While some people can point to one family member that cooked, I can’t turn around in mine without slapping someone wearing an apron. Growing up, food and family were two things that went together well.

My dad has a contagious enthusiasm for trying new things—generally food that he has gone out and hunted or gathered himself. When I was little, he would come home from the field all scratched, smirking that his make believe girlfriend, Fi-Fi, had clawed at his ankles as he was leaving her boudoir. I still get triumphant calls in San Francisco announcing the kill of a particularly wily turkey, or a fat goose from a snowy field of battle. And he cooks these things well. Oysters and crabs are usually toasted with champagne; duck breasts are simmered in apricot preserves; shrimp served in wine over creamy grits.

Daddy started his foraging forays as a barefoot babe in the swamps of South Carolina. His mother, Ethel Claire (“Granny”), was an ingenious cook herself, and also a patient one. So deep was my father’s faith in her cooking, that as a child he would bring her countless “minners” caught with string and a safety-pin hook, all of which she faithfully filleted and fried.

In her words: “Ben graduated to rabbits, birds, and the ‘Infamous Cooter’ when we later lived at Ingleside. The Cooter was one of the most horrible culinary experiences of my life! Ben had caught this huge turtle in the stream that flowed under the bridge near Ingleside. He presented it to me to cook. It took two days of boiling to even get a knife to chop through it, and two more days of cooking the chunks in a highly seasoned sauce to get even the consistency of a parboiled rubber tire. On the seventh day, not being to put it off any longer, the barbecued cooter was served to the family with rice. I took one small bite of ‘Cooter Surprise’ broke out into a cold sweat; then broke out into a dead run for the bathroom—just making it. [Granddaddy] (being wily) had mounded the rice high on his plate and had placed the barbecued cooter to the side of it. He only pretended to eat the cooter with the rice. I will never forgive him. And I will never eat terrapin in any form.”

My mother had a lot to live up to when she married Daddy. She wasn’t used to food being alive. He used to dump a bushel of blue crabs onto the kitchen floor, laughing as I squealed and tap danced around their snapping claws (one wedged himself under the stove…boy, was Daddy sorry). The sink would be filled with an assortment of staring fish, feathered entrees and an occasional confiscated species Daddy didn’t intend to waste.

As a new bride, Mom was apt to stiffen whenever the mention of what “Grandmother” used to do. “Grandmother always made candied citrus peel for Christmas,” he would opine, loftily. “Grandmother always had two kinds of pie on Sundays.” “Grandmother always made standing rib roast at Easter.” As it happened, Grandmother also had a staff of about six to mind the children, drive the car, cook supper and clean the house. Poor Mom kicked Grandmother savagely off of her culinary pedestal.

As we began to see our parents not just as Mom and Daddy, but as “real people,” my sister and I began not only to tolerate Mom’s mealtime machinations of Coquilles St Jacques and Daddy’s Argentinean grouper chimichurri, but we began to roll up our sleeves and pitch in. We peeled chestnuts for her dacquoise. We ground pecans for meringues. I still call her for her opinions on yogurt versus sour cream and repeat instructions for spaghetti carbonara. At Christmas, when we are all back together, what fun we have romping in the kitchen of our childhood.

When my husband and I started dating, he marveled over how my whole family would gather in the kitchen to drink wine, stir pots, add flour or butter or broth, laughing while doing a veritable dance of plating, saucing and serving. Nobody was mad. Nobody was fighting. Nobody was sweating and worried and lonesome. Cooking was something we all did together. New recipes or family favorites, all were equally exclaimed over, with lots of rolling of eyes, sighing and lip smacking. Whether we’re sitting by candlelight with sterling and crystal or standing out in the bitter cold, dining around a campfire, food and its preparation figure prominently in our family’s happiness. As Daddy says, “If you’re standing around eating with your hands, you’ve got to be having a good time.”

I watch my sister with her daughters, standing on their tiny footstools, letting them stir and chop. They are already so sophisticated, eating asparagus and quiches and things I probably would have spurned up until college. Her eldest, Margaret, helped me make blueberry pies last summer, leaving a trail of flour, butter and smashed berries from one end of the house to the other. And standing there at the counter with her, I remembered: my mother’s hands on mine, rolling out the smooth white softness of the dough into ever widening circles, bigger than my tousled and tangled head. It was an agony of waiting till that mystery, the oven, unveiled the cinnamon-scented paradise of pie. Remembering that Mom would take the scraps of dough and roll them again, filling them with a handful of sugar and spice-dusted berries—a tiny pie, just for me—I gathered the tender pieces from the countertop and began the tradition for Margaret, my family, old and new.

Now far across the country in my sweatshop of Christmas knitting, I am already imagining the sound of clanking pot lids, the smell of Daddy lighting his cigar (and eyebrows) on the five jillion BTU stove burner, the clinking of glasses while we laugh around the kitchen table. I am grateful for the good food we will be eating, but I am more grateful for warmth of the hands around the table.

Sweet Potato Biscuits

My mom made about 6 million of these for the caterer to serve at my wedding, and everyone still swoons at the memory. Truly, they’re unparalleled in deliciousness. The little orangey biscuits are excellent with a tiny slice of salty Virginia Ham, but equally good served warm with plenty of butter. But hell, what isn’t better with butter? The recipe calls for sugar, but they actually aren’t terribly sweet.

Prep time: Forever
Makes: about 30 biscuits.
**Note: You have to start with roasted sweet potatoes, so don’t start this with raw potatoes expecting to be done in 30 minutes; that will make you mad. I roast them unwrapped on a cookie sheet at 400-degrees for about 1 to 2 hours or until they are caramelized and bursting. Then I use a potato ricer, so there are no lumps. Discard peels.

Ingredients:
3 c. all purpose flour
three-quarters c. sugar
1 Tbs. salt
1 Tbs. baking powder (make sure it’s fresh)
one-half tsp. ground allspice
1 tsp. cinnamon
three-quarters c. shortening
2 c. mashed sweet potato (About two large potatoes.)
one-third c. milk
extra flour for dusting

Directions:
Preheat oven to 450-degrees.

Mix the dry ingredients and sift together. Cut in shortening till it makes a coarse meal. You can do this in a Cuisinart. Stir in sweet potatoes. Add milk and stir until moistened (isn’t that a disgusting word?) or sticky.Turn out dough onto a floured surface and roll to one-half inch thick. Cut with a small cookie cutter or a round glass and put on a greased cookie sheet, not touching. It will make about 30 smallish biscuits.

Bake at 450-degrees for 12-15 minutes. They don’t brown much, and if they get dark, they may be burned. They also don’t rise a lot, so don’t roll them too thin.

My mom likes to cut them while they’re hot and put in a sliver of butter. Then you can freeze them for a party, reheating at 350 till they’re hot, about 5-10 minutes.