Welcome back, my fellow creatives!

I’m not always a fan of writing prompts–not that they’re bad, of course. On the contrary, they can spark your imagination to see a new path forward in a story, or to discover a story you didn’t know you had. I recall my Blue House doll story started with looking at a Halloween story contest prompt. Writing prompts can push a writer’s stamina, or simply refresh one experiencing stagnation. That’s why I plan on doing a blog post about some different prompt books in the next month or so.

But food? Really?

My university’s creative journal released the writing theme for 2024, and I had no clue what to do with it. “Food.” Why food? Am I supposed to critique a restaurant, or share a recipe? Perhaps I could do something fantastical about outlandish cuisine on another planet…oh, who am I kidding? I have no love for the kitchen, nor it for me.

It’s no secret that I’m a horrible cook. I tend to keep things extremely basic for the sake of fueling people and moving on with life. Every time I experiment–such as that debacle with the peaches–it goes absolutely, horribly, awfully wrong in every respect. So to write about food, even tangentially, feels impossible to me. I whined about all this with a colleague of mine, and she posed an approach I’d never considered before:

“What about food for thought?”

Hmmm.

I dwelt on that a bit. There are plenty of different things we take in to nourish our inner selves, aren’t there? Particular writers, stories, poems, songs, films, tv shows…

…and just like that, a familiar piano tune came to mind…

This show? This show was comfort food to me. I watched it often as a child at home, but especially with my grandparents. My dad’s mother was never one for sewing or cooking like my mom’s mother. Oh no. My dad’s mother was a city girl who worked long hours at a Milwaukee hospital, enjoyed Friday nights dancing at supper clubs with my grandfather, and loved to end the day with a brandy and a cigarette.

Her voice was just a touch huskier than Angela Lansbury’s, but both had the same updo with red hair, that same mischievous look in their eye when they were up to something, and a VERY firm tone when enough was enough. (Not that I got that voice often. Not too often. I think.)

And so, not too long ago, I found myself popping in the first episode as I prepared a few Thanksgiving decorations. Just to remember. Just to feel the cozy mystery as I did back in the 80s, sitting by my grandma’s feet on that giant green and orange shag rug they kept in the living room. Grandpa would play cribbage in the kitchen with my father, maybe a brother, too. Grandma would join them after the show, but for that hour, she and I were happy to sit together and watch J.B. Fletcher joke and charm and slueth her way about Cabot Cove and the world beyond.

“Hey, Mom.” Bash enters, hands full of Lego, eyes squinting at the old lady waving to everyone as she rides her bicycle. “Whatcha watchin’?”

“This was one of my favorite shows when I was a kid,” I say, my hands full of autumn leaves. “She’s the lady who did the voice of the teapot in Beauty and the Beast. In this, she’s a writer who solves mysteries.”

Bash thinks about this. “Like Poirot?”

“Yeah, only she’s not nearly so fussy.”

“And she doesn’t have a mustache.”

“True.”

And just like that, Bash sits down, Legos and all, and watches the show with me from start to finish. Save for a question about a character or what someone said, he is far more attentive to J.B. Fletcher than to any Star Trek, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, or any other fantastical thing I’ve shown him. With most movies or shows, he’ll watch for a few minutes, go away for a while, come back, repeat. But not Murder, She Wrote. For the whole hour, he and I share a cozy story story on a chilly autumn day.

The perfect kind of day for a bit of comfort.

~*~

Now we come to the food.

Actual food, this time.

My grandmother wasn’t much for cooking, either, preferring cold cuts or trips to the local diner. However, there was one dish she would make every Thanksgiving that I adored: candied yams.

Oh, the warm, rich smell of brown sugar and orange juice carmelizing those yams in the skillet, hints of nutmeg and cloves tickling my nose. The way each bite just melted in the mouth, surely a dessert but it was a VEGETABLE! Why don’t all vegetables taste this good?! More than the pumpkin pie, the turkey, the stuffing, more than anything, those candied yams were Thanksgiving to me. They were the one thing the Grandma Who Never Cooked, cooked, which couldn’t have been easy amongst the other more confident cooks in the family. And every year, they were as heavenly sweet as she was.

In the past few years, I’ve tried to recreate that dish with different slow cooker recipes, but it’s never been the same. There is a taste of the comfort food from years past, but far too fleeting. Like catching the whiff of something delicious in the air, but you never get to eat it. So this year, Bo challenged me to go for broke: use our old skillet, dig up Grandma’s recipe, and do my best to follow it. It will likely go absolutely, horribly, awfully wrong in every respect. But it will also be an adventure.

And a fantastical one at that.

~*~

Thanks for taking this little journey with me! I promise to update you about my yam (mis)adventure in the coming weeks. First, we’ve got a podcast episode to record, an author interview to share, and more.

Read on, share on, and write on, my friends!