If you’re joining for the first time, welcome to Never Precious. I’m Tyeesha Dixon — lawyer, writer, food obsessed — here documenting family recipes, food traditions, and the ways people carry culture forward through everyday cooking.
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Hello, family, and welcome to Issue 5.
Most of you know I love traveling. But I’ve really enjoyed being back in Maryland the past few months, focused on writing and building deeper connections with people I care about.
This summer, I’m planning to explore the cultural treasures of the place that raised me — the state of Maryland — and sharing what I find with you. By the end, I hope you’ll feel the same fuzzies for the Old Line State that I do — or at least crave a crab cake enough to ask your uncle for his recipe.
My family laid my great aunt Ingrid to rest a couple months ago. After the service, we did what families do: we ate.
In Black American communities, the repass (or repast, as the dictionary calls it) is one of the oldest and most enduring traditions surrounding death. That is, after the funeral comes the gathering where family, friends, neighbors, and community members come together around a table heavy with food and memory.
The tradition carries traces of many histories at once: West African customs of communal mourning, generations of mutual aid forged during slavery and segregation, and the Black church’s longstanding practice of caring for families in moments of joy and loss.
My trigger was pretty unexpected.
A repass always stirs up something. That’s part of the point, really.
Aunt Ingrid’s repass was one for a queen. The meal had more dishes than I could try. Green beans cooked down soft, fried fish, macaroni and cheese. In Baltimore, there is always shrimp salad. Stewed cabbage, ham, at least four different chicken preparations, potato salad, banana pudding. Don’t get me started on the cakes! So many cakes.
Every teeming plate, though, had one thing in common — spice cake, unfrosted, and accompanying the meal kind of like a cornbread would.
Everyone seems to have a different preparation of spice cake, but the general idea is a moist and buoyant cake flavored with cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and other warming spices. It has a deep, hard-to-describe flavor from ingredients like molasses, brown sugar, and applesauce; apparently some people use dried fruit. I like mine with chewy edges, like a brownie.
My brother’s fiancée is not from Baltimore, and in the middle of the meal she asked an innocent question that sent me into a spiral: what kind of cake is this?
I told her it was spice cake. But then panic set in.
It’s the best thing in this place, but I don’t know how to make it. I don’t even know who made this spice cake. I’ve never bothered to ask anyone how to make it. Which aunt would I start with? Why don’t I spend more time with my extended family?
Why am I starting a project to write down other people’s family recipes when I don’t even know my own?
The guilt, though, quickly turned to a feeling of. . . . warmness. Dare I call it joy, even? I felt complete relief that I was getting to share this perfect cake, that’s kind of like bread when it wants to be, with the people I love, to celebrate a woman who cared for us fiercely, no matter how little we got to see each other in her final years.
How else do you describe instant and overwhelming connection to a place, a time, a people — that happens through a square slice of nutmeg cake?
Sometimes growing happens while sitting still.
I spent most of last year traveling the world, looking for entry points of connection with the people and places and things that grow from the earth. The feeling I got at Aunt Ingrid’s repass reminded me that much of what I yearn for is within arm’s reach.
Maryland is the place where I was born and have spent more than half my life. I’ve moved back three times. I learn something more about myself and this place every time.
This return feels different — maybe because of the times we are in.
Maryland sits right on the Mason-Dixon line. It was a slave state that stayed in the Union. Our storied American history rears its head here and there, like when the Confederate-loving state song was finally repealed in 2021.
Southernness shows in Maryland’s food. So does multiculturalness.
It’s a place that has never been just one thing, raising a kid who knew that she, too, would never be just one thing either.
Whatever the reason, the winds are calling me here, to discover Maryland, the place that’s been under my nose the whole time. Apparently to learn how to make some good cake.
It’s going to be a rad summer 😎.
SOMETHING ROOTED (NEVER PRECIOUS)
Every issue, I share something passed down — a recipe, a ritual, a way of doing things — sometimes in its original form, sometimes adapted for the lives we’re actually living.
After Aunt Ingrid’s memorial service, I decided to practice what I preach. I pulled out my phone and asked my grandmother to tell me on camera how she makes her mac and cheese. She recited it from memory the way she always does, with some context from my grandfather and uncle added in the mix. Her trick is using six types of cheese; any will do except pepper jack.
I have the feeling this “recipe” will sound warmly familiar for many of you :)
RECS N THANGS
Things to eat, read, watch, explore.
READ.
It’s also linked in the essay above, but I recommend this read from Robin Caldwell, Understanding Black Southern Funeral Food Tradition. This passage really stuck with me:
As the last visitor is sent off, there is some solace to be found in savoring a bite of your aunt’s banana pudding or your cousin’s cornbread dressing with a side of potato salad. You do not have to like the occasion to admit loving the food and the gift of it.
EAT.
The thing I crave most when I leave this area is a proper bowl of grits — savory and simple, sprinkled with Old Bay, topped with scrambled eggs and Louisiana-style hot sauce.
Nikki Miller-Ka’s recipe uses the method I like most. White grits cooked low and slow in water and maybe some milk, salted water, and lots of butter.
Nom nom.
Old-Fashioned Southern Grits
Yield: 4 servings, 1/2 cup each
Author: Nikki Miller-Ka of Nik Snacks
Ingredients
1 cup grits
1 cup milk
3 cups water
Instructions
Boil 3 cups of salted water (3 tsp of salt is PLENTY)
Stir in 1 cup of grits (any kind — white, yellow, stone ground, but NOT INSTANT GRITS)
Add 1 cup milk (or cream, coconut milk, oat milk, etc.) Stir.
Lower heat to LOW. Cover. Let cook 20 min.
Season with salt & pepper to taste. Garnish with whatever.
BEFORE I FORGET…
Here’s something people outside Maryland rarely know: by the Census Bureau’s count, this is the most diverse state on the East Coast — more so than New York, New Jersey, even D.C. About one in six of us was born in another country; about one in five speaks a language other than English at home. You taste it everywhere, which is part of what I want to show you this summer.
The first unofficial stop on my Maryland Lovefest 2026 was the Howard County AAPI festival, held toward the end of May, AAPI Heritage Month. I wanted to check it out because Howard County has the highest concentration of residents of Asian descent of any county in Maryland. The festival did a nice job of honoring that.
My favorite bite of the day: chicken momos from the Himalayan Soul Foods truck, and especially the spicy sauce that came with it. Fire.
Know of any upcoming cultural events in Maryland this summer? Been to any already that give you good memories? I’d love to write about them, so please share.
YOUR STORY
Every issue, I close with an assist to help you preserve your own stories.
If you think about it long enough, everyone has a food that brings home into focus. Mine is embarrassingly simple grits and eggs.
I’m curious:
What’s the one food you miss most when you leave home?
Tell me about the dish, who makes it, and what it means to you. I'd love to hear the story behind it. Reply to this email or share your story using the link below.
Never Precious is curated and published by Tyeesha Dixon.
I’m sorry about your loss but the reflections are beautiful and your grandma is awesome. Hope I get to try her Mac and cheese someday ❤️
I smiled while watching your grandmother recite her recipe. This whole post totally warmed my soul! Nothing like family and whew, the way food brings us together! Nothing like it. 💛