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September 11 Stories: Food, Memories, and Healing After 9/11, Patriot Day · Family Tree Food Stories

0:07
Hello everybody.
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Welcome back to another episode of Family Tree Food and Stories, the podcast where
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food meets family meets memory meets.
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Well, all things delicious and a little bit more intriguing or
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a little intriguing at times.
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If you tuned in last week, you heard our conversation about food crimes.
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Yeah, right.
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Food is usually comforting, but sometimes in the wrong hands.
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Well, you get the picture, but today Sylvie and I are pausing
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for a different kind of story.
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This is a special edition.
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It was on September 11th in 2001 that our world changed overnight.
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I don't think any of us can actually ever get that out of our mind.
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Those of us who experienced it as buildings fell, we stood up and we
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united and vowed never to forget.
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The great thing is that the rest of the world did the same with us too.
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Stories emerged of neighbors helping neighbors.
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And strangers coming together to share grief and well yes food too.
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Chefs, churches, community groups all stepped in.
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Chefs like Ruth Reel who organized cornbread suppers for first responders
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and those who had been displaced.
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Their message was clear.
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Food isn't just sustenance for the body, it's sustenance for the soul.
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Yeah.
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. You know, and it's all about these memories.
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And some of us have stories to tell about what we were doing on nine 11.
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I just happened to have one.
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It is food related.
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. It was one of the most beautiful days in Kentucky in September.
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We get some really great weather blue skies.
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Gorgeous.
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I was taking my mother home during her final illness to her birthplace.
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It's about 80 miles from Lexington West Liberty, Kentucky, just
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the tiniest place on earth.
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The kind of place where at the courthouse, the old fellas show
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up, , and trade tales and stories.
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And we stopped at the only fast food place in town.
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It may have been the only real restaurant.
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It was McDonald's, and it so happened that Ronald.
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Ronald McDonald was making an appearance as a promotional event.
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I hope that he had someone to show him out of there how he could get home, but
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he would never know how special that visit with Ronald McDonald was to this woman
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in the final days of, , serious illness.
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And, I'll always remember that.
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And I think you've got a story about your dad on nine 11.
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Well, you have a picture of your mom actually taken with Ronald
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Yeah, I've gotta try to find that.
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You know, moving is, is tough, Nancy, you lose all kinds of stuff, right?
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But you have the memories, which is good.
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. Nine 11,, I remember it very clearly myself.
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It was a gorgeous day up in Westport, Connecticut, and I was driving
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to a meeting to meet a friend and all of a sudden I'm hearing
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some chatter going on on the car radio and couldn't figure it out.
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Well, when we got to her place, then we realized exactly what was going on, but.
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The thing that we don't realize or we don't remember and we probably didn't
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remember at the time, is that September 11th is actually called Patriot Stay here
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in the United States, and my dad was a true red, white and blue American patriot.
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In fact, he changed the name of his company to May USA.
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He designed
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eyeglass
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frames, but that's probably for another story.
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It's not a food related story,
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It's beautiful though.
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Right.
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But as he was passing, and we have this particular story in our second
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show that was released when, so you can go back and listen to it,
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but he asked for clam chowder on those final moments just before he
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passed.
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So nine 11 I think of clam chowder and dad as well and good old red, white, and blue.
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Nothing more American than well, new England clam chat.
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Well maybe fried chicken, beef.
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You're from the south, right?
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Yeah, well, it's kind of a neat little partnership here.
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I'm Ronald McDonald, and you're clam chowder.
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I like that.
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Yeah,
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our memories come in all , sizes, shapes, and kinds of food, right?
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absolutely.
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But today we're reflecting, let's go back to that Patriot Day in a proclaimed
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National Day of Service and Reflection.
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Now, it's not a national holiday.
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Businesses are open, but it is a call to, more than two decades later.
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To do something that matters, , to honor those who gave their lives
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were displaced and to honor people today, our armed forces and our first
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responders, and all people in need.
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And that's why that day has become a space for healing, resilience, and connection.
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And it's often about serving and providing food.
