Introducing "Your Mama's Kitchen"

Speaker 1 Hey there, I'm Michelle Obama, and I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for being a part of the Light podcast. It wouldn't be the same without you.

Speaker 1 And if you enjoyed my show, I have a feeling you're going to love this brand new, Audible, original podcast from Higher Ground.

Speaker 1 It's called Your Mama's Kitchen, and it's hosted by my dear, dear friend, Michelle Norris. For as long as I've known Michelle, she's been an absolute master in the kitchen.

Speaker 1 I've so many wonderful memories of her gathering our group of girlfriends around the table for unforgettable conversations that always leave us feeling nourished and inspired and warm.

Speaker 1 And don't even get me started on Michelle's chili. It's out of this world.

Speaker 1 And in this podcast, she's going to be sharing another one of her specialties, a good conversation.

Speaker 1 Each week, Michelle is going to talk to authors, actors, musicians, the most interesting people on the planet, and she's going to start each conversation with one simple request.

Speaker 1 Tell me about your mama's kitchen. And I just love this question because so much of American life starts in the kitchen.
It's where we are nourished physically and spiritually.

Speaker 1 Some of my own best childhood memories involve food, friends and family gathering in the kitchen making our favorite dishes, talking, laughing, sharing stories along the way.

Speaker 1 Making and sharing big meals was how we showed we cared, how we made sure we could make time to sit down and actually

Speaker 1 talk and laugh and sometimes even shed a tear or two.

Speaker 1 For so many of us, Food is love.

Speaker 1 Meals are home.

Speaker 1 And your mama's kitchen is at the core of it all.

Speaker 1 So I couldn't be more thrilled about this podcast. And to kick it off, the first episode features me.

Speaker 1 I had so much fun reminiscing with Michelle about my own mama's kitchen back on Euclid Avenue. I just can't wait for you to hear this conversation.
So stay tuned.

Speaker 1 And if you like what you hear, subscribe to your mama's kitchen. You can find it right now, anywhere you get get podcasts.

Speaker 1 This teeny tiny little room was where we did everything. We grew up there.
We became teenagers, adults in that small space, but it felt big to us because that's what kitchens do.

Speaker 1 You know, they can be small and big at the same time because we packed a lot into that house, into that kitchen.

Speaker 2 Welcome to Your Mama's Kitchen, the podcast where we explore how the food and culinary traditions of our youth shape who we become as adults. I'm Michelle Norris, and I am so glad you're here.

Speaker 2 It's great to be back in front of a microphone. That simple question, tell me about your mama's kitchen, opens up all kinds of delicious memories.

Speaker 2 Of course, because of the food, but also because because the kitchen is usually the heartbeat of the household.

Speaker 2 So many important things happen there: the debates, the experiments, the arguments, the homework, the card games, the unpaid bills that sometimes stacked up on the kitchen table.

Speaker 2 It's the place where we spend time with the people we love the most. And all those meals and all those memories simmer inside us forever.

Speaker 2 All of it shapes who we become in interesting and sometimes surprising ways.

Speaker 2 Hey there. Hey.
Thanks for coming into the studio.

Speaker 1 From one Michelle to the other.

Speaker 2 We have Michelle Squared here.

Speaker 1 Thanks for having me, babe.

Speaker 2 I bet you recognize that voice. My very first guest on your mama's kitchen hardly needs an introduction, but let's go ahead and do it anyway.

Speaker 2 Michelle LaVon Robinson Obama will forever be our forever first lady.

Speaker 2 As the first black woman to live in the White House, as the spouse of America's first black president, she's also a mother, a lawyer, an author, a sister, and a daughter, a fashion icon, in fact, an outright icon in part because she's a woman who knows how to speak her mind.

Speaker 2 With that simple opening prompt, tell me about your mama's kitchen, she was on board.

Speaker 2 She understood the power of that question because she's talked about the importance of building a supportive kitchen table of trusted family and friends all throughout her life.

Speaker 2 I'm so glad that she's with us on the show because it gives our listeners a chance to learn more about Michelle Obama's origin story and all the lessons she learned in her mama's kitchen.

Speaker 2 And as you'll hear, boy, was that a special place. It was a place filled with love and lifelong values of integrity, honesty, hard work.

Speaker 2 And when Michelle Obama wants a taste of home, we'll learn about the recipe that she craves. It's a southern dish and it's delicious.

Speaker 2 And I'm guessing that you're going to want to try it in your own kitchen. So stay with us for the recipes, for the kitchen wisdom, and for a whole lot of laughter.

Speaker 2 I am so glad that we get to do this.

Speaker 1 I know.

Speaker 2 So when I had the idea for this podcast, your dear friend, I shared the idea with you because I trust you so much. It was validating.

Speaker 1 Because it's a great idea.

Speaker 2 Everything starts at the kitchen table.

Speaker 1 Right there. Right there.
It's the heart of every home, the center of everyone's life. That kitchen table.
I wrote about it in The Light We Carry, developing that kitchen table.

Speaker 1 So I was right there with you.

Speaker 2 And I'm glad you're right there with me right now. Right here with me in this room.

Speaker 2 So tell me about your mama's kitchen on Euclid Avenue.

Speaker 2 What did that kitchen look like? Close your eyes and take me back there.

Speaker 1 Oh, 7436 South Euclid. Spent all of my life in that kitchen.
And just to describe the house, because it was a two-family house.

