The Recipe Preservationist

  • The Gizzada: Gathering ingredients & memories

    A photo essay documenting making gizzada The gizzada is a staple in any Caribbean grocery store. My grandmother would always reward me with one for accompanying her on shopping trips. I had not thought of the dessert in years until I came across a recipe for it in Riaz Phillip’s West Winds. I spent an…

  • An Unfinished Plate: Small Acts of Resistance Through Food

    I often think of resistance as a large scale, group effort, but resistance takes many forms. It does not have to be a march or a boycott, it can be a small personal act. The public sphere is not always the setting; our homes can be the site of ritualized resistance. On a Sunday afternoon,…

  • Recipes in my head: a Jamaican rum cake passed down through generations

    A conversation where I learned that not everything is available on the internet. Every year in November, my aunt, Lavern Robinson, makes a cake. It has various names – Christmas cake, rum cake, black cake, but in my family my mother refers to it as “my sister’s cake.” Robinson lives in Connecticut and my mother…