Grimoire: Coven

Wandering for decades

Through the murky bogs of normality

Yearning, keening, comparing

Kicking, screaming, wailing

Reducing, rebelling

To find my place in it all

Somehow I’ve arrived

At the Order of The Zig Zag Path

Wolf-like, growling

Strange wings, cawing

Occasional hands

Have dared touch my flesh

Steering, holding, guiding

The realness of them, shocking

They lift me

Then

They are gone

Loosely, we are networked

By a fine, gossamer thread

A webbing, worldwide

A simple tug (I have to ask)

Will bring these hands

To mine in times of need

Many years I’ve travelled

And lines of insanity I’ve toed

Wandering far from this web

Withering, dissolving, slobbering

Blade in hand, at the ready

When always, they are there

It’s taken half a century

To see

That without this web

That without this

Coven

I would never have made it

As odd birds cannot fly to safety

Alone

There is always a wind

There is always a strange rising that guides them

There is always

Another

Without this,

Chilling winters

Turn beating hearts to stone

We need bodies

We need circling

We need

Support

Especially those called

To walk the edges

To take study in risky hedges

To turn the different Way

We need

Coven

Coven may sound

Like some fantastical irrational

Dreaming

And in part, we are

But this webbing also includes

The real rays of diagnostic

The trained elders guiding mind

The white walls of safe places

When blood may come

From our own hands

These too

Are Coven

For those who have been called to

(Most likely kicking and screaming)

The Order of The Zig Zag Path

Cannot do this

Alone

We have both rational, hard structure

And spirit guided deep wildness

To weave as we navigate the road

Where nothing is normal

Where pain cannot be dissected and removed

Where reoccurring trials of the flesh

Are seen as lessons, and gods, and great

Rootlets winding through ancient futures

This

Without Coven

The mind, in the stew of normality

Will be torn, reduced, tamed

Confused, anesthetized

Until our wild eyes and hearts

That know The Way

Expire in the freezing snow

Odd birds cannot fly to safety

Alone

There is always a wind

There is always a strange rising that guides them

There is always

Another

Without this,

This Coven

Mass hysterical illusions

Those chilling winters

Will

Turn our beating hearts

To stone

Find the webbing, dear one

Tug it

Let yourself

Be held

And diagnosed

And nurtured

And guided

And re-membered

And dissolved

By the straight numbers and the tests

Keeping your shining organs alive

And by the very, very strange ones

The ones you know

Let yourself land here

In Coven

Not

Alone

Featured

A Legacy of Silence

I remember the day clearly

Sunlight gleaming off lapping blue crests

The squeaking of tattered wooden pier

The aggressive cries of gulls circling above

We’d stopped for a breath

Leaning against a wobbly rail

And like it was the latest ache or pain

She told me

About her rape

The night of the house

The temperature of the air

The terror

And the knife

Against her smooth twenty-something neckskin

The shock

From one she thought she knew

On military break, and soon to depart

How he left her there, weeping

The timeline’s a bit hazy

But I’d say she was about sixty-five

I’ve never told anyone until now

Those words, they hit me like lightning

Looking into her eyes

After years of my own intensive therapy

I wondered how she’d carried this

For so long

This wasn’t her first reveal

There’d been one other

It was delivered as we sat on a starched striped blanket

Our shifting, squeaking, in the quiet room

In my voluntary psych ward home

I tried to kill myself with pills

She said

Nothing, but this

Except for the unspecific screams

She’d hurl regularly into my childhood cell

And her wails of wretched body pains

These

Were the only clues

To the mystery I was always trying to unfold

Even sifting through her belongings

After her death

I thought I’d find out more

I searched her sacred daily planner

I thought for sure

The daily cigarette and gin-laced writings

Would open new vistas

I sat, hungry and heart beating

Turning those pages

Hoping, desperate to know her

They won’t keep her from me!

Angry.

That, I swear

Was all.

