norris Oh. No you hadn't.

Dorie Greenspan Yeah. Oh, yeah. The whole thing. Whole shebang. New cabinets.

Dorie Greenspan Right, right. Right, right. Okay.

Michele Norris Well, you know, any time you do a renovation, there's something you didn't get exactly right. So on the second time, she probably had a kitchen that was just perfect.

Dorie Greenspan I wish you'd been there to tell her that. [LAUGHTER]

Michele Norris After that, you didn't do any cooking in your mama's kitchen? No. Or really, any other kitchen until you were junior in college. And that's when you met and married your husband and you began cooking. Then again, it was a dilemma that you're that your mother and her mother faced. You began cooking because someone had to eat.

Dorie Greenspan That's right. That's right. But at that point, I really wanted to cook. I couldn't wait to get into the kitchen.

Michele Norris What was going on? Why were you so enthusiastic about cooking? And what did you do to, to get rid of the nightmares that you might have had after seeing that fire at an early age when you were just 13?

Dorie Greenspan So Michael's mother. I'm sorry. Michael, my husband. Still my husband after all these years. Michael's mother cooked. And every Friday night there would be dinner at Michael's parents house. And I loved those dinners. I LOVED them! Everybody would talk about -- Do you remember the way mama could fold a knish. And in fact, I once came in to my mother in law's kitchen and saw her making knishes and went home and tried to do it. And I've never made a knish. Never. I didn't make it that night.

Michele Norris Is there a knish in her cookbooks?

Dorie Greenspan No, I've never been able to make one! But I wanted that. I wanted people in the house. While, my mother always had people in the house. That was conversation. That was confidences. That was friends. And so when I got married, this was really the chance to make a home be what I wanted it to be. And cooking in my mind, that was a big, big part of it.

Michele Norris Did you take baby steps to learn how to make some basic things, or were you diving in, trying to keep up with your mother in law right away?

Dorie Greenspan I probably should have just gotten her recipes and tried them, but I got two cookbooks when we got married. One was Craig Claiborne's New York Times cookbook, and the other was the settlement House cookbook. And when I look back at that, and really when I look back at the New York Times Cookbook, I think, how did I ever cook from that? I made coulibiac one day!

Michele Norris Would you say that again? You made what?

Dorie Greenspan Coulibiac? It's the Russian salmon dish. It's salmon. There's rice around it. There's pastry. There's some mushrooms. I mean...

Michele Norris You did this as a as a new cook? This is what you -- you jumped into the deep end of the pool, Doire.

Dorie Greenspan I did! I was so excited about cooking.

Michele Norris Did you find that you had a natural talent for it, or were there a few hits and misses?

Dorie Greenspan The London bake, that was like shoe leather because I, yeah, yeah, the piece that I put in a ceramic dish that someone had given us for our wedding, that I'd put over a gas flame and it broke and the peas were all over. No, I wasn't great in the beginning! But I loved the process and I loved the process now. And I was so happy in the kitchen, which had been a walk in closet and was converted to a kitchen. It was so tiny. I think maybe the two of us. Yeah, you and I would have filled that kitchen.

Michele Norris But you filled it up with love.

Dorie Greenspan I loved it.

Michele Norris And experimentation. And eventually a good deal of mastery.

Dorie Greenspan You know, near the end of my mother's life, she would call me and she'd say, if you were making a pot roast, would you use whole tomato..? I'd say, are you making a pot roast, mom? She'd say, no, but I'm just curious. And it made me think that had things been different, my mother might have been a good cook.

Michele Norris What was it like sharing your food with her when you started to really cook at a high level, and you could fill your own table? What was that experience like when you could have your parents and your brothers and your in-laws over for dinner?

Dorie Greenspan When I decided that food was going to be a career for me, neither of my parents was happy.

Michele Norris A word here, though, we should say that you were starting gerontology, right?

Dorie Greenspan Yeah. And was all but dissertation in gerontology. And I thought I would teach or work at a research center.

Michele Norris And you are on your way to being Doctor Greenspan.

Dorie Greenspan Doctor Dorie. That's the way I always said it [laughter].

Michele Norris But there is going to be a doctor in front of your name, and your mom could almost taste that.

Dorie Greenspan Yeah, I think I think both of my parents, it would have meant something to them. And I made the decision not to finish my dissertation after Joshua was born. And I was talking to Michael and I said, you know, I just I don't want to go back. And Michael said, you love baking so much. Why don't you try to be a baker?