Speaker 1 We lived upstairs, the Robinsons, and our landlords were my great aunt Robbie and Uncle Terry.

Speaker 1 So they were right downstairs. They were right downstairs.
And I don't think initially the house was built to be a two-family home because it was so small.

Speaker 1 I think the upstairs was supposed to be the upstairs. So the kitchen is not really a kitchen.
It's sort of a makeshift kitchen. That's how small the apartment was.

Speaker 1 So to get up to our apartment, there was a side door and a very narrow staircase that led directly up to a small hallway.

Speaker 1 And right to the left was the kitchen, which was probably a bedroom at the time.

Speaker 2 Ah, and it had been converted.

Speaker 1 That had been converted. So it was tiny.

Speaker 1 just a small sink for mica sink that hard white you know resin resin right exactly little ridges on the side just a small little section where you could put the dish rack yes to let the water no dishwasher

Speaker 1 oh no no no dishwasher

Speaker 1 you and craig were the dishwasher we were the dishwashers there wasn't a lot of cabinet space because this was a bedroom so there was the sink i think there was a shelf over the sink where mom would put odds and ends like mercuriacomb you remember that medicine that you put on scar

Speaker 1 the red medicine but they put on everything exactly you know it's sort of like

Speaker 1 the dropper. I loved it.
It was sort of like a bird of a tusset, right? You put it on every injury. So that was sort of like a little medicine shelf.
So there was that shelf and just a sink.

Speaker 1 Then there was a little doorway, which probably was the closet of the bedroom that was turned into like a pantry.

Speaker 1 The refrigerator was in the closet because there was literally no room for it in the kitchen, which is how small this room was. So it was a jack leg kitchen, you know.

Speaker 2 But it made it, they made it work.

Speaker 1 It made it work, right?

Speaker 2 Did you eat in the kitchen or eat in the dining room?

Speaker 1 Oh, there was no dining room.

Speaker 1 Oh, a dining room. What was that? We had no dining room.
You had the kitchen. There was one table and it was probably a borrowed or used dining room table with four or five chairs around it.

Speaker 1 My mother put that plastic picnic table clothes.

Speaker 1 Did you just wipe off? And it was yellow, yellow checkered. But that was there my entire life.
So that tablecloth had a life of its own.

Speaker 1 Like you knew where the cigarette burns were that left the hole in one place.

Speaker 1 You could map out our childhood, the time you spilled Easter egg dye on that one spot, that blue ink wouldn't come out of it. That tablecloth was a little bit different.
If that tablecloth could talk.

Speaker 1 Right. The map of our lives.
And what would sit on the tablecloth was a napkin holder with paper napkins a salt and pepper shaker and it was on like a mat there was a clock on the wall

Speaker 1 and the framing of the entry door told a story because we'd measure ourselves along that you had the little marks on little markers of how tall we got the ledge my father used it as Craig started to become better at basketball to get him to jump higher.

Speaker 1 He would place coins or pennies on the ledge, and he could get the coin if he could jump high. Oh, there was a phone, one of those princess phones you hung on the wall.
With the long

Speaker 1 curly Q cord. Curly Q cord.
And the bathroom was right off of the kitchen. And the only way you could get privacy in my house was to take the phone.

Speaker 1 If you were on the phone as a teenager, take the phone and stretch that cord into the bathroom and close the door. So, I, I mean, this teeny tiny little room was where we we did everything.

Speaker 1 I mean, the thing I marvel at is how small our home was and how much we packed into the teeny tiny spaces that housed four people. We grew up there.
We became teenagers, adults.

Speaker 1 My brother became 6'3, then 6'4 and 6'5 in that small space. But it felt big.
to us because that's what kitchens do. You know, they can be small and big at at the same time.
We were poor.

Speaker 1 You know, when I described it, I was like, dag, we were poor. But poorly.

Speaker 2 That wasn't a word that you would have applied to yourself.

Speaker 1 Never. We were always very fortunate, we believed.
Fortunate, blessed.

Speaker 1 It's what we were. And we were, because we, we packed a lot into that house, into that kitchen.

Speaker 2 So tell me about the kind of table that your mother deliberately created, you know, partially with the food, but also with the other things that happened at that table.

Speaker 1 Because a whole lot of business happens at a kitchen table.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's a that's a good question.

Speaker 1 The table my mother created was a table of, I would say, high efficiency because so much happened at that little table. That was like the, the, the central operating systems place in the house.

Speaker 1 You baked bread, made pie crust, you did bills, you did your homework at that table, You filled out the trading stamps. You remember when you had

Speaker 1 a trading station?

Speaker 1 SNH. Right.
When you had collected them all, that became the central place where you would lick the stamps, put them in the books, and figure out what you could buy.

Speaker 2 I have not thought about that in so

Speaker 1 long.

Speaker 2 Those books with those little grids.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, we dyed Easter eggs there. It was a place of efficiency because my mom didn't have a lot of space to do her mom work, to pay bills.
All of that had to happen at that one table.

Speaker 1 And when I think about the fact that she got so much done, homework, overseeing things, laughter, visits happened at the kitchen table.

Speaker 2 So when people came to visit, that's where they would get because she's cooking.

Speaker 1 And if you had an uncle and cousins, everybody wanted to be there with her while she was frying chicken or getting something ready. So I don't care how many.
many people were there.

