Who Is Auntmama?

She’s your mother’s sister, your grandfather’s third cousin. She’s the woman up the street who sets an extra plate at dinner, helps craft your job resume, stuffs collards and rewires the hall lamp at least once a month to avoid buying a new fixture.

She’s a gardener, a cook, a friend to her many nieces and nephews by birth and her nieces and nephews by choice. But above all, she’s a story.She has a story for everyone and she helps everyone tell their story.

So welcome, and come on in. Put your favorite music on. Hop up on the kitchen counter or settle into the tall director’s chair in the red brick kitchen. Watch the birds feed out the cedar window and the eagles fly by. You can see them swoop into Puget Sound for their salmon.

Roll out the pie dough and sink into a tale or two.

Auntmama will take you back to her beloved Blue Ridge Mountains where time moves slower than a honeysuckle breeze. Then she’ll snap you back to the Pacific Northwest where sunlight halos Mt. Rainer, slugs feast on the dahlias and skyscrapers grow faster than the Douglas fir.

She’ll want to know about your home, your folks, your story, too. Lot of stories pass through her kitchen. Lots of good food too. You can get the recipe or order take out. The recipes have changed over the years. Raised in a no-carb-left-behind kitchen, Auntmama is trying to improve on some aspects of traditional southern cooking. No possum will be available but nephews and nieces from Kazakhstan, India, Cuba, Africa and the Caribbean have certainly added new spices and foods to her kitchen. Your family recipes may be changing, too, so an old fashioned recipe exchange is a good idea.

And that sounds like another story. So come make yourself comfortable and tell it.