C.M. • BHA Interview Transcript

Quinton: Where would you all gather as a family? I know you mentioned going watching TV together, and playing outside. Where was the communal space or area?

CM (59): So, if it was just as family, we would go in the family room a lot. Where, because the one floor model TV that we had to literally go and change the channel for our parents was in the family room and it was a nice sized floor model TV. But we would often times sit on the floor and our parents would sit on the furniture and stuff but we didn’t mind sitting on the floor back then. But we mostly sit in the family room it was just us but when we got together for holidays, we would go to my grandmother’s house, which was two houses down and she had three bedrooms and a bath. But we made it work. She had seven children and then the children had children so we all-- we was in every room in the house but we was all sittin down eaten and you know what’s the matter got finished then somebody else would sit at the table to eat but we made it work. And that was the fun part about it when you got together and grandma cook for everybody or you know, she did a lot of the cooking so that’s I learned how to bake now. Just sitting there watching her and putting-- her palm was her measuring cup. So she didn’t measure a lot of stuff she would say you just put a little bit in the palm of your hand and she would throw it in the bowl. And she would put a bowl in her lap, sitting right in between her legs and she would just mix it you know mix it, mix it, mix, mix, mix it and so that’s I learned how to do a lot of my baking so I was actually a baker before I was a cook because she baked a lot of desserts. And so I wasn’t worried about the you know, steak and stuff like that. I want to know how to bake the cake and the cobbler. So that part was neat. So everything that, anything she could teach you about baking, if you sit in the kitchen long enough with her, she would tell you how to do it. So when people call me now, and say, “what’s the recipe?” I don’t have a recipe. I don’t measure a lot of stuff. So that was how I came up. She just say, and you know, “see it’s supposed to look like this--it’s supposed to feel like this. Like, okay, whatever that mean. But I just in watching her and seeing what she did. I was like Okay, so now when I make crust, I be like, “Oh yeah, it’s gonna be good. It’s gonna be flaky.” Just because of the texture or the look of it. So just watching her do it was like “okay”, so that was neat. I wish we had gotten a few more of her recipes, which weren’t recipes but; to learn how to bake different things. [yeah]. So that part was neat.