Speaker 1 We were all sitting around that kitchen table so we could be a part of the conversation. I played jacks on that floor.

Speaker 1 Our friend, my girlfriends from grammar school who walked home and had lunch at my house, we would have anywhere from seven to eight little girls there during lunch hour to eat our little bag lunches and then to play jacks on the floor.

Speaker 1 But the entire day, it felt like was spent in that room.

Speaker 2 In the kitchen. So if we could go back in time and someone marched into your family refrigerator and threw open the doors, what story would that refrigerator tell?

Speaker 1 Oh, it would probably tell the story of a working class family. And our stuff lasted a long time.

Speaker 1 You could open the refrigerator, but you couldn't just get what you wanted. You couldn't afford to just eat all of anything.
You know, you'd have a bag of Oreo cookies for like a month. Yeah, because

Speaker 2 two or three at a time.

Speaker 1 Two or three. I remember the time, this is when I thought my mother was magical.
I was asking for a pre-dinner snack, which was rare. And I was begging her.
I was like, I'm starving.

Speaker 1 Dinner is going to take forever. Can I just get an Oreo? And she said, Okay, you can get one Oreo.
She was in the living room unusually. So I went back into the kitchen.
I was like, She's not looking.

Speaker 1 I'm going to get two Oreos. So I ate one and then I came up with a one.

Speaker 1 And I sat there and I ate my one. And she said, I thought I told you to only get one.

Speaker 1 I was like, how did you know? She said, because you have two Oreo breaths.

Speaker 1 I was like, whoa.

Speaker 2 She had eyes in the back of her head. She's a witch.

Speaker 1 She probably heard you in the package. She probably, you know, I probably took longer than I thought.
I would, you know, kiss her. But she just knew also, no child is going to take a long time.

Speaker 1 What child takes just one Oreo. I don't want to.
I did from then on.

Speaker 2 There's another thing that often happened in kitchens like ours when we were little, and that's hair. Saturday night for so many little black girls was the night we got our hair done.

Speaker 2 Our mothers would sit us down at the kitchen sink to wash our hair, condition it, and comb it out.

Speaker 2 And because black girls have a head full of curly, kinky, fuzzy, coily reach for the sky hair, that meant the whole ordeal could take hours when our hair was braided, plaited, and straightened, or curled.

Speaker 2 There was a whole lot of fidgeting, ooh, a whole lot of fidgeting, and often a few tears.

Speaker 2 Now, we sure looked cute when it was all done, but woo, what we had to go through at the kitchen sink, it was a ritual that frankly brings up all kinds of complex memories for a whole lot of brown women of a certain age.

Speaker 2 Was your mother a kitchen beautician?

Speaker 1 Oh, she was. She was.
And it was so painful. We just, there was sort of the battle with hair.
Were you tenderheaded? I had so much hair. it was just a lot of it, and it took hours to comb through it.

Speaker 1 And, you know, and then it just was, it was not a comfortable place for Mike a sink. So I would lay on one edge of it, and your head would be hitting the back of it.

Speaker 1 And you'd have a just talking about it. I can feel that.

Speaker 1 Oh, God, it would just hurt. And you couldn't squirm.
And you were just, you know, it took forever because it was just sink water, right? It wasn't some gushing hair spray pressure.

Speaker 1 It wasn't a pry pressure. So it would take forever to get the hair wet enough to get the soap in there.
And it was a well of balsam that stung your eyes.

Speaker 1 Oh, man. Hair doing day was just, my father would leave the room.
Craig, nobody wanted to be back there with the two of us while I was fighting and crying and mad, and she was mad.

Speaker 1 And then they had the hot comb on the stove.

Speaker 2 You know, people may be listening to this and wondering, what is a hot comb?

Speaker 1 So a hot comb was a wooden-handled metal comb that you would heat up, usually by fire, and it would straighten

Speaker 2 with a little grease.

Speaker 1 And the combination of the hair grease and the warmth would be like you would literally be ironing your hair out straight, which is the pain of trying to follow somebody else's notion of beauty.

Speaker 1 Because our hair is beautifully curly and magical in that way. But, you know, if you raised in America, you were trying to tame it.

Speaker 1 You were trying to tame it and turn it into something that it wasn't, which required huge amounts of heat and grease to make it happen.

Speaker 1 And you would be pulling on every strand of hair to get it as straight as possible so that it would blow in the wind

Speaker 1 and fluff about. And that took hours.
My mother quickly sent me to the neighbor lady who had the beautician shop in her basement.

Speaker 1 She was a, was across the alley from us.

Speaker 1 And the minute my mother found out that, oh, Miss Phillips, that Miss Phillips did hair, I think if I was five years old, she sent me across the alley with a little wad of money and said, let's miss Phillips do it.

Speaker 1 So I started going to the hairdresser when I was five, six years old, just to stop that battle between me and my mother. But yes, the kitchen was my first beauty salon.

Speaker 2 We also had in our neighborhood a basement beautician that we used to go to and she could do in maybe hour, 45 minutes, but would take like days. Three hours, you know, for my mom.

Speaker 1 We were all grateful for Miss Phillips.

Speaker 2 Tell me what dinner was like, like an average Tuesday night dinner in the Robinson household.

Speaker 1 Dinner was

Speaker 1 dinner was an expectation. I want to say that because when I hear about people who don't eat dinner together, I can't envision that.
I can't envision.

