Emily Meggett: Gullah Geechee Home Cooking (Edisto Island, SC)

Forty-two miles south of Charleston, SC and home to a little more than 2,000 people, Edisto Island is a place where everyone knew everyone else when Emily Meggett was growing up. Today she calls it a “little slice of heaven,” and says that when the side door is open, people know that there is food in her kitchen. And there is almost always food, as Miss Emily cooks “big,” as she calls it, cooking enough to feed 8 to 10 people on the regular. She began cooking professionally in 1954, at now, at 89 years old, has published her first cookbook, Gullah Geechee Home Cooking: Recipes from the Matriarch of Edisto Island. She’s spent a lifetime cooking and sharing Gullah Geechie food, keeping its distinctive flavors alive and celebrated, all while raising ten children. She cooks with all her senses, and when she talks about cooking, she often uses her hands to demonstrate the method she’s teaching you. It’s beautiful, just like her laugh, especially when she sometimes refers to “butt’s meat,” her name for salt pork, one of her favorite flavoring ingredients.