People often asks me what inspires my culinary culture and I tell them two things: Travel and My cooking family.  I chose a Daddy that blessed my Saturday mornings with pancakes, waffles and biscuits sopped in syrup, grits with sugar (it’s the only way I’d eat them), scrambled eggs and cheese, sausage patties, and crispy bacon.  I have fond memories of rising to the smell of cooked butter and foregoing showers and proper morning hygiene etiquette just to get seated at the breakfast table first.  When my friends would come over to spend the night my father would entertain us with either homemade chilli dogs, fried fish, french fries, mac and cheese, spaghetti with a special sauce that took 2 hours to make, bread with his special garlic spread and he’d never fail us with the banana pudding (with custard from scratch) and peach cobbler that was laboriously and lovingly coverd with hand made dough.  My friend’s loved my dad so much that they used to come to my door and ask my mother if Mr. Chapman could come outside and play!  We were all fascinated with the love, ease and enthusiasm that my father put into his meals.  I was always in awe when I would watch him throw down.  It’s as if he created magic in edible form and all was right with the world once he served you.

Mommy on the other hand didn’t quite grow up on the Southern Paula Deen cooking scene.  I knew I had a very advanced palate coming into this Earthly realm, so I chose parents who demographically could give me what I need.  My Jamaican mother nourished my life with curry chicken every Sunday dinner, rice and peas (which I constantly begged for), ackee and saltfish and fried dumpling were a breakfast treat, fruit cake every Christmas, ginger-less Sorrell (which apparently is a Jamaican sin) and plenty of Easter bun and cheese! My mother explored more than typical Jamaican dishes though, we traveled all over the world and re-created dishes that suited our appetites.  Every weekend we grocery shopped for our culinary journeys, and with me by her side as her sous-chef we conquered the globe bite by bite.  It sounds all good now, but from 13-18, I hated being stuck in the kitchen chopping, tossing, mixing, getting, washing and doing….I would’ve rather watched BET and catch up on the latest dance moves and lyrics.  But alas who knew, that I would have actually left behind the esteemed pyschological and educational practices that Harvard and Spelman tried to grill in me to honor my calling as a Culinary Culturalist and explore food the way it’s never been explored before.

Perhaps they knew.