Speaker 2 When people are too busy to all sit down

Speaker 1 where everybody, one person eats at one time. Some people stand up eating.
Oh, you would never be allowed to stand up and eat.

Speaker 1 You had to sit at the table and our little poor table, but there was a process. There was a ritual of dinner time.

Speaker 2 Same time every night?

Speaker 1 About same time. The only time we change stuff up, because my father works shifts, right?

Speaker 1 So if he was in a shift where we might have to eat a little earlier to eat with him, otherwise we didn't eat with him, but we had dinner at the same time. And we all four of us sat together.

Speaker 1 We'd say our prayer. God is great.
God is good. Or, you know, sometimes the prayer would change, but we would always bow our heads and say a prayer.

Speaker 1 My mom never considered herself a good cook because she grew up in a big family with lots of sisters and everybody had a set of chores. She was always the cleaner.

Speaker 1 She had other sisters who cooked, but she could cook, but she was a Betty Crocker cookbook cook.

Speaker 2 Okay, tell me what that means.

Speaker 1 That big conditioner betty crocker cook she cooked from recipes and she was less throw a little bit here a dash of there she operated off of recipes and i think her ideas of meals came from there so meatloaf and mashed meatloaf roast beef with rice and gravy spaghetti and meatballs when she felt fun and free and italian you know that was that was our notion of traveling the world when we had spaghetti and meatballs right with that with that parmesan that you had oh yeah the shaken parmesan that Was that parmesan?

Speaker 1 No, I don't know.

Speaker 1 We're not going to denigrate

Speaker 1 a particular corporate meat.

Speaker 2 It did have an interesting consistency now that we had real parmesan.

Speaker 1 You know, that that's not what parmesan is like at all. Um, oh, you also had some kind of Tabasco sauce because my dad liked hot sauce.
Did your dad cook?

Speaker 2 Did Frasier Robinson cook?

Speaker 1 Occasionally. He cooked like a lot of men because my husband is the same way.
He can cook, but how many times does he cook? Not much, but yes, my father. Mr.
Obama cooks. Oh, yeah, yes.

Speaker 1 He, yeah, shoot. Anybody who can read and has sense and taste buds can cook.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Follow a recipe, you can cook. So for all the men out there who swear they can't cook, if you can read, you can cook.

Speaker 2 And they usually cook when fire is involved.

Speaker 1 You're like some pulling something up or something. Barack had recipes, and my father did too.

Speaker 1 He made this wonderful peppered steak because he also, because he went to the army, I think for a period of time, he learned how to cook some things in the army.

Speaker 1 He made a really beautiful apple pie, homemade apple pie. And I don't know why that was.

Speaker 2 You're a pie person to this time.

Speaker 1 I am a pie person, and my dad made this wonderful deep dish pie. He would make his own crust, but he didn't cook often because he was the primary breadwinner and he was a shift worker.

Speaker 1 But when he cooked, it was special.

Speaker 2 And we all gathered around to watch dad peel the apples and make his little you know concoction to make the apple sweet it was a very special thing when dad cooked when i would visit chicago there was i i noticed among my aunts and uncles that lived in chicago that there was almost like an underground culinary economy they wouldn't call it a culinary it's a word that they would not use but there was a sort of kitchen economy where people were doing things out of their kitchen yeah as currency almost because maybe they couldn't pay someone, but they could send over a pie or send over a cake.

Speaker 2 You would say thank you with something from the kitchen. Did you ever see that in your own neighborhood?

Speaker 1 You know, yes, but what I remember with every meal, it seemed like there was this big leftover tradition, takeaway tradition, because you had to cook enough, but then everybody had to get a plate.

Speaker 1 right afterwards and getting the plate just seemed like it was such a big deal right no no, not that plate. Get your plate.

Speaker 1 And did you get a plate? And you get in trouble if you didn't get a plate because, well, how am I going to keep it? We have too many ribs. Did everybody get a plate?

Speaker 1 And then the aluminum foil would come out, right? Yes. And the paper plate.

Speaker 1 You know, and there would be the chow line to make your leftover plate. But it was such a big deal.
And I think people felt like, I cooked all this food and we can't waste it.

Speaker 2 And it was also a sign of respect.

Speaker 1 It was definitely a sign of respect because if you didn't take

Speaker 1 somebody's potato salad and some aunts you didn't want their

Speaker 1 you know their takeaway yeah we have one aunt carolyn may she rest in peace but all my cousins if they hear this will understand whatever she cooked we were very disappointed oh no because aunt carolyn who never had kids my mom's oldest sister and she lived with my grandfather which was even more annoying because my grandfather was an amazing cook southside southside was known to cook throughout the day.

Speaker 2 You know, if your name is Southside, of course, you're a good cook. He was just that.

Speaker 1 He's a jazz listener. He was the grandfather when the house was filled with music and he was always cooking.
Barbecue up some ribs.

Speaker 1 But if you stayed and played cards long enough, he might just go in and back and fry some chicken wings and make some milkshakes as like a midnight snack. So that's who Southside was, right?

Speaker 1 So if you went over to Southside's house and Carolyn had cooked, the kids would just, all the kids would be like, no.

Speaker 1 We're in a podcast, so people can't see what you did with your head, but you just like, just roll your head. It's like, no, not Carolyn.

