monday, december 24th, 2007

The first time I watched Poppy Tooker make rice calas was at a Share Our Strength conference in New Orleans last November. The most recent was at a dinner she hosted for our CulinaryCorps team in her lovely New Orleans home. On both occasions I was inspired by how passionate this vibrant woman who valiantly heads up the New Orlean's Slow Food movement was about a recipe that she says changed her life.

Always passionate about food and the nostalgia it can trigger in someone who smells or tastes something long forgotten but precious in their hearts, she recounted the story of serving the sweet rice fritter at a New Orleans farmer's market several years ago. As she fried and served the toasty brown fritters whose crispy skins give way to meltingly creamy sweet interiors, a man stopped by to sample one of her sugar dusted offerings.

She watched him take his first bite and as he chewed saw the tears well up in his eyes. When he was through, he told her that his grandmother used to make rice calas for him as a boy and the first bite brought the memory of her rushing back to him. A recipe long surrendered to the plunder of time placed him once again as an eager boy in his grandmother's kitchen waiting for the first bite of her hot rice calas which she made to sustain him certainly, but also to show him how much he was loved.

This simple exchange changed the course of Ms. Tooker's career. Those few minutes with a stranger illustrated for her the important role food plays in our lives and by the time he was finished with his calas, she had made the decision to devote herself completely to a career, and life, of food.
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