She’d left only a handful of single words

Over the decades of daily financial scribbles

And unless she somehow knew she was going to die

And uncharacteristically danced wild,

Her impassioned deep confessionals

Burning in the sunset sands of some secret beach

I’d have to just accept

I’d just have to let go

And realize

I’d never really know her

And that perhaps

She’d never known her Self

It’s taken me decades to come to terms

With my mother, here inside me

And lately, as I wrestle

With this great unexplained torture unfolding within

With the memories and violations

And strange symptoms revealing

Slowly…like she did

That I realize the pattern

The pull to conceal, run, hide

Anything to prevent a generations-old shame

Its threats to destroy me

I recognize the ripples, mirroring

And how it’s me, seeing

And how it’s me, writing

And how it’s me, screaming

And how it’s me, starving

And how it’s me, crying

And how it’s me, sharing

And how I think…

In this strange visceral way…

I do know her…

And how it’s me

Putting words to these shadows

Extending my hand, to you

And how it’s me, and her

Who can only break

This legacy

Of silence

Sacrifices: Eating With The Dead

The heaviness is here

Weighty lump in throat

I risked it

For the ancestors

Opened the grimoire

Revealing today’s assignment

Eating with the dead

My dreaded Book of Shadows

First, scouring the aisles

Finding perfection to match them

Settling for enough

To avoid familiar choice overwhelm

Second, scouring the picturebooks

Sadness and memory emerge

Turning pages

I find their faces

Years before the beatings

Third, setting the altar

Lighting candles, preparing plates

Roasting garlic wafting through

Arranging the items

Setting them there

Fourth, turning on music

At first a thirties Benny

And then back, way back

To weaving voices and clinking water jugs

Poland

Finally: eating

Noticing excitement

For reason to break routine

Over and over the same

The typical fare

But this time, new delights

Await

Welcoming the dead

I pick up the knife and smear

Chunky pimento cheese matter

Onto cracker and lift

Teeth pierce through cold substance

Breaking through crisp leavened wafer

And chewing begins

Pimply cold cornichons

Rolling in between finger

Burst through skin and onto tongue

And stomach turns

Still, I continue

Cornbread, toasting

Perhaps it will settle

Roiling and rumbling

All kinds of voices

Black chanting obstacles

Back and forth in hand

Hot breadstuff matter

Lifted to nose

A sweet smell

Will it save me?

Billowy, corn laced

Cake onto tongue

And chewing seems to soothe

Swallowing with no idea

Of the later effect “too much”

Will unfold

Thanking, thanking

These dead, beloved ancestors

Ones who inspired palm reading

And ones who left grand story

Ones who kept going

Despite the crumbling world soul around them

Thanking, thanking

And risking

Perhaps, this time, it will be okay

Perhaps, this time, eating “freely” won’t hurt

Perhaps, this time, the ancestors will spare

Later, the wishing is wrong

Later, the stomach is roiling

Later, the anxiety peaks

And the fullness haunts

The scrambling and unexplainable terror

Comes over once more

But this practice

The ones for the dead

Is one I’ve committed

And every so often

I risk

Candle flickering

And old folk voices chanting

I risk entering into this territory

I sacrifice this weird first-world problem

And hold on

Until the rumbling freight train

Passes

Thank you, grammie and granpa

For pushing me to live

The 100 Calorie Absurdity

One two three
Four five six
Seven

Seven
Fucking
Almonds
Now was that so hard?

For months
The line of 50
Has been uncrossable
But now, after proper reflection
The Seven are added

Nausea acidic hurl
Sloshes to and fro
She doesn’t want this
The fermented bubbly excuse
For an oasis in the desert

Why is it
That 100 is so damned difficult
The feeling of fullness so terrifying
That absurdities, ones that
Don’t
Really
Even
Matter
Rule the breath filled day?

Once again the Seven join
Despite what illogical regimen surrounds
Once again
Bootstraps are pulled
Victimy box dancing child
Invited to

Get Up Off The Floor

Why does the forgetting commence?
Surely depth, some great alchemical equation

Some cultural shadow reflection

Some unconscious puppetry

Is at root of it all?

Or perhaps

Everyone

Gets

Stuck

Sometimes

Waking from a deep, self-forgetting numbness

I give myself

Compassion

The Egg Salad Sandwich. Finis.

Crisp celery chunks

Bursting between teeth

Limp, browning lettuce

Squishy breadstuff

A lukewarm acidic coffee

And salty, salty sadness.

Body threatens to hurl

External drama absent

But oh how it roils inside

Will I die like you did?

