Vegan Kitchen Magic

How my grandmother’s spirit infused me with a love of kitchen witchery

I got my introduction to kitchen witchery at my grandmother’s little table. This sounds more mysterious and wild than it was, but it was still essential to my development.

My grandmother was not a witch, at least not to my knowledge, but had a deeply intuitive, thoroughly natural ease with using food as a conduit to elevate one’s spirit and connect with those she loved. She was not working with an array of herbs and mixing elixirs — honestly, it was McCormick all the way in her modest spice rack and parsley was likely the only fresh herb that could be found in her ‘fridge — but if magic is at its core about transformation, my grandmother was a true sorceress and her kitchen, with the little yellow Formica table (what I wouldn’t do for it now) where she chopped and mixed and the stovetop where she stirred and cooked, was where the spells coalesced.

The cookbooks of her era were plain and succinct. If you ever see a cookbook circa 1975 and compare it to a contemporary counterpart, you will notice right away how much more simple and direct the recipes and instructions were. For someone who loved to cook, my grandmother did not have many cookbooks but the few she owned had notes for improvements neatly jotted in the margins. The recipes she used were much more likely to be filed in her recipe…