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And, you know, Nancy, in a time that we call the age of
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Loneliness, it's really heartening.
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To see at the local level what so many communities are quietly
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gathering together and giving.
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I liken them to earthworms.
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You know, I can never stop talking about earthworms.
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You know that about me.
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I'm gonna do a show someday on earthworms.
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We bug
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You Know, we did a bug show, now we need earthworms.
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But they burrow under the ground and they create a new soil so that our food
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continues to be grown in this new soil.
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And that's what people are doing in their local homegrown groups.
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, Absolutely.
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Partially, our job here is to make sure that the good works and efforts are
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known about because family tree, food and stories isn't just about family
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because people that you care about.
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That is your family.
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for you, our listeners, we wanna make sure that you know what else is going on
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around the country and maybe even around the world as it relates to nine 11 days.
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And remembrance when it brings people together, food brings people
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together in the most profound ways.
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Now, here's a couple of examples that we have found.
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. Take for example, the organization nine 11 Day that was started by families who
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were directly affected by the attacks.
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Each year, they host services and events across the country where thousands
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of volunteers assemble meals from one another and for people in need.
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As an example, rice, beans, dried vegetables and seasonings are
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all packed in together for hunger relief., Food is given to food
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banks throughout the country.
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, What better way to help somebody with, an extra little lift . and the Philadelphia
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Eagles are doing something as well.
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They've done this for a number of years.
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They put together 2000 volunteers that come together with Feed America and they
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pack 700,000 meals for people in need.
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I think that's just a beautiful way of touching the heart and the
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soul , from the stomach to the head, to the heart to the soul.
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I guess they look at it right.
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Yeah.
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, Also just coincidentally , September is Hunger Action Month.
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It is a perfect setting for this with those, all those volunteers.
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Now, , you can do us corporate sponsorships with nine 11 day, but
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I think what we are interested in.
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A lot of those things take place in big cities like Philadelphia, but you know,
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Nancy, what's going on at the local level?
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, Our listeners live in these local places, maybe not as small as West Liberty,
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Kentucky, but they live in smaller places.
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, What can go on there?
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I was more in tune to what was happening up north when we lived there.
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Here we're still sort of getting our feet in the ground with the community,
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and I think because we were so close to New York, we saw the impact
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personally , in very different ways than.
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People further away, like in Florida, they didn't necessarily see what was
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happening unless you had family up there.
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But who knew that this was gonna happen?
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, And when it comes with bringing people together in, in the big cities,
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it's really the smaller cities, like you said, that has the ability to
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have, I think, even greater impact.
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It's not just not-for-profits, but it's local restaurants that are now offering
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discount meals to first responders, not just on Patriot's Day, but even year
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round, and offering this kind of, I don't say discount, but really just a
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gesture of kindness and appreciation.
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Is a gratitude that has continued to live on.
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But what about other individuals at ground level in other parts of the country?
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What's happening where you are, Sylvia?
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. Gosh.
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You know, this has been an awakening for me, and we're gonna get into this in a
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minute, this whole cornbread thing, but, you know, think about organized visits
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to nursing homes and bringing food.
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, When I conduct stories telling classes for,, the elderly in those
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homes,, it's always about food.
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Their recipes and all of that kind of thing.
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So it is so neat.
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, what, what we wanna talk about is what's happened in the decade since, and I
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got a couple of things to add to that.
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Including the fact that Rona Roberts here in Lexington.
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Conducted cornbread, suppers, for several years, I don't think she does them now,
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but you could come into her home on a Sunday evening, bring a dish like the
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things that go with cornbread, right?
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Beans, chili, all of those kind of comforty foods we could
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add to the list all day long.
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But they would come to her home and so, , that's brought something.
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New in my mind, , our restaurant used to serve cornbread and we stopped doing
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it because we thought, Hmm, you know, maybe it's kind of a restaurant that
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appeals to like the Keeneland crowd and that's the racetrack here in Lexington.
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And now I'm looking back on how important cornbread is and just, the
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little bit of a background on that.
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After nine 11, Ruth Reel organized her gourmet staff.
