What Remains at the Table?
My great-grandmother Maggie’s hands, creased and soft as overwashed linen, moved quietly over a bowl of yolks. She folded in sweet relish, mustard, and mayo until the deviled egg filling tasted just right. My earliest memories are of clinging to her hip, watching her turn ingredients into something worthy of a family gathering. Cooking has always felt sacred to me, a ritual, a meditation that begins long before the first bite. Maggie passed in 2016 at ninety-eight.
At her repast, we gathered with Southern staples: cornbread, fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, collards, and her deviled eggs. Relatives, drawn by grief and a shared meal, showed me how food carries memory and kinship. Recipes can hold love and lineage. Nearly a decade later, I made Maggie’s deviled eggs again, this time for my chosen family at the 2025 Juicy Couture Cookout. The House of Juicy Couture hosts this annual gathering within New York City’s ballroom kiki scene. In this space, LGBTQ+ individuals form deep bonds and create alternate kinship networks, often separate from families of origin.
What Remains at the Table is a video experience in which recipes emerge from memory, not measurement. Mainstream food media often overlooks voices like mine, reducing cooking to a performance or instruction for a select few. The premise of this creative video project counters that by centering on personal narrative. Identity, emotion, and experience guide the table. The story is the foundation; the cooking is its expression, with the overarching theme drawn from queer and food theory to explore how food sustains chosen families and transforms shared history.
While this short focuses on my experience in the ballroom community, it gestures to a broader series reimagining cooking-centered visual media by letting storytelling lead.
“Continue reading the full exploration in the PDF above.”