No one knows me like you did

Oh mama

I miss you

Keep thinking of you

Calling out Death

While the Summer of Love played on

Gasping

Bleeding

Dying

Alone on the cigarette burned bathroom floor

I’m sorry

Mama

I wasn’t there

The same traffic prevents me

The terror of ancestral repeating

Ripples through my core

Sittin’ here

With a soggy, limp assignment

Our egg salad sandwich

In the same ol’ car

Your Rosie

But that seat is empty

And you’re not complaining

Dust to dust

This dungeon parkway

So many memories

To match our Last Supper

His death

My first committal

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

The bowling lawn

And the day I found you on the bathroom floor

Yet here I celebrate

On this noon of Lammas

The egg salad sandwich

You and I amazingly shared

The

Last

Time

Saw

You

Alive

Here

With creamy substance

Lumpy mustardy mastications

Descending

I look across this concrete underworld

At those familiar sliding doors

Your Cheers

They knew you so well

You made them laugh

And sometimes, stare in shock

So many times

This place held you

When you’d let no other

Mama, I eat this egg salad sandwich

Alone

Remembering you

Remembering this long fucking strange trip

I’ve been living

The same car

The empty seat

And the Emergency Room doors

Swishing

Accepting tragedies

Other than our own

CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP

Dust to dust

The egg salad sandwich

The memory of you

The ending

Of this

HERE LIES THE END

OF FOOD MEMORIES RE-ENACTMENTS

MAY THESE STORIES BE READ

MAY THEY LIVE ON

FOR WHOMEVER NEED READ THEM

EVEN IF IT’S ONLY FOR MY OWN

IN YOUR MEMORIES

AND IN MINE

R.I.P.

December 7, 2020-August 2, 2021

*Thanks for reading and following my journey. I now return to the Void to see what next arises :}

**If you’d like to learn more about the Food Memories book I’ve been referencing for these posts, you can support a small bookstore by purchasing it here:

https://www.ebookwoman.com/book/9781689839075

or by searching for Food Memories by Reagan Lakins on any major book selling website.

Vanilla Ice Cream, Deux

For the next two weeks I am choosing to explain my re-enactment in prose form. These are my last two opportunities to re-experience the ending chapters of my memoir, “Food Memories,” and I’d like to say more than a poem can about them and my process :}

This week, I chose to re-enact the memory of me going to Rite-Aid to challenge myself with an ice cream cone for afternoon snack. This wasn’t a long-ago memory, it was just a few years ago in 2016 that I decided to put myself through day treatment to help me with eating issues after a long time struggling alone.

In the memory, the dietician suggested I choose something that brought back good memories, to go purchase and allow myself to enjoy that. If you’ve been on this journey with me from the beginning, or have read my book, you’ll remember that Vanilla Ice Cream was my first food memory, and was one particularly filled with joy. So it was this food that I wanted to challenge myself that day.

What ended up happening in the original memory is a full-body freezing response to some sort of unknown sexual trauma. It surfaced as I stood outside of the Rite Aid, licking the dripping white liquid, feeling it run down my hands, feeling people in cars passing by, watching. And what snapped me out of it was a crow, hopping on the telephone line above me, catching my attention.

Fast forward to this weekend, when I chose to go to the neighborhood Rite Aid to re-enact the memory.

As I was planning to head out, a friend asked if I wanted to connect, and I said I was doing a few things if she’d like to join me. I chose to let her into this experience, trusting what it would bring.

I met her in the parking lot, as as we walked towards each other I saw she had something in her hand. When she came closer, I recognized she was carrying a picture of a crow. “My friend said she wanted you to have it.” She smiled.

I didn’t think much of it at the moment, except that it was a sweet gesture from someone I didn’t really know.

We walked over to the Rite Aid and entered the whoosh of the automatic doors, the coolness meeting our skin. My friend excused herself to look for another item while I went to order my ice cream. I saw the “Chocolate Malted Crunch” flavor I also loved as a kid and for a moment wondered if I should get this flavor. I decided to stick with Vanilla for the memory’s sake.

I stepped up to the counter and there was a family of four treating themselves to various cones and scoops. They were all “overweight” body types in the societal judgement of things, except for the little girl that was with them. The clerk serving them was also of this type. I noted this as a possible synchronicity to explore.

But what was also occurring while standing there waiting was this weird hidden shame feeling. The family was acting jovial and cheery, but as I do not fall into that body type I was feeling all of these kinds of comparison, self-judgments, etc, in the field. I am not sure if it was mine or theirs or what. I just felt it.

Another thing to note.

As I approached the counter, I noticed that the clerk wouldn’t look me in the eye, and was fidgeting a lot to avoid direct contact. Again, not ever sure what is mine and what is another’s, I approached him with gentleness and tried to make the interaction as clean as possible. I tried to engage him about what its like working during the summer at the ice cream counter, the rushes, etc (I did this too at that age). He didn’t seem to understand me, and was fumbling. Again, I tried to send good energy to the whole situation, to not create as little embarrassment/weirdness as possible.

That interaction complete, I met back up with my friend and we went for a walk in the gardens outside while I ate. I was a bit nervous of what might happen outside, if I would face a synchronistic sexist comment or situation that would remind me of that day in 2016. But I did not. I was simply surrounded by plant and human friend, strolling in the sunshine, eating an ice cream cone like a “normal person.”

I did struggle with whether or not to eat the cone at the end, and deciding that the ice cream was a big enough challenge, chose not to. (Later I thought about it and realized that this used to be my favorite part, eating the dribbly creaminess and crunching cone all together…I had a full on craving and visual experience of how good that was…and wondered why I didn’t remember this in the moment.)

My friend and I sat in a park afterwards and talked about spirit encounters, Brazilian psychics and agnostic ideas for balance lol. It was a good day.

In reflecting about the experience, I thought about how it both related to the original memory…as well as how it helped me heal/deepen into it. While it wasn’t crystal clear as in some memory re-enactments I’ve had, I do feel there were interesting bits.

Crow, once again, being with me, seemingly helping me to stay present.

The viewing (and possible empathic feeling) of people’s self-judgments about their bodies, about enjoying their senses, as if I was getting an opportunity to see what my own shadow energies around my body and sensuality shame were…from a distance. Without it totally taking me over, immobilizing me.

And then the fact that I was not alone, that my friend met me and was with me. She did not eat with me, but she was with me…which is a rare thing: me eating with others around. Letting her see me want/desire something, letting her see me purchase it and eat it with joy…this was healing. The fact that there wasn’t a gnarly sexual issue that came up was refreshing too. The fact that I could enjoy this, simply eating an ice cream cone without drama, was refreshing.

Thanks, crow.

Thanks, family.

Thanks, nervous server guy.

Thanks, friend.

And thanks, Rite Aid Vanilla Ice Cream.

Ps. Next time I’ll eat the cone.

*Thanks for reading! Please join me next week as I re-create the food memory, “Egg Salad Sandwich.” I’ve been re-enacting these memories chronologically from my memoir, and this will be the very last one!

**If you’d like to learn more about the Food Memories book I am referencing for these posts, you can support a small bookstore by purchasing it here:

https://www.ebookwoman.com/book/9781689839075

or by searching for Food Memories by Reagan Lakins on any major book selling website.

Turkish Coffee, Deerhide and Social Anxiety

I hold the demitasse

An azure porcelain relic

To my lips

A tiny trickle of pungent

Bitter liquid bursts across my senses

Cardamom

And the odors of crisping, crackling home fries

Intermingle

A man is cooking

Shuffling about the kitchen

As streams of late morning sun slice through

Dio in the air

And more enter

Three humans

I am sharing this experience with

How strange

So much of my eating is alone

That company would feel odd

Sipping, and laughing

I have faint remembrance

Of community

And feeling Home

Somewhere on the planet

With the echoes

Of beating deerhide

And banishing rituals

Gathering

To celebrate

Sipping, the rich brew

Travels out to the garden

Where dead things are buried

And new life has just begun

Intense words are exchanged

Laughter follows

As we flip over our mostly empty receptacles

Awaiting the ground’s messages

We twist cups to the right

One, two, three

Letting the sludge dribble

And finally

Reveal

In one, a moon woman

Crossing abyss-like chasm into fire

In another, a horned angelic being

And then

High plumed headdress and

Bear spirit

Emerging from the last

This ritual

Feels so familiar

The measuring and brewing

The savoring and visioning

The reading, in circle

Imaginations

Of having come to rest

After bumpy, dusty roads

Travelling in caravan deserts

Laughing

Drinking

Smoking

Together

These people

Feel so familiar

Sitting in circle

Beating drums

Casting space

Sipping

Ritual

My heart longs

For this to be real

Still

So many shadows dance

In the space between us

Beautiful as it seems

It’s Unspoken

I feel the way they quiver my voice

I feel the tentative connection

Attachment traumas

Little anesthetized spirit children

Holding out hands

Ignored

Projecting

Introjecting

Complexing

Possessing

I feel the yearning

And refusal to admit it

Is it mine

Is it theirs

Is it mine

Is it yours

Is it all

Is it real

Who am I

Who are you?

Laughter

And chatty professions

Dancing round smoky tendrils

And the spirits of arabica

And I get lost

I feel a confusion

Of who or what or where I really stand

And the struggle to remember

All while smiling

And discussion

And socializing

With The Normal

Saturates the external reality in front of me

And

Can’t

Talk

About

This is not new

This is always how it is

When I

Am with you

Good thing I’ve gotten used to

Playing along whilst feeling

Thrashed

The

Shadows

Good thing I’ve got practice

Of simultaneously pulling myself

From the blackness, drowning

From the gauzelike haze

And the stumbling, grasping

Forgetting

And good thing for Turkish Coffee

Whose ritual

And flavor

And heady, swirling cardamom laced

Clarity

Seem to help me remember

Who I am

Who I Am

When I Am with you

And the many grasping tendrils

Between

*Thanks for reading! Please join me next week as I re-create the food memory, “Vanilla Ice Cream, Deux.”

**If you’d like to learn more about the Food Memories book I am referencing for these posts, you can support a small bookstore by purchasing it here:

https://www.ebookwoman.com/book/9781689839075

or by searching for Food Memories by Reagan Lakins on any major book selling website.

Our Daily Salad

The blade

Slices

Through cold, hard flesh

Pieces drop, one two three

Into crucible

Layers

Of ripped matter

Cover

And set to boil

Cans halved

Exact flatness achieved

All items ready

On this altar

How many times

Have I performed

This rite?

Measuring

Tamping

Steaming

Pouring

The same

Same

Comforting

Repeatable

Predictable

I thank the dead for their offering

The lid rumbles, emitting steam

And I wonder

How many times

This rite?

How many times

Like a raw-skinned hand washer

Have I done this

With the illusion

That it makes everything

Okay?

This time, unlike last time

I no longer require myself

To worship

At this perfectly measured altar

Everyday

But this time, much like last time

As I perform the ritual

I wonder what could free me

Into a bigger

Less measured life

Appreciating

The hells I’ve come through

And life I’ve managed to craft

But still yearning

For something beyond this

Box

Although bigger than before

Still

These walls trap me

Still yearning for something

Beyond

Something else

That comforts

Something else

That structures

Something else

That directs

Eases

Organizes

The Chaos that lives within

Something else

Instead of this obvious

And metaphoric action

Something larger

Something indescribable

Something I yearn for

Yet

Can’t

Seem

Materialize

So like millions of other humans

I perform this ritual

I exact what I think is good

I repeat it regularly

And hope that it will be okay

Like millions of other humans

Here I perform

At the dietary altar

With religiosity

With hope

With hounding

Hollows

And chaos

Swirling within

Like millions of other humans

Here I sit

With my perfectly measured salad

And Netflix hypnotism

To drown out

The scream of my Soul

I cannot seem

To translate

Thanks for reading! Please join me next week as I re-create the food memory, “Turkish Coffee.”

**If you’d like to learn more about the Food Memories book I am referencing for these posts, you can support a small bookstore by purchasing it here:

https://www.ebookwoman.com/book/9781689839075

or by searching for Food Memories by Reagan Lakins on any major book selling website.

Ghost Shrimp

The original mission

Fresh into expanded menu

Was to purchase some items

To cook for myself at home

That day, I braced myself for overwhelm

Of the aisles and questions

Of the options and decisions

Of the food stamp limitations

Needing to be faced

To craft such things

In the original mission

I sought out the ingredients

For simple shrimp tacos

Six shrimp

One avocado

Onion

Salsa

That day

Upon entering the store

Indeed a flush of intensity

Needing to keep myself from running, screaming

Back out into sunshine

But persistent, for “recovery”

I made my way deeper into the pit

At the deli counter asking

Ashamed at the amount

Battered by forceful joyous energy

Of the butcher behind

Six shrimp

Crinkly wrapping enfolding

He gave with a stunted smile

And psychic recommendations

For a larger life

This time

Although less overwhelm presented at entrance

Still I braced myself

Walking up to the counter

Wondering what people were thinking

Of this woman asking for

Just

Six

Shrimp

Jumbo shrimp, actually

Enough for two tacos, actually

And there will be more food beside them

Why did I feel the need to explain?

Why did I feel this shame?

Why do I feel like I should be ordering more

Or something different

Or with a jovial laugh, socializing

Why do I feel like I should be

Something

More?

This time, unlike the last time

The butcher at the counter was quiet

A gentle smile and perhaps the faeblood

Listened and received

Only a kind energy was felt

As the crinkly wrapping enfolded

This time was different

There also wasn’t a mom, yammering on

About the latest diet she’d like her girl to try

Pushing pushing mind controlling

Behind me as I choose from 70 different salsas

As I strain to get food into me

Battling her spellcraft, of culture

This time, there were a million options

But I chose with minimal terror

And made my way out of the store

The current mission completed

I thought whether I wanted to cook these creatures for dinner

And decided to have shrimp tacos

At the local dive bar

With a friend

Instead

She

“Wasn’t hungry”

Having pounded a protein shake prior to meeting

Strange to have

Someone else forgoing

While I stuffed my face

Here then, was the culture stealthily yammering

Silent, silent

But deadly

Later

As the stoner band played on

I was taken by the drummer, in a cutoff metal tee

Ragged hair and

Full of fire

My belly kind of full

And a half a frothy beer in hand

I was reminded of him

Again

Reminded of him

And the wolf dog

And the meals

So many years ago

Laughing

Full but empty

With my protein fasting friend

I held this

This constant yearning

I keep trying to shake it off

But he always

Seems

There

In a dream

Woken, the dreaded nausea setting in

Faint and disappearing

I saw him

Smiling

My hand over his

He stared into me

Like it was all okay

Memento Mori

Memento Vivere

In one world,

Shrimp rumbling

Nauseous, sweating

And in another

He stared into me

Memento Vivere

Like it was all okay

Thanks for reading! Please join me next week as I re-create the food memory, “Our Daily Salad.”

**If you’d like to learn more about the Food Memories book I am referencing for these posts, you can support a small bookstore by purchasing it here:

https://www.ebookwoman.com/book/9781689839075

or by searching for Food Memories by Reagan Lakins on any major book selling website.

A Kitchen Witch Bakes Bread

With heavy, hag-crusted apron

I wait for it to rise

Past circling, stirring motion

The meal, the embryo, the red of the moon

Combine, they dance

Swirling and mixing

I wait

Whilst frankincense-laced vapours

Hang, wispy and snakish

As guttoral, throated vocalizations

And visions of strange beings

Ambulate on quartz lined stage

I wonder

As I wait

If they

Are me

The wheated, bubbling creature

Waits

As I wait

Wonders

As I wonder

Under thick cover

Amidst heat shimmers

Of Awaswas’ mountain

With heavy, hag-crusted apron

I wait

While it waits

For the Cakes of Light

To rise

II.

Naked tips dipping

Into sticky, porous, amoebic

Mass

Stringlets stretching

As I pull apart its body

As I drop its flesh

Into oiled Abramelin chambers

The heat is rising

And I wait

While it waits

As preliminary aromas

Its possible hope for transformation

And Tuvan melodies

Twirl in air

This

Is such

An old

Ritual

III.

A crisped shell

A moist center

Cradled in hand

Hot, piping steam

Back and forth to save them

Back and forth to cool them

Back and forth to infuse them

I lift

This alchemized creature

To my mouth

And break through

Teeth piercing into grainy innards

And breathe

Tastes swirl

Sweet, buttery, salty

And vague notes

Of sorcery within

I chew

All flavors transfigure

Into pregnant mass

A eucharist of sorts

I take myself

Into myself

And begin to hum

Feeling this ritual

Flowing, pulsing, re-membering

Swallowing

Feeling this ritual

In hand

Like the sinewy, weathered of grandmothers

Feeling this ritual

Of bread

Blood

In bread

Thanks for reading! Please join me next week as I re-create the food memory, “Shrimp.”

**If you’d like to learn more about the Food Memories book I am referencing for these posts, you can support a small bookstore by purchasing it here:

https://www.ebookwoman.com/book/9781689839075

or by searching for Food Memories by Reagan Lakins on any major book selling website.