Michele Norris Well, that suggestion from her perceptive husband rang true with Dorie. She left behind her pursuit of a PhD and got her hands dirty, learning the ins and outs of cooking and baking. Of course, there were some setbacks at first. A few baking gigs at restaurants left Dorie feeling stifled and invisible. The chefs were always looking past her like she didn't even exist. But eventually she began writing for Food and Wine magazine. Her first cookbook was called Sweet Times. It hit the shelves in 1991, and it found a small and devoted audience. And then everything changed when an enormously influential character stepped into her life like a fairy godmother and sent Dorie's career into an entirely new orbit.

Michele Norris You'd published this cookbook with Julia Child called baking with Julia, which transformed your career. And I think for a lot of women opened up the possibilities of cooking in a different way, baking in a different way, being more courageous or experimental in the kitchen. How did you meet Julia Child?

Dorie Greenspan I met Julia when my first book, Sweet Times, came out in 1991. I was invited to do a baking demonstration as part of a day of such things at Boston University, and I was petrified. I was so afraid. I thought you became an author because you never had to leave home. I...

Michele Norris so you just wanted, you happy baking. And you didn't want to have to go out in the world and market the book.

Dorie Greenspan I didn't! And I certainly didn't want to bake in front of an audience. But books are like your children, and you want to take care of them and you want them to succeed. And so I took the train up to Boston, and I'm so glad I didn't ask who else was doing this, because not only was Julia part of this day, but Jacques Pepin also.

Michele Norris Oh, her dear friend!

Dorie Greenspan Her dear friend! And I was the last person up. So I saw all of these people just doing magical things. And then it was my turn. And I made a cake called 15 Minute Magic. It's all made in the food processor, and I figured if I don't chop my finger off, I can do this. All I had to do is push a button. And when I finished, Julia came up to me, and I'm five foot four and she was six feet, six foot one. And she said, that was excellent! We're all having dinner. I'd like you to sit with me. And so, Julia, wonderful, kind, generous Julia, took me under her wing. And that's how I met her.

Michele Norris And you started working with her?

Dorie Greenspan No, no, no. In fact, we kept in touch. Julia was a great postcard writer, and she...

Michele Norris She wrote postcards. I love that!

Dorie Greenspan She wrote postcards. They would be typed and she would sign them "love, Julia." And sometimes they would be handwritten. And then I went to work for the Food Network, and I was working there when I got a call that Baking with Julia, the PBS series was being put together, and that Julia wanted me to write the book, and this is really hard to believe, but I said, no. I said, well, I was in showbiz, I was in television. I had changed my career. I wasn't going to write again. And about six months later, I called the producer and I said, so who's writing the book? And he said, we haven't found anybody yet. And I said, sign me up. You know, sometimes you get a second chance. Sometimes, you're just not smart the first time around. And if you're really, really, really, really lucky, you get a second chance. And that was my second chance. And it changed my life.

Michele Norris So I want to talk to you about your kitchens. Because you live in Connecticut and Manhattan and Paris.

Dorie Greenspan And Paris!

Michele Norris You spend 4 or 5 months a year in Paris. And when, when we first started cooking, I was so curious about your kitchen. And I was stunned when you showed me pictures, because all of your kitchens are fairly small.

Dorie Greenspan So my Paris kitchen is a little...

Michele Norris Let's say that again. I mean, you know...

Dorie Greenspan Oh... I could...

Michele Norris Not everybody gets to say that. I aspire to be able to say that one day, my Paris kitchen.

Dorie Greenspan My Paris, kitchen... my...

Michele Norris I'm going to pause for effect when I say it. So you can just take it in!

Dorie Greenspan I still pinch myself that I can say -- truly!

Michele Norris As you should.

Dorie Greenspan As I do! My Paris kitchen is a little wider and a little longer than my very first kitchen, so it's small. It does have a balcony and light. I think light always makes a difference. I love working in it. My New York kitchen is a galley kitchen. I can stand in the kitchen, put my arms out, touch both walls. And my Connecticut kitchen, was -- we just put in new cabinets and they're yellow, they're sunshine yellow.

Michele Norris Sounds beautiful.

