Sarah Browning

I never saw my English grandmother cook 
a single thing. She was raised by Victorians, 
vegetarian. Dinner was store-brand 
canned vegetable soup and cottage cheese. 
Lunch, canned peaches, and cottage cheese. 
Breakfast, cold cereal, or maybe cottage cheese.

So, a surprise! The Sunset Magazine Vegetarian 
Cookbook she gave me to begin my adult life 
was actually good! Not 80s good – tofu stir-fry 
and lentil soup – but good as in I still make 
the French white bean salad with mustard,
tarragon, and a touch of honey. 

Nana gave strict orders on tea: A rolling boil and 
steeping until the tea had authority. But then she 
drank it with an A&P graham cracker. Nothing 
hand-baked, home-stirred, whipped, or kneaded. 
She needed very little; she ate almost nothing. 
She tried, she failed, to teach us this, the art of restraint.

Sarah Browning is the author of Call Me Yes (FlowerSong Press, 2026), Killing Summer, and Whiskey in the Garden of Eden. Co-curator/co-host of Wild Indigo Poetry, she teaches with Writers in Progress and coaches writers. Co-founder and an early director of Split This Rock, she now lives in Philadelphia. www.sarahbrowning.net