Cynthia Wood of Dipped Fresh catering company removes a dish from the oven.When Cynthia Wood and Antonia Poland served their braised chicken, made-from-scratch mac and cheese, green beans and caramelized yams at a recent lunch at the Bessie Smith Cultural Center, the compliment they heard repeatedly was: “This tastes like what my mother made growing up.”
Because it was.
Wood and Poland learned to cook from their grandmothers and those old recipes, handed down to them and now being taught to their children, are the foods they plate when catering meals. They are the meat-and-threes that adults recall as the centerpieces of Southern Sunday suppers after church.
“We heard a lot of people say that the food was like their mother’s or grandmother’s,” says James McKissic, director of the city’s Office of Multicultural Affairs, who attended the luncheon.
“Their food is delicious; it makes me want to take a nap afterward, and that reminds me of home and holiday meals with family, too,” he says, chuckling.