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She was the executive CEOI and a food critic and a chef.
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, Just after nine 11 in the Times Square Kitchens, they showed up in Force.
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Cornbread was a prominent , presence there along with other comfort foods
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such as chili, lasagna, brownies.
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Oh, my.
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Goodness.
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Sound good.
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They became symbolic, a simple, powerful act of love and togetherness, and I
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love this quote from Ruth, chef Ruth.
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We were hoping to snatch hope from the rubble of our broken city, and
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food was the perfect way to do it.
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Wow.
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That makes so much sense, Comfort food, particularly cornbread represents
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resilience and community and it's rooted so deeply in the story of
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America and cornbread is woven into so many American traditions from Native
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American communities to the south and to Appalachia kitchens everywhere.
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It's humble, it's.
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Adaptable, and more importantly, it's shared.
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You cannot have a piece of cornbread without being with somebody else.
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I'm convinced, and you know, even in New England, there's something about
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cornbread that I think just SOPs up the soul when you need it the most.
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Right?
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That's Right?
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But, some interesting facts.
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Native American cornbread consisted of cornmeal salt water, and was referred
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to by many settlers as P. PONE described by one Southerner as a hillbilly.
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Talk for pan.
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? Like po bread versus pan bread?
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I had a southern friend and she would say, I need a pan.
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Do you need a pen?
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Do you need a pan?
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That was Charlotte like so we laughed about that one.
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It's like pan.
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No, not a pan.
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It's a pan.
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Okay.
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We cut off the subject a little bit, but as you're writing down
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stories, you kind of need that pen.
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But we involved a cornmeal with eggs, oil, and milk, and some would
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say an essential to cornbread.
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Cookery is the iron cast skillet with bacon grease and corn
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kernels, and sometimes buttermilk.
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But the northern version tends to be a little sweeter, and I couldn't figure
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out what the difference was, but now I know is yeah, it tastes like sugary,
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more like a cake a flour and one half cornmeal.
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So the north is the yellow and the south is the white with.
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The real southern cornbread and recipes, baked, fried, a big fried stir.
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I guess you gotta stir your cornbread before you bake it, right?
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So it's personal, but it's part of the family heritage that seems
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to pass down from grandma to great grandma or great grandma to
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grandma, to mom, to hopefully us.
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And and it's just something that says home and love as far as I'm concerned.
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Yeah, that's right,.
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Like what Rona Roberts did.
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, So special, and I gotta tell you that this gave me an idea.
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Since we reopened the restaurant on Memorial Day weekend, we've had
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so many requests for the cornbread.
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Now, the bread we're serving.
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Very tasty, but it's not cornbread.
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I mean, these are people who are the trainers from the racetrack and , CEOs
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and people, and they want the cornbread.
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So here's my idea
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Let's stop a second.
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We're gonna take a break ' cause we wanna tell people a little bit more
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about what other things are going on and then we'll share your idea.
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Stay tuned.
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Okay.
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Sylvia, I broke you mid idea here.
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That's okay.
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I could talk about it all day long, so interrupt me whenever
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but you know what?
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It's, we're breaking cornbread, so why not?
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But anyway, , what we did, , we opened a Memorial Day weekend.
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People kept asking again for the cornbread and we're like, uh, you know, , we
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had gone traditional, regular bread is very good, but it was regular bread.
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And the cornbread that our chef made was so delicious.
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It had corn kernels in it and also had sour cream.
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Which adds a flavoring to, cornbread.
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Again, , and, and you add to that a ham, hock, fried potatoes, brown beans,
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, just all day long you could do that.
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But one story is especially close to my heart.
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my dad didn't cook much.
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He was a factory worker and he worked all night and, slept most of the day.
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But when he did cook.
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It was cornbread, and I remember him pulling out this
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enormous cast iron skillet.
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Now, I regret to this day that in the ensuing moves of
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my life, I didn't save that.
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I didn't really assign the value to it that it deserved.
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but it seemed huge.
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And he would melt the butter, like, I mean, I'm sure, a stick of butter.
