Daddy's Garden

Today’s blog is a personal reflection but speaks to the heart of how food and family are linked to health and quality of life. I’m taking this moment because my father passed away last month. Daddy was 89 years old and as far as I can remember he always had a garden in the back of his house in Galena Park, TX. He grew mustards, collards, okra, tomatoes, and bell peppers. I didn’t get to see the garden all the time, but I sure got to eat the fruits of his labor during every visit. You see, Daddy was a great cook, a keeper of tradition when it came to Louisiana style cooking. He also had a very strict, healthy regiment for eating and preparing his own meals. Every day, no matter what time he got up, started with breakfast. Up until about three years ago, he lived alone and cooked his meals in bulk, froze individual servings, and micro-waved them as needed. You could go to Daddy’s house and be served shrimp and okra, rice, and a tomato salad at the drop of a hat. And for dessert you’d get his home-made pound cake and Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream. He’d simply pull these items from his freezer.

In 2001, Daddy turned over the soil in his garden and planted grass. According to him, he was slowing down and didn’t have the energy to tend to a garden anymore. Lucky for him, his new garden was right across the street. It wasn’t really his, but a community garden tended by others in his neighborhood. On one visit back home I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Goodlow, one of the founding members who started the Galena Park Manor Community Garden in 1990. He was carrying a couple of buckets of freshly picked okra out of the garden. People like Mr. Goodlow let Daddy come over and get as much okra, mustards, and tomatoes as he wanted. These folks gardened for the pure joy of working the soil, seeing things grow and sharing their produce with family, neighbors and friends.

When Daddy gave me his recipe for shrimp and okra, I asked him the types of spices he used. Laughingly, he said, “I grew up where all we had was salt, pepper, onion, garlic, sugar, and maybe a little cayenne to season food. I still cook that way and my food taste delicious.” I say amen to that because even when I add gumbo file’, oregano, and thyme to this dish, it never has that down home Louisiana flavor like Daddy’s shrimp and okra.

Daddy lived with me this past year and a half. Even though taking care of an elderly parent can be challenging at times, I’ll always cherish the experience. While his health issues were a challenge, our biggest points of consternation were over food. He said I cooked food for rich people and he cooked food for working folks. He insisted on cooking his own food. I argued that he wasn’t going to burn my house down by nodding off to sleep while watching the cabbage be cooked to death! We called each other stubborn and compromised in the end. He only cooked if someone else was home. And joy upon joy I learned how to make red beans, mustard greens, and shrimp and okra the down home way from a master!