Dorie Greenspan Oh, I love it. It's it's just sunshine. And I have an island at last. And I have a dining room table there. But everybody wants to eat in the kitchen. And I love that. I can do what we did when we were together, cook, and have people around the island talking to us. And yeah, yeah, I love that.

Michele Norris And it's not necessarily performative. It's just..

Dorie Greenspan No, no, no.

Michele Norris You can actually be in the space. And so different from the way that I think many people grew up. I'm imagining the house that you described in Brooklyn, which had a kitchen and often a swinging door, and what you did in the kitchen no one was supposed to see. And then when you brought everything out into the dining room, it was supposed to be perfect, and you never saw where the magic or the mess actually happened. You know, deep inside the kitchen.

Dorie Greenspan So in Paris, we took the door off the kitchen, and many of our French friends were shocked because when you come into our apartment, you have to pass the kitchen to get to the living space. And no one wants guests to see the kitchen. No one wants guests to smell the food as it's cooking in the kitchen. And I just thought, because in Paris, that kitchen is a separate room. I want to hear what's going on out there. If there's music I want to hear it. I want to hear the clink of glasses. I want people to be able to walk in and chat with me. And so, yeah, we took the door off.

Michele Norris Although Dory's mother wasn't a cook. Remember that special restaurant they used to visit to enjoy crab meat sandwiches? They must have been really good. Because even Dory's mother, the woman who hated to cook, was inspired to recreate that delectable recipe at home.

Michele Norris Let me ask you this. I know your mother didn't cook much, but she loved food. And was there anything that she made in the kitchen that you remember that you might want to share with our listeners?

Dorie Greenspan In thinking, thinking, thinking, I remembered something that we loved. And it was only for us. My mother made crab meat sandwiches. I, you know, she would say, come on, let's have lunch. And I go into the kitchen and the crab was in a can. And what would she have put in it? Maybe lemon juice out of one of those, you know, the plastic lemons.

Michele Norris Oh, yes. Right. Yes, I do remember those.

Dorie Greenspan So that. There was always Lawry's seasoning salt in the house.

Michele Norris I can see the L right there.

Dorie Greenspan Right! Okay. And we would have had it on a paper plate. And I know we ate it outside sitting on the back steps. Was it delicious? In my mind. It was delicious. In my mind, it was a treat and it was just us.

Michele Norris All the time. I'm talking to Dorie in this conversation. I keep thinking about another conversation we had years ago. A difficult gut punch of a day. While Dorie and I were in the kitchen recording a baking segment. For All Things Considered, Dory got some bad news about her mother. Frankly, I wasn't sure if I should bring this up, but as we were ending this conversation, Dorie took a deep breath and asked me a question.

Dorie Greenspan Do you remember? Now I'm going to start to cry.

Michele Norris I -- how could I ever forget?

Dorie Greenspan Do you want to talk about it?

Michele Norris We can... I didn't know if we...

Dorie Greenspan I don't know, I don't know either, but -- it was in your kitchen that I got the phone call that my mother had died.

Michele Norris Yeah. Your phone was, your phone was jiggling.

Dorie Greenspan That's right. Because we had turned it off, we had already started to record. That's right.

Michele Norris And it was one call and then two. And then three. And you thought, I need to answer this.

Dorie Greenspan And you took me into the living room and put a shawl around me and brought me tea. And I can feel your hands as you wrapped that shawl around me. As I look back on it, I think I really couldn't have been at a better place. It was... You were so calm and so... I felt taken care of in that moment. And it was so important to me. I come back to that memory all the time, and when I left that day, do you remember you handed me a book? A notebook and you said, maybe one day you'll want to write about this. And I have the notebook and I haven't written anything.

Michele Norris I gave you that notebook because someone had done that for me. When I lost my father.

Dorie Greenspan Did you write in your notebook?

Michele Norris I eventually did. It took me a decade, though, before I could even think about it. And I realized grief is an unusual thing. And sometimes memories just swoop down on you so hard and you want to hold on to them. And that journal was a way that I could just write little things, or sometimes profound things. As those memories would come back.

Dorie Greenspan That day we did the recording. It was probably not my best, but I thought, I could get on the train. I could go back to New York. I will get on the train. I will go back to New York. But I -- after you put that shawl around me. I felt like I could breathe. And I thought I just wanted to be with you. And I also knew that baking was a very good thing to do in that moment.

Michele Norris I was surprised that you wanted to return to the kitchen. I assumed we were done for the day. I think the engineer had started to wrap up and you said, no, I actually this is what I need to do right now.