Speaker 1 And your mom would be like, shh, don't say anything. You know, don't be rude.
One day we were over there.

Speaker 1 The cousins, we still talk about this. You know what she made? Liver and onions.
For

Speaker 1 a family meal.

Speaker 2 I mean, that's what you make.

Speaker 1 That's the punishment dinner. Yeah, right.
That's not what dinner company. That's the dinner that you don't.
You walk home from school and you can smell it and it's like liver.

Speaker 1 Right. Carolyn made liver.
So I actually like liver and onions, but I did. I did not.

Speaker 1 You were a rare child.

Speaker 2 But you got to cook it or otherwise like she loved.

Speaker 1 No child in our family like liver, right? It's not what you went to Southside's house for.

Speaker 1 So yes, we never took her leftovers and you would be insulted not to take home, who's going to take home liver and onions? We'd be like, mom, do not get leftovers because we are not eating this again.

Speaker 1 So, our currency was

Speaker 1 shared food, right? And that is an act of love.

Speaker 2 Let me take a plate.

Speaker 1 Yes, indeed.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and there was always a little plate for somebody who couldn't come, too elderly, you know, too infirm. So, make sure to send a plate home to

Speaker 1 yeah, we couldn't loan people money, you know. You, you

Speaker 1 know, food is love, acts of kindness because you couldn't afford anything else. So, yes, that was our neighborhood, our family.

Speaker 2 It was all about the food, for sure.

Speaker 2 Stay with us for more of my conversation with Michelle Obama. That's coming up after this short break.

Speaker 2 And now it's time to share our Maker's Mark custom cocktail recipe inspired by today's guest. former First Lady Michelle Obama.
This special segment is presented by Maker's

Speaker 2 During my conversation with Michelle Obama, I was really taken by what she said about how the kitchen can be small but big at the same time.

Speaker 2 Her mama's kitchen on the south side of Chicago was a tiny makeshift space, yet it worked. No matter the size or complexity, the kitchen table can hold a great weight in our lives.

Speaker 2 And the same thing holds true for cocktails. It doesn't take a lot of extravagant or splashy ingredients to make a great tasting cocktail.

Speaker 2 All you really need is a few things you probably already have and a great bourbon.

Speaker 2 This inspired recipe has simple ingredients but still packs a lot of flavor. It even leaves you with a delightful bit of fizz and who doesn't love a cocktail with a little fizz?

Speaker 2 That's why we're calling it the bourbon fizz.

Speaker 2 Now let's get to the good stuff, the ingredients.

Speaker 2 To make this recipe you will need two parts maker's mark bourbon, three to four fresh mint leaves, preferably still on the stem, one part fresh lemon juice, one half part simple syrup, that's a one to one ratio of sugar and water, two parts sparkling water, some ice cubes, a lemon will, and a sprig of mint for garnish.

Speaker 2 You always have to have that garnish. Now the instructions.
In a cocktail shaker, gently muddle the fresh mint leaves to help release their flavors. Not too much, just enough so you get that aroma.

Speaker 2 Add Maker's Mark bourbon, always maker's mark, fresh lemon juice, and simple syrup to the shaker. Fill the shaker with ice cubes and shake vigorously until the whole thing is thoroughly chilled.

Speaker 2 Strain the mixture into a glass that's already filled with ice. Top off the glass with sparkling water to add a refreshing splash of fizz.

Speaker 2 and then garnish with fresh mint and a lemon wheel for some extra flair. There you have it, the bourbon fizz.
Raise a glass to toast today's guest with this simple yet delicious drink.

Speaker 2 And thank you so much to Makersmark for sponsoring this custom cocktail recipe produced by ACAS Creative. Makers Mark is the perfect full-flavored bourbon to use in this recipe.

Speaker 2 The taste is sweet with a balance of oak, vanilla, and fruity essences. You could feel that spice mixing along with the sweeter flavors.
It pairs extremely well with all the other ingredients.

Speaker 2 Hope you'll enjoy it. Makers Mark makes their bourbon carefully, so please enjoy it that way.
Makers Mark Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, 45% alcohol by volume.

Speaker 2 Copyright 2023, Maker's Mark Distillery Incorporated, Loretto, Kentucky.

Speaker 2 If you'd like to make this recipe yourself, and I hope you do, check out my Instagram at Michelle underscore underscore Norris to get the full breakdown. That's two underscores.

Speaker 2 That's Michelle, M-I-C-H-E-L-E underscore, underscore, Norris, N-O-R-R-I-S.

Speaker 2 We grew up in an interesting era where there was a collision of cultures. The women's movement

Speaker 2 was really starting to explode.

Speaker 2 when we were in junior high and high school.

Speaker 2 And I've always wondered what that meant for a generation of women

Speaker 2 who were conditioned with certain expectations in life. And then suddenly a generation right behind them was coming up and saying, we can be more.

Speaker 2 And what wasn't said, but somehow was maybe implied is you should be wanting more too.

Speaker 2 And I wonder if that debate found its way into

Speaker 2 your household at all. And do you remember that at at all?

Speaker 1 You know, it's interesting because it's sort of yes and no.

Speaker 1 The no part is because,

Speaker 1 like a lot of black households, the women were the matriarch earners. My father's generation, he was the breadwinner in our family.
He had a steady city job.

Speaker 1 My mother stayed home until we went to high school. She was a housewife, but that was unusual because every other woman in my life, aunts, grandmothers, everybody worked.

