Ode to the Not-So-Humble Cabbage

Did you know cabbage could make you cry? No? You didn’t? Well, I didn’t either. Not until this morning, at least, when cabbage made me cry. It was toward the end of a rambling, thought-provoking, mouth-watering and totally emotional conversation with Jenny Lau, aka Miss @celestialpeach_uk herself. As Jenny and I talked about cabbage, about food, identity, memory, taste, politics, history and family — I found myself with tears in my eyes, as memories of dear departed Great Auntie Khalejan and memories of dear departed Great Grandma Alice coalesced. I had made Kalam Polo on Saturday— an Iranian beef and cabbage and rice dish— and as I cooked, as I sweated the cabbage, browned the beef and eventually combined the two, these women, these long gone relatives, were there with me— in my heart, in my memory and in my kitchen.

There she was— Khalejan, visiting us in the US from Iran in the late 1990s, making kalam polo in a newly-renovated suburban Michigan kitchen, sneaking cigarettes late at night in the garage when she thought no one would find out, always sitting on the floor, cross-legged, even in her old age. And there too was Great Grandma— frying cabbage and ground beef with a Stanley Home Products pan, in a rural Michigan kitchen straight out of the 1960s, in the home where she’d birthed my grandmother, raised my mother, and fed, babysat and loved me.

Cabbage and beef. Frying in a pan. That’s all it took to bring them back to me. And then telling Jenny about it today was all it took for emotion to take over. And now again the tears well as I write this. Tears of sadness but also of joy. And of gratitude. Sadness because they are gone. But joy and gratitude because they are not really gone, can never be gone— because I carry them with me in my heart, memory and kitchen. And because even the simplest things, the simplest ingredients, the simplest dishes have the power to connect, transport and move us.

What a way to start a week. Thank you, Jenny. And thank you, Khalejan and Great Grandma. And thank you all for reading this, and letting me share my food, family, life and love.