I was raised on steak and mash potatoes, spaghetti and meatballs. On Sundays, peas-n-rice and baked chicken were expected.. Every once in awhile, my mom would send me to the butcher to buy pork chops and bologna-- sliced thin. Yep. She knew how to stretch a dollar, and I wasn't old enough to be embarrassed when she sent me to the grocer to buy three eggs.

On very rare occasions, we went out for dinner. I remember the excitement of walking down Eastern Parkway to a Chinese restaurant about three city blocks from our house.  We might have been low on Washingtons and Benjamins, but we knew how to rev up the emotions. And although I might have had fewer fancy clothes  than my friends, I did grow up in a house just like most of them.   I don't remember ever being hungry, and I don't remember ever asking for more- like Oliver Twist had the nerve to do. I do remember that there was never anything to eat between meals. But my brother took matters into his own hands and stretched the meager ingredients he found in the fridge to bake his famous one-egg cake. I can taste the hard vanilla surface and warm buttery interia.

 As we grew older, the fridge filled up.  With my father's promotion, and rental income, we were able to make more frequent trips to the supermarket, carrying home a shopping cart teeming with food.

And  when I was able to rent my own apartment, the contents of my fridge and pantry would  differ from my parents'.  My chef-like impulses shifted  easterly, right over the Atlantic Ocean, past the Bahamas and Haiti, eastward over the Caribbean Sea all the way to the small island of Barbados. There I found lost recipes for coo-coo and cod-fish, codfish cakes, fruit cake, bakes, sorrel, sea moss and ginger beer. In addition to the recipes, I found something more precious than a palate could appreciate; I found a part of myself.