Welcome to The Roots Of It All
Food stories, Motherhood, & Green Tomatoes.
Welcome to The Roots Of It All, a newsletter from Leftovers Community. This is our first edition! Thanks for joining us here. We’ll start with a hello from our founders, food journalist Jessica Vaughn Martin (hello, it’s me!) and Chef Gaby Weir Vera. We believe that food paired with story builds connection - people to people, people to food, food to the present, past, and future. Food and story, on the plate and in words, are intertwined here. You can learn more about us and our mission over at leftoverscommunity.org.
It’s fitting that we’re sending our first newsletter out into the world on Mother’s Day. Parents have a direct hand in crafting someone’s food story. As mothers and as daughters, Gaby and I know this well. It’s something I think about a lot. And I realized awhile ago that tomatoes have become a central character in my own food story - and those of my children. There’s a photo of me as a toddler eating a bright red, juicy, tomato like an apple. My grandparents ate them fresh, sliced and salted in the summer. My mother’s Louisiana upbringings made appearances in tomato laden jambalaya suppers on our table. Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce is one of the first recipes I added to my young family’s house menu. And now, we plant them each year in our small garden. Tomatoes on the table bring me comfort. They evoke a sense of home, of rootedness.
Tomatoes have become synonymous with celebration in my life. That’s probably because my family has a habit of celebrating big in July - my wedding anniversary and both kids' birthdays fall within the same week. Unexpectedly. In the days after we welcomed our youngest daughter, our garden erupted with tomatoes ready to harvest. And the next year, my two kids spent their birthday month plucking and eating them straight from the vine. I cherish the image of tiny dimpled hands reaching up from the stroller for more “matos.”
I’ve loved watching my kids grow alongside our summer gardens. They remind me to take in the goodness of now. The beauty of watching things grow, slowly then quickly. The importance of nourishment, of patience, of love and care. From the first yellow flower to a vine ripened beauty, tomatoes - and kids - remind us that growth, progress, and potential are to be celebrated.
Gaby and I had these things in mind when we dreamt up the new Leftovers Community logo. We chose the green tomato - green specifically - because it represents potential. That’s what Leftovers Community is all about; we celebrate food stories, and we see the potential of scraps: food, words, and photos, overlooked places and unheard voices - the leftovers. Our green tomato is a symbol of this mission, and we’re so grateful to local artist Adrienne Luther Johnson for bringing her to life. You can read more about the story of our green tomato here.
Chef Gaby’s #SundayFocaccia series has featured many tomato topped breads, all decidedly equal in beauty and taste. Find them, and the recipe for to create your own sourdough focaccia, in our recipe archive here.
Another fitting Mother’s Day aside here: besides baking beautiful breads, Gaby keeps busy educating the next generation of eaters at Windsor Street Montessori School in Columbia, Missouri, where she’s pioneering the school’s food-forward approach. Her lunch program includes daily scratch made meals with story, and made with ingredients harvested from student and teacher tended gardens. I wrote about it in 2021 for Feast magazine, and you can read that here. Windsor Street is currently enrolling for summer and fall programs, and if you’re a parent (or know a parent) who wants their kids to experience schooling that’s entwined with nature and food - you’ll want to learn more.
From Gaby, on spring garden planting day: we're not just cultivating plants - we're nurturing a love for sustainability, healthy living, and learning. Our Montessori approach empowers children to connect with nature, make conscious choices, and become stewards of the earth. Join us this summer and fall to sow the seeds of change!
Unbound Book Festival was last month in Columbia, and I had the delight of moderating a panel of cookbook authors. Well, more like food storytellers. These authors have written cookbooks that you’ll want to settle into a comfy chair to read. The stories stretch beyond the kitchen, into ancestry, grief, connection, and more. James Beard Award nominated Hetty Lui McKinnon (Tenderheart), Kentucky professor, poet laureate, and novelist Crystal Wilkinson (Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts) and home baker Stacey Mei Yan Fong (50 Pies, 50 States) shared stories from their food writing journeys, pandemic-era cookbook writing, and weaving cultural and family traditions into food stories. I really needed an hour with each of them to dive into the beautiful stories they’ve shared within the pages of their books.
In her Substack newsletter, To Vegetables, With Love, Hetty recently reflected on an audience question posed during the panel about food systems and how we eat. As I’ve begun cooking my way through her books, I’ve felt that Hetty’s writing and recipes strike a lovely balance of deep appreciation for fresh market produce and freedom from the absolute necessity of in season, expensive and sometimes inaccessible ingredients. She shares her thoughts here.
Before the panel, I spent time cooking with Crystal Wilkinson in local author Nina Furstenau’s kitchen. We used Nina’s late mother’s sunflower yellow stock pot, they shared stories of their own kitchen ghosts and a warm meal together. Two such talented and thoughtful storytellers together in one place creates magic, and a lasting memory for me! We’ll soon have an audio Kitchen Conversation to share with you. For now, we have delightful interviews with Stacey and Hetty, which appeared in KBIA’s Unbound Conversations collection.
Family and food go hand in hand. Missouri writer Christina Holzhauser is cooking and writing her way through her family’s old church cookbook on her blog, Knife and Pen. This Spaghetti Sauce story highlights the intersection of food, music, and familial ties. Grab your tissues, y’all. This one’s going to make you want to call your grandpa.
That’s all for this edition of The Roots Of It All. Next week, and every week, we’ll talk more about food and story, and those who are pairing them well. While you wait, let us know: are tomatoes a main character in your food story, or is it something else?
P.S. - special thanks to my mom for coming up with the name for this newsletter! You’re the best!
Love it - so happy you're here on Substack! 💮