Christina’s Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies
Written by Christina Marable for foodmemory.net
At a writing workshop, a colleague once asked me why I was writing a short story collection centered around travel writing when I wasn’t the ideal person most envisioned as a protagonist of such novels. After all, that category is reserved for the Eat, Pray, Love types.
I trace my interest in travel writing back to my earliest childhood memories. Shortly before I was born, my family migrated from a small Tennessee town to Chicago in search of better jobs and opportunities.
Homelessness met them instead, and we bounced around from shelters to hotels and guest houses. We slept wherever we could safely crash, depending on how much money we had.
My family secured our first place of residence in Northern Chicago when I was around five, when the neighborhood was a cultural mix of Black and Eastern European communities. We lived comfortably. Food became our love language: Chinese takeaway on Thursdays, pizza on Fridays.
My mom taught me how to make dough from scratch. We treated guests to rich and layered lasagnas.
A tradition that sticks out is baking chocolate chip cookies on New Year’s Eve.
Annually my older sister and I baked chocolate chip cookies that we ate while watching the Dick Clark special as the ball dropped. It was one of the few times I stayed up late.
We kept this tradition until I was seven when she’d fallen in love with a boyfriend who gave her a prized stuffed lion as a token of his affection. She sat me down, and in her calmest voice, explained that she was going to spend the holiday with him instead of me. I took the lion and stormed out of the apartment and threw it in the garbage.
Looking back on it, the chocolate chip cookies symbolized my vision of tradition. I imagined normal families, who didn’t move around so much, baking cookies for special occasions. It was an expression of love that permeated my mind. The smell of brown sugar and butter sauntering from the kitchen promised me — I’ll never leave you. They triggered memories of when I was the baby of the family, the spoiled brat who had all the love and support of my older siblings and my family. It was the only time we lived under the same roof. My father died, we moved out of the apartment and scattered across the country.
Chocolate chip cookies were one of the first food items I learned to bake when I transitioned to veganism. My best friend showed me her recipe, which I adapted using my family’s recipe. At first, I thought everyone knew how to bake chocolate chips cookies, but they weren’t. When I taught in Korea, I brought over a hundred of these cookies to a vegan potluck — no one saved me any. In graduate school, I brought these cookies to a vegan cafe that hired me to bake chocolate chip cookies. They always sold out, no matter how ugly these cookies were at the beginning. I only bake them for potlucks and special occasions now because it takes me back to those memories. Cookies are wholesome, sweet, warm — the embodiment of home.
Bio:
Christina Marable is a mental health and wellness copywriter based in Washington, D.C. She is an alumni of Voice of Our Nations Arts (VONA) as a Travel Writing fellow. In 2018, she earned her Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing, where she completed her book of interlinked short stories. Currently, she’s querying her book. Her work’s been featured in Mace and Crown, LIVESTRONG, and Meaning Garden. Contact her at christinamarable.com. She’d love to hear from you!