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And he'd pour it in the batter and he'd bake it until it turned golden and crisp.
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Oh, those crisp edges.
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'cause they were just butter filled edges.
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And I would sneak and take some of the edges off.
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I'm surprised it got by with that.
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but , that was long before nine 11, but he was onto something, wasn't he?
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I should have paid more attention.
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And as, George Bernard Shaw said, youth is wasted on the young.
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I didn't get it at the time.
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. It was wonderful.
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And, and what we're gonna do is we're gonna serve cornbread
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at the restaurant on nine 11.
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Along with discounts for the wonderful people who give so much of themselves,
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the first responders in all of that.
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But we're gonna serve that cornbread, probably not quite as buttery as my dad.
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Well add a lot of sour cream though, right?
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Well, you can always add some extra butter on top.
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I don't know about you, but when I eat cornbread, I gotta have.
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A good like slab of butter on top
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of it as well.
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That's, yeah.
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It's like, you know, one slab of butter for the cornbread and
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one slab of butter for each side of the thighs, so,
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Yeah.
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Yeah, And . I actually use buttermilk in mine, and , and I guess that was my dad.
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He always used buttermilk too.
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It's just a little bit of a different flavor.
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You know, I have to say, I haven't.
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I shouldn't say haven't made cornbread, but , they come in a little Jiffy box
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and it's not quite the same because it doesn't have the granularly.
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I like the, the cornbread that has like the.
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It's grainy.
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Right?
15:09
And when we came down here, there was some sort of local street fair or street event,
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and we met, one of the local farmers, a a fellow who's, I'm drawing a blank
15:19
in his name on right now, but his wife had some sort of device, old fashioned
15:24
device that was taking the carnals.
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Off the corn, you stick it in and it sort of, it had like a handle
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and it was almost like, it, well, it, it was a de kernel, I guess you
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call it first as a knife cutting it
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off.
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But they were dried corn pieces she said, this is how you get
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the best kernels for cornbread.
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And then it grinds it up.
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So that was kind of interesting.
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I learned old fashioned Florida pioneer
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Yeah.
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making kernel things.
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Yeah.
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There's so much for technical stuff, right?
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But we also talked about nine 11 was a little bit more about preserving things,
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preserving memories and soul and stuff.
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And at one point, I know we had talked a little bit about canning,
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Mm-hmm.
16:05
Mm-hmm.
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And now, I will have to tell you, when we moved his kids , from Long
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Island to Massachusetts, my mom and dad and I, we didn't know at the
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time were in some sort of tough.
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Financial strain because of business aspects that were going on.
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It all worked out in the end, which is a good thing.
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But Mom decided that she was going to learn to, can
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Mm-hmm.
16:23
I call it a canning?
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Because they're bottles, right.
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You know, the jar things from, , all the stuff that dad had made in the garden.
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So , my mom had a pressure cooker, but it was the kind of pressure
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cooker that if you like didn't do it right, it would explode.
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I was scared to death after that experience with mom in the kitchen.
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I would say there is no way on earth I ever want to can anything,
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but my sister does it all the time.
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She preserves this thing and that thing they actually can meat.
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Have you ever heard of that?
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I would thought they would dry meat, but yeah, I imagine.
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I just had never heard of that.
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'cause I come from a canning background.
16:58
yeah.
16:58
Never heard of it,
16:59
I never heard of that either.
17:01
So vegetables and
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all sorts of salsa that they do and soups and broth and everything
17:07
because they have cattle.
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So , you slaughter a cattle and , there goes bubba the cow into the can.
17:14
Yeah.
17:15
Yeah, I'm not going to my sister's house when I know the
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name of her cattle, so, no.
17:19
Thank you very much.
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Well, we're gonna be doing a show on, , the fall coming, the fall is
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coming right on the heels of nine 11., Then it starts up here anyway, and I,
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I'll be interested to know more about what happens in Florida in the fall.
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' cause we don't think you have seasons, but you probably know you do.
17:37
we do, it gets cold down here.
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It'll drop
17:38
into the thirties, so , it does get cold.