Speaker 1 My great-grandmother, my mother's grandmother was the primary breadwinner. And they were working out of necessity.
They worked out of necessity.

Speaker 2 Not because of self-actualization. Right.

Speaker 1 And also because men couldn't be guaranteed steady work. Unions kept them out of trades, jobs.

Speaker 1 it was rare that they could earn a regular enough income to support a family. So every woman I knew in my family worked.
So there was that kind of, well, what are we fighting for?

Speaker 1 We're already on the job doing it all. There wasn't a conversation of more.
The conversation was, how do we make sure our men can get something, right?

Speaker 1 But generationally, the aunts that I was closest to, who is my father's youngest sister, she was only 10 years older than me, right?

Speaker 1 But I was very close to her, and she was one of the first people I knew that went to college. She definitely, at the kitchen table, I would see the battles between my aunt and her mother.

Speaker 2 And it was generational.

Speaker 1 Generational. You know, my aunt, she was of the movement on all different fronts, how you wore your hair.
She was the first woman in our family to wear her hair in a big afro. She went to college.

Speaker 1 She studied African dance and she brought new ideas and she was more critical of her mother's way of being, which was more traditional.

Speaker 1 But my grandmother would go to work and then she would come home and start making dinner. Second shift.
Second shift.

Speaker 1 My aunt used to bristle at that, bristle at what she probably perceived as a subservient way of being to her father, my grandfather. She would challenge the system in ways.

Speaker 1 She was frustrated by her mother and her sort of backwards ways.

Speaker 1 She would come to our dinner table where my mother was more of her contemporary. And there would be the discussions about what she was frustrated with in her household versus what she saw for herself.

Speaker 1 So I guess that's the long way of saying, yes, those conversations started to happen around the kitchen table. But I didn't have to have those conversations with my mother.

Speaker 1 You know, being a woman means you do it all. You're going to to cook and clean.

Speaker 2 But that do-it-all thing is interesting because when we were young, that was still the message. Yes.
Women should go to the workplace. They should

Speaker 2 climb the corporate ladder. They should get jobs that were normally reserved for men.

Speaker 1 And then they should come home and take care of the family.

Speaker 2 Also, it was this sort of, you have to have it all.

Speaker 1 And do you remember Anjali? Yes.

Speaker 1 That perfume. That perfume.

Speaker 1 Oh, you just. That's where the song came from.

Speaker 1 Because I know that. I didn't know the song other than that commercial.

Speaker 2 Was that song made for that commercial or was that actually

Speaker 1 a pan and never let him? Never let them know. Never let him forget.

Speaker 1 Because I'm a woman by Jolie.

Speaker 1 It's stupid. I hated that ad.

Speaker 2 I hate that ad. I've actually played with trying to go back and figure out who's the ad company that created that ad.
In my mind, it was a bunch of men who came up with it.

Speaker 2 Because remember the woman, she was all dressed, all sexy and everything, and taking off her clothes and doing all this. And I thought, that's a bill of goods.

Speaker 2 They were just trying to hold on to the idea that woman would still cook in the kitchen and bring home she was also earning and bringing home a picture.

Speaker 1 Well, we, you know, we're not beyond those arguments, you know, those challenges with gender roles. We still struggle with when women say, I want to have it all.

Speaker 1 It's still the remnants of that. What does having it all mean? Because you can't have it all, nor should that ever be a goal.

Speaker 1 But I think it's still the fragments of that falsehood that was sold to us.

Speaker 2 Breakfast. Were you a big breakfast family?

Speaker 1 Me, Michelle, was not. Everybody else was.
They thought I was

Speaker 1 vegan's breakfast. I was kind of a picky eater.
I didn't like any breakfast, anything. And my

Speaker 1 brother, who ate everything all the time, thought I was crazy. We had big breakfasts because my brother, he's a growing athlete.

Speaker 1 So it was everything.

Speaker 1 Cereal followed by scrambled or fried eggs, followed by lots of toast and bacon and lynx sausage, but every now and then we'd get the patty sausage. So breakfast was big.

Speaker 1 You know, I was at a time, my mother tried to force me to eat breakfast, but I was really stubborn. I didn't like bacon.
I hated eggs. I only started liking eggs.

Speaker 1 I didn't like bacon, sausage, all of the breakfast food. So what did I eat? Peanut butter and jelly every morning until I went to college.

Speaker 1 Really? That was your goal? That was my go-to.

Speaker 2 Was that out of protest? I'm just not going to eat with y'all.

Speaker 1 That's what I was

Speaker 1 that much. And then my mom, I really liked peanut butter and jelly.

Speaker 1 It was sort of a compromise that I made with my mother because I thought, well, it's got peanuts, protein, a little bit of oil, nothing's wrong with bread.

Speaker 1 If we're having toast, why can't I have it in a sandwich form and jelly? Everybody was having jelly on their toast. Let me just put it on my peanut butter.
She gave up.

Speaker 1 And I literally ate peanut butter and jelly every morning for most of my life, literally until I was in college. That's when I sort of started liking eggs.

Speaker 1 So that's what I mean by everybody else in the whole household, on the whole planet, loved breakfast food except for Michelle Robinson. So I despise breakfast.