Dorie Greenspan Yes. Yes. I loved you from the day I met you. But you were with me for one of the most important days of my life.

Michele Norris I am, I'm honored that I was able to provide some small measure of comfort. And I'm heartened that we're able to talk about it today. And also to remember her in this way, because through this conversation, I understand so much more clearly now what she meant to you. And how she moved through the world and the imprint that she left because I -- you know, I've never met your mom.

Dorie Greenspan I know that.

Michele Norris And now I feel like I know her, and I know I would love to spend time with her. And I wish I could go shopping with her.

Dorie Greenspan I was gonna say, you have the best laugh, and I can hear the two of you laughing together. That would have been pretty great.

Michele Norris We would have made some mischief. I would have loved to have come over and put some peroxide in my bangs when I was, or eat ice cream before dinner in her kitchen.

Michele Norris I want to ask one last question, because you are someone that people turn to for advice. So if you are setting out in the world and creating a kitchen, what are the one or two things that make a space really be the heartbeat of a home and the center of a good life?

Dorie Greenspan Do you know how there are some rooms you walk into, and as soon as you walk in, you feel comfortable? You just take a breath in a different way.

Michele Norris Absolutely.

Dorie Greenspan That's the kitchen you want to build. I don't have advice for how you do it. I think it's different for all of us. It's really building a place that you want to come to, that you want to share with other people, that when you spend time there, it's the place you'd want to be.

Michele Norris Well, I would love to stay in this space with you for a lot longer, but I've got to say goodbye.

Dorie Greenspan I love you, but you knew that!

Michele Norris I love you, too, and you know how much I adore you. Thank you so much. I'm only sorry that we don't have a stack of your World Peace cookies right in front of us. Dorie Greenspan, love you. Thanks so much for being with us.

Dorie Greenspan Thank you.

Michele Norris I didn't know Dory's mom, but I'm honored that I was able to support Dory through that loss. I feel lucky now to have the memories that she shared of her mom today. In fact, we're all lucky. This is a great conversation. You can find the recipe for those delicious crab meat sandwiches that Dory shared with her mom on the back porch at our website, yourmamaskitchen.com. And as a special treat, since Dorie now lives in France part time, she has also shared a recipe for how to make a perfectly crisp French fry without burning down your kitchen. Thank goodness for that.

And before we say goodbye, we want to hear from you! That's right. We're opening up our inbox for you to record yourself and tell us about your mama's recipes. Some memories from your kitchen growing up. Maybe someone other than your mother who was important to you in the kitchen, or thoughts on some of the stories that you've heard on this podcast. Make sure to send us a voice memo at YMK@HigherGroundproductions.com. Again, that's YMK@HigherGround productions.com for a chance for your voice to be featured in a future episode. And here's an example of the kind of thing we might want to hear from one of our listeners.

Heather Fambrough Williams Hello, Michele Norris. I am Heather Fambrough Williams, the very proud daughter of Henry Hambro, who was the original baritone in the R&B soul vocal group, The Spinners. My father died this year. The world knew him for his voice, but I would love to have the opportunity to share the other side of him with you. The side that I saw in the kitchen. It's where we spend our special time together. Where he taught me how to cook. He taught me it was okay to make mistakes and to learn from those mistakes, in his kitchen. He taught me to be creative, to trust my instincts in the kitchen. The kitchen was where he expressed his love and his faith. I wrote in his obituary that Henry loved to cook. If you crossed the threshold of the Fambrough home, Henry made sure you dined sufficiently. If daddy fed you, he loved you.

Michele Norris Now make sure to come back next week. Because you know us. We are always serving up something delicious. Until then, stay beautiful.

This has been a Higher Ground and Audible Original produced by Higher Ground Studios. Senior producer Natalie Rinn, producer Sonia Htoon. Additional production support by Misha Jones. Sound design and engineering from Andrew Eapen and Ryan Kozlowski. Higher Ground Audio editorial assistant is Camila Thur de Koos. Excutive producers for Higher Ground are Nick White, Mukta Mohan, Dan Fierman 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. Talent booker Angela Peluso. Special thanks this week to Threshold Studios in New York City. Chief content officer Rachel Ghiazza. And that's it. Goodbye, everybody. Copyright 2024 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC. Sound recording copyright 2024 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC.