Okra

If you’ve known me for any length of time at all, it’s probably confusing that I haven’t yet done a blog post dedicated to food. Surprising even to me because my world basically revolves around it. It’s what I enjoy most about traveling. Meeting new foods is as exciting (if not more so) than meeting new people and animals. Actually, people are probably a solid third in this list. What time I’m not eating food, I’m usually reading about it or writing about it or planning my next adventure with it. I frequently tell people that I have to know where my next meal is coming from.

This week’s food choice is OKRA. I planted some about a week ago, and the little sproutlets are almost an 1/8th of an inch high to date. I’ve planted a myriad different wonders this spring in need of being kept alive in an arrangement between the sun and the rain and me, recognizing fully this has little to do with me other than making sure I keep the weeds at bay and speak to them all kindly. Every morning I tell them how beautiful they are and thank them for growing so well in my world. Each new bud and leaf and root system is a delight, but it’s the okra I’m most excited for. Okra will grow anywhere corn does, so they say. While we’re talking about the very wise “they,” legend has it that okra made its way to this country in the hair of enslaved women. This is when okra gets serious.

Okra is literally the tie that binds: it’s a thickening agent in a gumbo pot. It’s the mucilaginous vegetable that bonds all the flavors together and turns an otherwise unholy mixture into something wonderful. It transcends culture and cuisine, showing up all over the world battered and fried, roasted, pickled,

wok-ed, or masala-d. A strong source of Vitamin C, Magnesium, and fiber, it always brings its A-game to the table. Its bright green hue enlivens any dish it finds itself in. And if that isn’t enough, its flowers are beautiful, so beautiful in fact, I had the whole darn plant tattooed on my leg.

It isn’t everywhere a tattoo artist will befriend you, listen to your stories, and draw an okra plant for you based on an early 1900s seed packet, but that’s what Max in Natchitoches, Louisiana did. He even had the drawing blessed by a local Creole woman, who had a hard time understanding what this White girl from Virginia knew about okra. Very little in the grand scheme of things, but okra knows me. Okra knows my heart. Okra is home and bond and all the good things that unite us. It is more than food and even more than nourishment. It is strength and perseverance, joy and resilience. It, like the women who carried it here and everywhere, put down roots in foreign soil and grew in abundance. Okra decided that home was where it grew, not where it came from.

If the okra graces me this summer, it will not be because of the love I have poured into it. It will not be because I have begged the sun and rain to be kind to it and give it what it needs and no more than it needs. It will be because this okra has claimed my home as its home, because it will recognize me. Again.