Speaker 1 I, it was just, but you like breakfast now. Oh, yeah.
I'm big into all of it now. Oh, give me eggs, Benedict, any eggs, anyway, but peanut butter and jelly until I was into my 20s.

Speaker 2 Do you still sneak off and have a peanut butter?

Speaker 1 I do not, Jay. Sometimes I am not OD'd on it.
I don't, I don't do it. I don't drink anymore.

Speaker 1 And if I sit here and think about it, I think, yeah, that would be nice, but don't keep it around because also Malia was allergic to peanuts.

Speaker 2 So there was no peanuts in the house.

Speaker 1 tested the theory. We didn't believe she was really allergic because the babysitter saw her have the allergic reaction.

Speaker 1 So my worst parenting move is when I decided on my own that she really wasn't allergic because I didn't, nobody in our family was allergic to peanuts. Barack and I together forced her to test it out.

Speaker 1 And she was like, she was maybe three.

Speaker 1 And she was like, no, mom, I really don't think. I was like, nah, come on, kid.
It's just peanut butter. And we made her try a big spoonful.
Luckily, her allergic reaction was digestive.

Speaker 1 Oh, she, so she didn't break our knives or have an anaphylaxis. She just threw up right on me,

Speaker 1 which was, thank God.

Speaker 1 And Barack and I looked at ourselves with our peanut butter, going, Oh, well, we shouldn't have done that.

Speaker 2 You just admitted that in front of a microphone.

Speaker 1 I did, you know, we did. We force-fed her peanut butter

Speaker 1 until she threw up, and she was like, Yeah, I'm allergic. All right.
So, so from then on, we stopped having peanut butter in our house. I haven't had peanut butter in a while.

Speaker 2 One of the best things about this journey that I'm about to go on with all of you in this podcast, Your Mama's Kitchen, is what we are going to hear next.

Speaker 2 Every week, I will ask guests to share a recipe or a technique or something special that comes from or is inspired by their mama's kitchen or the food they grew up with.

Speaker 2 These recipes will cover a full array of flavors, sweet, salty, fatty, healthy, decadent, and everything in between.

Speaker 2 Because Michelle Obama is so generous, she shared two things that take her down memory lane.

Speaker 1 So when I go home, if I ask my mom to cook anything, there are a couple of things that taste like home. Her homemade cakes, because she used to bake us our birthday cakes each year.

Speaker 2 And she did that even in the White House.

Speaker 1 She tried to, but she felt like the ovens weren't right. Oh.
And there's something different about a homemade cake. Like we lived in the White House, pastry chefs, Susie, lover, still the best.

Speaker 1 But there's something about professional cakes that are too dense. They're too solid.
They're too perfect. A homemade cake is moist

Speaker 1 and it's looser, right? The cake itself, it's just,

Speaker 1 and it's got a crustiness on top. The imperfection of it is what makes it good.

Speaker 1 Just around the edge. Yeah, yeah.
That was my mom's cakes. And she did chocolate for me, of course.
I am a devotee to chocolate, red velvet for my brother.

Speaker 1 So, getting her to do a homemade cake, that's one. And then, one dish that feels very much like home, which was a hand-me-down recipe from our South Carolina elders who were great cookers.

Speaker 1 And my father's mother learned how to cook this dish, and my father loved it so much. My grandmother taught my mother.
And it's something called red rice. Red rice.

Speaker 1 Red rice is a rice that is steeped in tomato sauce, not runny, but where the tomato mixture soaks it up, right? So that the white rice becomes red.

Speaker 1 Then in that, you add bacon, a spicy kind of sausage, and shrimp, but it's not Creole. It's really just

Speaker 1 like a jambalaya. It's not a jambalaya, and it's drier, but it's so flavorful.

Speaker 1 And it tastes great hot, or it's a great picnic kind of rice where you can serve it cold or warm, and it tastes better over time. The longer it's set in the refrigerator, the better it tastes.

Speaker 1 So, it's the kind of rice when it's in there, you come and get a scoop, even when it's cold. You don't even want to warm it up.
You just go back and eat it.

Speaker 1 Red rice feels like home, and it feels like big home, like way back home, like the southern part of home for us. That's delicious.
Sausage sliced, or is it the patty sausage?

Speaker 1 All of it cut up into bits.

Speaker 1 So, you get little chunks of it, different sizes you know so it's sort of crumbled by hand not cut too fine not like a like a jambalaya you usually get a disc like a link sausage no this is a patty okay more of a spicy patty now i'm not sure how much of my mother's recipe is a take on the original but this was how my mom cooked it okay and when i go home I'm either going to ask her for a cake or red rice.

Speaker 1 Red rice.

Speaker 2 All right, now I'm going to figure out how to make this red rice. Next time you come over, I'm going to serve it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we'll share the recipe. Okay.
That's home for me.

Speaker 2 We have spent a delicious bit of time talking about your kitchen. How has it influenced you? Oh,

Speaker 2 wow. Michelle Obama that we know now, the forever first lady, how is she influenced by all the things that she saw and experienced in that little old kitchen on Euclid Avenue?

Speaker 1 Well, all of it happened there.

Speaker 1 Because the tools that I have for getting through that keep me upright, that have gotten me through a really interesting life journey that I could have never expected, that led me out of the South Side into some of the finest universities that I never thought I could compete in, let alone thrive in, led me through a career in law, through a career in nonprofits.

