Grace and Chocolate Making

The first Tuesday of each month, except July and August because of the heat, we make chocolate.  Chocolate equals Jim to me, and since I haven't made chocolate in Foodways since Jim passed away last year, yesterday was a little emotional for me.  Everything about the program remained essentially the same, except Barbara roasted the beans instead of Jim.  But, just like always, we shelled the nibs and I dipped my finger in some sugar when I ate them and it was like a mix of roasted coffee and chocolate with the sweetness of the sugar mixed in, cutting the bitterness.  We winnowed out the twigs and leaves in our big basket, which I'd never done myself, and then ground the nibs into a powder with our mortar and pestle.  Next, we got out our chocolate stone, heated a bit with some coals in a brazier under it, and a big metal rolling pin and rolled and rolled the powder until it became liquid and chocolate.  Then we got out our saddle stone and rolled some more until it was very smooth and added spices-- mace, nutmeg, cayenne, cinnamon-- until it became flavorful and good.  It's a very labor-intensive, long day, but in the end you have a bowl of chocolate.

Only once, Barbara asked if I was alright and I realized I'd been thinking of Jim.  I read a poem the other day, though, that helped.  I was thinking about Foodways, and my job, and the value of it all, and I read the editor's welcome in my most recent Southern Living and it had reprinted a poem called "Grace,"-- grace, how providential-- by Jake Adam York and it partially read,

"Because my grandmother made me
the breakfast her mother made her,
when I crack the eggs, pat the butter
on the toast, and remember the bacon
to cast iron, to fork, to plate, to tongue,
my great grandmother moves my hands
to whisk, to spatula, to biscuit ring,
and I move her hands too, making
her mess, so the syllable of batter
I’ll find tomorrow beneath the fridge
and the strew of salt and oil are all
memorials...

I think of my uncle, I think of my uncle
rising, not falling, when I raise
the buttermilk and the cornmeal to the light
before giving them to the skillet
and sometimes I say the recipe
to the air and sometimes I say his name
or her name or her name
and sometimes I just set the table
because meals are memorials
that teach us how to move,
history moves in us as we raise
our voices and then our glasses
to pour a little out for those
who poured out everything for us,
we pour ourselves for them,
so they can eat again."

And suddenly it all made sense and I felt connected again to the meals I prepare, taking recipes from old cookbooks and making them live again, making Mary Randolph and Hannah Glasse and all the women and men who used their recipes once more come alive.  And when I rolled the ground cocoa beans on the stone that Jim hand-carried to the States from Mexico I realized that he was right there in the kitchen still making my hands move as I made his hands move again and I felt both happy and sad at once, and it's still his chocolate as much as it's mine and Barbara's and Anna's and Kimberly's and all of the chocolate makers who perfected this process going back centuries and centuries.  All of us making each other's hands move, taking part in a universal process.