Macon Magazine

February/March 2026 | maconmagazine.com 87 icing now," Terrill said. "But mine had to be from the 1940s." Terrill's most meaningful recipe passed down to her daughters is a chocolate chip pie recipe. "My mother never made it. I have absolutely no idea how I got the recipe," Terrill said with a laugh. Her mother was known for her cakes, not pies, so pies slowly became Terrill's specialty. While her father made pecan pie, chocolate chip pie found its way into her kitchen unexpectedly and became something entirely her own. What makes the recipe special is not just the dessert itself, but the way it brought Terrill and her daughters together in the kitchen. "It's super easy," she explained, "so it was something my girls could help me make." Her youngest daughter, Rebecca, took a particular interest early on, and the two began making the pie together regularly. Over time, the recipe became second nature. "We both have it memorized," Terrill said. Now, chocolate chip pie is Rebecca's signature dish. "If she has somewhere to go, that's her go-to. She's known for her chocolate chip pie." For Terrill, this simple recipe became a way to teach her daughter how to bake and to build a shared tradition. "That was really how I taught her to bake," she said. The connection continues today, even as her daughter branches out. "She actually called me yesterday for a recipe. She wanted to make fudge for her coworker," Terrill recalled. Though Rebecca has since expanded her skills, now experimenting with sourdough bread, the act of sharing recipes remains a meaningful bond between them. While family recipes are often passed between parents and children, their significance reaches far beyond individual households. These dishes preserve memories, but they also carry the weight of one's culture. Family recipes often reflect where people come from, the circumstances they endured, and the traditions they protected through generations. Brandi Simpson, a West African food historian (see page 60), uses food as a lens to help students understand the deep connections between regions and how closely American cuisine is tied to West African culture. By tracing ingredients and their origins, she reveals how food tells stories of migration, labor, and resilience. Family recipes hold cultural meaning, even when that significance is not always recognized. Howard can relate to this connection deeply. As a Black American and a member of the African diaspora, she believes food traditions are deeply rooted in survival and ingenuity. "My relatives were enslaved, and the women specifically were cooks," Howard said. "Cooking has been a job in my family, even in bondage. Every recipe passed down to me has some process or story tied to our culture. We've been battered and bruised and given nothing, and we consistently turn that into greatness," she added. ABOVE One of Howard's original recipes with oleo as an ingredient. The techniques and flavors that often labeled as Southern cuisine, she notes, are rooted in Black foodways that originated in West Africa and were later transformed by enslaved Africans and their descendants. "What people love to call Southern food is Black food," she explained, developed through passed down knowledge and cultural memory. For Howard, this knowledge is not something that requires research or searching online. "I didn't have to Google it," she said. "I know how to do this because it's part of my culture. I was trained." Preserving recipes does not mean guarding them closely but rather ensuring they continue to live. The goal is not to gatekeep, but to share knowledge. Food, at its core, is communal. "Our culture is to share," Howard explained. "I am cooking in the same way my great-grandmother did, even though she was enslaved. That matters." For her, recipes are part of a larger process: learning from those who came before, mastering the craft, and then offering that knowledge to others. "We don't want our recipes to die," she said. "I never want there to be a day where something that used to be so important, so commonplace, is just gone." That commitment to sharing is reflected in how Howard documents her family's food traditions. The black notebook she carries serves as a training book — filled with handwritten recipes, notes in the margins, crossed-out steps, and adjustments made over time. It is a working record, a space where her knowledge is perfected. Alongside it, she has created a self-published cookbook of her family's recipes in which everyone contributes, leaving tangible evidence of their part of history behind. For Howard, writing recipes down is not about finality, but continuity. In this way, family recipes become an open invitation rather than a closed secret, ensuring they endure through shared effort and collective memory. In sharing their stories, Howard and Terrill also shared their recipes and invited others into their kitchens in the most meaningful way. As a writer who thoroughly researches her subjects, I had the opportunity to taste the dishes they spoke about, experiencing firsthand how food carries care and intention. These meals were prepared to be shared, reinforcing the idea that family recipes are living traditions set down on a table, not collecting dust in isolation. Send us your favorite family recipe to be published at hello@maconmagazine.com

• Cover