Speaker 1 helped me become the mother that I am, and gave me the resilience to stand by the first black president and try to be an equally impactful first lady.

Speaker 1 All of that, it was imparted around that little table with that yellow checkered board plastic tablecloth as my mom did dishes on that formica sink and talked to us little girls as we played jacks on that pinoleum floor.

Speaker 1 The conversations around my household about fairness and honesty and how to be a person in this world, how to treat others, the compassion, that that all happened around the table, either by spoken word or story or just watching my father pay the bills every week at that table.

Speaker 1 The humor that I have, my ability to tell stories and laugh at myself and laugh at the world, it happened at that table. Those stories happen there in that little bitty kitchen.

Speaker 1 And that's one of the reasons why I tell parents. Today, when they think about how do you raise

Speaker 1 a whole human being, I remind them that it has nothing to do with stuff.

Speaker 1 It doesn't have anything to do with the size of the house or the depth of the kitchen counter or whether you have the right kind of stove or oven. We had none of it.
We had so little.

Speaker 1 The stuff wasn't it. It was the quality of the love in the space.
And I still believe that that's true. And we have lived in some of the grandest homes that you can see.

Speaker 1 But when I think about what I want to teach my girls, it reverts back to those messages I got in that little bitty kitchen.

Speaker 1 That was the power of my parents' love, that consistency, the quality of the interactions. That's what it means to be a parent.
That's how you instill something worthwhile for your kids. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's what my kitchen table, my kitchen was for me.

Speaker 2 I can see how much that means to you and how much it still lives inside you.

Speaker 1 For sure.

Speaker 2 I have loved talking to you.

Speaker 2 I always love talking to you.

Speaker 2 I've loved talking to you about this in particular. I think there have been a lot of life lessons here today.

Speaker 1 I think it's an important question. It's such a valuable way to reflect on one's life.
This is start at that kitchen table.

Speaker 2 It's kind of a rear view mirror. We're looking backwards so we can figure out how to order our steps now.
Amen. And the kitchen table is an important space in our lives today.

Speaker 1 Thanks for sitting down with me. Thanks Thanks for having me, babe.

Speaker 2 Kitchens really do bring us so much more than just meals. The Robinson family's itty-bitty Chicago kitchen is a great example of that.

Speaker 2 There was plenty of food, but the most important items on the menu weren't the kinds of things that you find at the farmer's market or the grocery store.

Speaker 2 Unconditional love, honesty, loyalty, integrity, and the kind of laughter you feel deep down down in your soul.

Speaker 2 We all know a little bit more about how Michelle Obama turned out to be such a special person now that we've learned about life inside her mama's kitchen.

Speaker 2 And best of all, we all get to share a little bit of Marion Robinson's brand of home cooked love.

Speaker 2 You'll find a link to a recipe for the red rice Michelle Obama craves when she wants a taste of home on our show page and on my Instagram account. We hope you decide to try it out in your kitchen.

Speaker 2 And when you do, we want to hear about it.

Speaker 2 Share your pictures, your feedback, your own family spin on red rice, or your thoughts on this special conversation and messages about the importance of building a supportive kitchen table in your own life.

Speaker 2 Now remember, use the hashtag your mama's kitchen on Instagram or wherever you post. We'd love to see all of it.
Thanks so much for being with us as we launch this new show.

Speaker 2 We've got so much more in store for you in coming weeks, including conversations with Gail King, Andy Garcia, D. Nice, W.

Speaker 2 Kamal Bell, Harry Kondabolu, Abby Wombach, and Glennon Doyle, and Carrie Washington. Those are just the start.
We hope you'll make your mama's kitchen a part of your regular podcast diet.

Speaker 2 We are dedicating this episode to the life and beautiful legacy of Tafari Campbell. We will miss you.
We'll miss your food. We'll miss your smile.

Speaker 2 And this week's special thanks go to Clean Cuts in Washington, D.C. Phil DeRosa and Anthony Esposito with TPS Audio on Martha's Vineyard.
Phil's looking at me right now as I'm reading this.

Speaker 2 Crystal Carson and Melissa Winter, Melissa Bear with Say What Media, and Good Ear Music Supervision for their help in getting us the music you will hear at the end of these episodes.

Speaker 2 That's 504 by the Soul Rebels. Love it.
Okay, that's it for now. I'm Michelle Norris.
Come back next week to see what we're serving up. Until then, be bountiful.

Speaker 3 This has been a Higher Ground and Audible Original, produced by Higher Ground Studios. Producers for Your Mama's Kitchen are Natalie Rin and Sonia Tun.

Speaker 3 Sound design and engineering from Andrew Epen and Roy Baum.

Speaker 3 Production support from Angel Carreras and Julia Murray. Higher Ground Audio's editorial assistants are Jenna Levin and Camila Thurticus.

Speaker 3 Executive producers for Higher Ground are Nick White, Moop DeMohan, Dan Fearman, and Michelle Norris. Executive producers for Audible are Zola Mashariki, Nick D'Angelo, and Anne Hepperman.

Speaker 3 The show's closing song is 504 by the Soul Rebels. Special thanks to Joe Paulson, Melissa Bear, and Angela Paluso.
Head of Audible Studios, Zola Mashariki. Chief Content Officer, Rachel Giatza.

Speaker 3 Copyright 2023 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC. Sound recording copyright 2023 by Higher Ground Audio LLC

Speaker 3 Higher Ground