Something Sweet Added To Sorrow
In August 2017, I was asked to participate in the Inglewood Harvest Barn Sweet Potato Cook-Off. At this difficult time in my life, my mother was ill and receiving at-home hospice care. The day before the cook-off, I had to put down the family dog, Buddy. It was a devasted drive home for me from the veterinarian's office. The last time I cried so hard was when I was in kindergarten. My mother was heartbroken when I told her the news about Buddy, and I was in no frame of mind to come up with a recipe and bake five dozen sweet potato cookies.
I don’t know how I did it, but I baked cookies that night as I was suffering from grief and depression. The next day, my sweet niece, Rowan came over and we loaded the cookies in my mom’s van and headed to the cook-off. On our way to Inglewood Planation, I looked over to Rowan and said, “I don’t feel I can take any more sadness in my life”. She smiled and replied, “We’ve got this.” It took everything I had that day to smile and interact with people as well as the other cooks in the competition. As Rowan and I were walking to the van to head back to my mother’s house, they were announcing the winners.
When we got back home to check on my mom, she was in bed crying about the loss of Buddy. She asked how the cook-off went and Rowan said, “Uncle Dave won”. “Who would think a sweet potato in one of your Uncle Dave’s odd recipes would bring us good news in a time of total hell,” replied my mom. All three of us laughed.
My award-winning Sweet Potato Cookie recipe can be found in my upcoming cookbook, ‘A Box and a Bottle’.
Cheers to odd cookies and laughter!
- David
Click here to read the brief article on my win from August 2017.
