By Natalia Galicza

She can almost smell her mother’s kitchen, steamed up with peppers and brine. And the longer she stares at the recipe, the more nostalgic she feels. “Brooks Avenue Fish Stew,” it reads, lovingly titled for Lennon Flowers’ childhood home in North Carolina. Her mother never wrote this down, even though the dish was a holiday ritual, so she took the tradition with her when she died unexpectedly 12 years ago — until her family spent hours of trial and error to rebuild it as best they could. “Reconstructed from memory,” reads a parenthetical.

Later, as Flowers gathers the fresh cod, scallops, shrimp, diced tomatoes, clam juice, olive oil and seasonings that the digital recipe calls for, her mom might as well be there beside her. She can even visualize her movements, tossing diced onions into a stock pot until they hiss, cracking open shrimp shells and fussing over that last dash of red pepper flakes. Flowers adds slices of lemon to the steel pot and lets it simmer, thrilled that she can finally share this tradition. “My mom’s grandson, he will only meet her through the stories I tell him,” she says. “And one of those stories is the reason that we make seafood stew every Christmas Eve.”

Her pain was still fresh in 2014, when Flowers co-founded a nonprofit called The Dinner Party to help those grieving the death of a loved one to meet over shared meals. More than 9,000 people met up through the platform last year. “The creation of a meal and a really beautiful experience becomes an entry point into talking not only about death but celebrating a life,” she says. “What we need more than anything right now are opportunities to lower the barriers to connection. And food, precisely because of its familiarity and intimacy, is an amazing way to do that.”

Flowers, of course, is not alone. She’s not much of a recreational cook; she only intends to make her mother’s stew once a year. That’s true for most of us these days, between school and careers and our kids’ own hectic schedules.

https://www.deseret.com/magazine/2024/04/01/family-recipes-passed-down-preverse-memories/