Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast. I'm Emanuel Vaughn Lee, executive editor of Emergence

magazine, located on the unseated ancestral lands of the Coast Mewalk people of present-day

Marin County. Each week, we feature a new interview, narrated essay, or story, exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality.

Gina Ray LaServea is a geographer, environmental anthropologist, and the author of Feasting Wild in search of

the last untamed food.

In this piece, Gina Ray revisits her grandfather's recipes in order to trace the elements

of her Sicilian heritage.

Through legacies of wild food gathering and feasting, she seeks to embody the traditions that have brought her family joy and sustenance, even in times of grief, conquest, and migration.

Leak omelet, string beans, Italian toss salad, consisting of romaine, celery, carrot, tomato, black olives, roasted pumpkin seeds, sweet potato, all drizzled with extra virgin olive oil,

and a touch of apple cider vinegar.

Delicious.

The truth didn't come out until after my grandpa had passed.

It had been a family rumor among some of the cousins, but unknown to most of us.

Despite his meticulous record-keeping about his own life and the boxes of memoirs he left behind, there was never any mention of it. I think he obscured the

truth even from himself. On most days, he was successful, even if it gnawed at the back of his neck, even if it made him angry at times.

I wonder if he ever uttered the Italian phrase,

Acqua emboka, which directly translates as water in the mouth, but means to keep a secret.

We called my grandfather, Papa.

One night, toward the end of his life, I Skyped with him. Even in his 90s, he still carried the poverty of his childhood. He was the second youngest child of eight, raised in a poor Italian family in New

Orleans, and had lost his mother by the age of two. I'd heard stories that Papa used to steal

bananas from the docks to prevent himself from starving. One of his earliest food memories was of his

grandfather, taking all the kids to the French market,

...