“The person I immediately thought of is my mother. The dish that I have here, my mom calls poul ak nwa” its chicken and cashews and her special sauce. This is her favorite dish. It’s also mine. She is a huge fan of cashews or any sort of nuts in her foods. I’ve tried making this dish multiple times and failed so this time I was determined to make it right. I asked her for directions and she actually prepared the meat for me. She helped prepare the spices for me and I did the rest. We’ve had a very interesting relationship as I was growing up. As a teenager I don’t think I was a rebel of any sort. This is tough… I just didn’t have an understanding of what she was going through at that age. She just moved to a new country from Haiti, her marriage was falling apart, she didn’t know any English, she had to navigate so many things that were going on. There was just a lot going on for her. I was a 10 year old growing teenager navigating things as well. We’re very much alike so we butt heads a lot, but we were dealing with so much and we are bit bad at communicating. I think now we are getting better with not only each other but with the world. There was a time when we were in college we didn’t have the best relationship but I was trying to figure out as a woman how to deal with a lot growing into this 20 year old or getting new jobs and figuring out how to navigate how to work in a male dominated industry. I would seek out other women who were like mentors or professors or friends and then realized I wasn’t really getting anything and then finally I gave in and talked to my mom really openly about some of the issues whether it was mental health or work stuff any of that. and she was just so brutally honest and it was what I needed and then ever since then, ever since college, our relationship has been amazing. I think I forgot she was human. It was nice to open up to her. So I really wanted to cook something that she loved to bring here and something that she always made that way my favorite. Hope you enjoy.”