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And , the leaves kind of, well, they turn, turn.
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Colors . But, , we'll do one in the fall and I, before we, we wrap up, , talking
17:47
about sharing and Patriots Day and everything else, we had some guests
17:50
over this weekend, I have to laugh because I'm thinking, all right, family
17:54
tree, food and stories, what have we done that I couldn't make for our
17:58
guests that might surprise them now?
18:01
We had just finished recording the bug show and releasing
18:04
the bug show, so I thought,
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Oh,
18:07
oh, do I serve some cockroaches, fried crushes?
18:10
No.
18:10
I thought that was kind of pushing it a little too much,
18:12
Mm-hmm.
18:14
so I decided to make an apple pie, but in this case, it was a zapp.
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And remember, , we did this show on leave a zucchini on your neighbor's porch day.
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Well, in the summertime you don't have zucchini down here in Florida
18:26
because the growing season in the summertime is just too hot for that.
18:29
It's really the fall and the springtime.
18:31
They have the growing season.
18:32
but zucchini comes in from other parts of the country.
18:35
So I made a zappo pie.
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There's one caveat to that.
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I am terrible at reading recipe instructions,
18:41
so.
18:42
As I made it all together, I thought I was doing great.
18:44
Bob said, you didn't read the instructions?
18:46
I said, yeah, I did.
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I kind of glossed over them.
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He said, you're supposed to peel the zucchini so there's no green on it.
18:52
You're supposed to take the seeds out.
18:53
He read the instructions so that it looks like apples.
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Well, I left the green on, I left the seeds in and it was a green zapple pie.
19:02
Hmm, hmm.
19:03
It was actually very good.
19:04
And one of the, one of our guests said, man, you have balls to serve
19:09
this to guests at your party.
19:11
And what did I say and what did I respond?
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That's just one of your many talents.
19:17
Let him swing.
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But in any case, we did have some backup because Bob made homemade ice cream.
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So we had the backup and that went very well with the zapple pie.
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I'm gonna try it again on a smaller scale where it's you.
19:29
The green has taken off and it actually looks like apples.
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But it did taste like that.
19:34
Well, it, it had the consistency of apples.
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So
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that said, zapple pie, you can try it, but please peel the green off.
19:41
So nobody thinks that they're eating squash pie.
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It's kind of weird looking.
19:45
, The brain and the taste didn't kind of work together.
19:48
So anyway,
19:49
but they might have thought it was, uh, avocados or something.
19:51
You know, that's the rage.
19:53
I,
19:53
yeah.
19:53
Avocados are the rage, right?
19:55
Well, avocados are the trending rage, but yeah.
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So nine 11 rituals, love and caring for people, whether it's on nine 11 or not.
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But remember, it's a time to share and show your appreciation for people
20:10
who you care about, and even those that you don't necessarily know.
20:13
It's a day of commemoration, a day.
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We wish peace and comfort and connection.
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For all of you.
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And remember, food is more than what it is on your plate.
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It brings us together in so many ways.
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Yeah, and come to Azure for cornbread on nine 11.
20:27
we'll be back next week with more stories and that from Family
20:31
Tree Food and Stories of course.
20:32
. So before we go, food is all about sharing, right, Sylvia?
20:36
That's right about sharing.
20:37
. That makes it so much better.
20:39
Right.
20:39
It makes it taste better.
20:40
And on that note, we'd like to ask you to share these stories and the
20:45
show with your friends and family.
20:47
And you know what?
20:48
Maybe even bring him around the , dinner table to talk about it as well, because
20:51
there's a lot of information here that you might be surprised about.
20:55
In fact, the other day some listener reached out to me
20:58
and said, , Yogi is his name.
20:59
He's out in Arizona and Yogi said, you know, I learned so much from your shows.
21:04
So thank you, Yogi.
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Shout out to you in Phoenix, Arizona.
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I appreciate you and we appreciate you, and please share it with
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friends and family because.
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Every meal has a story and every story is a feast.
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We'll see you soon and we'll hear you soon.
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Bye-bye.
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bye.