There are some interesting things that you should know so you can understand why this project is so difficult.
1) I have never made a cookbook before
2) I am not a professional photographer
3) I am not a professional chef
4) I have no idea how to get a booked published
Additionally, it is a cookbook about the mexican food that my grandma used to make. So that adds some additional complications.
5) I don't speak Spanish. She doesn't speak a lot of English.
6) I live in San Francisco. My grandma lives in LA.
So, clearly after seeing these factors, my immediate response was "LET'S MAKE A COOKBOOK!"
Actually what happened was this:
In 2008/2009 I was unemployed for most of the year. I had gotten laid off at the peak of the financial crisis, and being a 23 year old with little experience, it took me a little while to get back on my feet again. During this time my grandma was starting to get sick, and some of her aging began to show. I spent quite a bit of my time driving from Newport Beach to LA to pick her up, driving her to doctors appointments, or accompanying her to church on Sundays.
Looking back, it was really hard not having a job and I spent a lot of time and anxiety over my unformed career. I felt like the whole world was spinning around me with important job titles, and ladders to be climbed, and yet I was desperately grasping at straws.
But I have this image in my mind of my grandma and I riding down Hacienda Blvd in my brand new silver Mazda on perfect spring day. The sunshine flooded the car, the air conditioner pushed cool air onto our faces, and we were chatting in broken spanish about nothing at all. This moment, right here, was the single bright spot in those anxiety filled months.
I learned a lot about myself from getting to know my grandma. Hearing her stories told me a lot about what I came from, and what I was made of. She's sassy and tough, and is the kind of woman that moved to a new country at 21 and never looked back. I love knowing that about her.
I have tons and tons and tons of cousins. And my grandma helped take care of lots of them throughout our childhood. Some times I feel like we don't always have tons in common, my cousins and I. My mom was a stay-at-home-mom and we lived 35 miles from my grandma, so my relationship with her was more around holidays and visits. Many of their moms worked, so my grandma would drive my cousins to school or pick them up, make them breakfast and after-school snacks. They know her in a way I don't.
But there is this wonderful middle ground. Food.
I already have my own love affair with eating, cooking, and feeding other people. I think that is something that I inherited. I love the concept of being able to span age, experience, interest, socio-economics or other gaps with something as simple as carne asada.
With that realization, came and additional reality: the one major that thing me and cousins, and my aunts and uncles all have in common is how much we love my grandma's cooking. Her first gerneration, completely authentic, no-frills cooking. This was followed by a second realization. Once she goes to the ground, it is completely possible that the recipes go with her. No more tamales. No more taco sauce. No more taquitos. The memories of our childhoods would cease to exists outside of the past.
Nothing has ever made me feel so panicked.
I decided that a cookbook must exist. Maybe not for money, or real publication, but for the sole purpose of keeping this part of her alive even when she is not.
We started cooking together in 2008. At the time, my grandma would still drive and wore a size 8 pant. We made chili colorado, and tacos, and rice and beans. My pictures of the food were horrible. I didn't have a camera, and had no idea what I was doing.
I started working in 2009. I got a marketing job and fell in love with the career I was beginning. I was very busy. I scaled the ladder more quickly than most, and the idea of making a cookbook faded along with my free time.
Then in the summer of 2012 I had dream. A lot had changed in my life since the last time I'd thought about a cookbook. I had gotten married. I'd moved here to San Francisco. I'd gotten a new job, new friends, a new apartment, and a new life.
On a hot summer night, I dreamed that my grandma passed, and that I never finished the book. I woke up sobbing and terrified. It was a moment of clarity so crystal, that there was no negotiating it.
Making this cookbook isn't something that makes money. It doesn't command prestige. It doesn't have a business card with an important sounding title. It doesn't bolster my career, or bring me opportunities for promotions. But it is, without apprehension, the most important project in my life thus far. I realized sitting there in cold sweats in the darkness, that if these recipes go into the ground with my grandma, I could feel no larger sense of regret. I would have squandered my time chasing things that felt important, but in reality, were like grains of sand slipping through my fingers.
So I quit my job. The cookbook wasn't the only reason. But having a clear calendar certainly gave me the freedom to fill it with the projects that really mattered to me.
I picked up the cookbook once again.
I bought a new camera. I fly to LA once a month. My grandma is now on oxygen and cannot stand near the stove. She tells me "Esperame. No me exploto." (Wait, don't explode me.), as she rushes to a chair we place just outside the kitchen where she tells me what to do, and she watches me cook. She can no longer drive, and wears a size 2 pant.
I still am not professional photographer.
I still am not a chef.
I still speak moderately horrible spanish.
I still have no idea if this thing could ever be published.
I still have no idea what I am doing.
But it is happening, one recipe at a time. I have a goal of finish it by the fall, and at least having something laid out in an InDesign document. I don't know what happens after that, but do I know, that when I look back at this year of my life - where I left a great job to climb on planes and cook food that I cannot pronounce - I know this will be a spot of sunshine that I will not regret.
i just cried at my desk. :)
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