In the heart of every kitchen, there lies a story waiting to be told. For K-Ming Chang, that story revolves around a wooden bowl and a Caesar salad that has become a symbol of love, loss, and memory. This essay, originally published on August 31, 2026, was recently reprinted in Issue 02 of Autostraddle’s print magazine.
The wooden bowl, the silver hair under the spotlit kitchen island, the clinks of spoon to jarred garlic—these are the images that flood K-Ming Chang’s mind when she thinks of her father’s famous Caesar salad. Yet, the specifics of the recipe remain a mystery, a puzzle pieced together through the memories of others.
The Mystery of the Caesar Salad
What made her father’s Caesar salad so special? Was it the wooden bowl, as her mother suggests? Or perhaps the whole grain mustard, as someone else recalls? The fresh egg, says another. Chang never tasted her father’s salad when he was alive, but the memories of it linger, a testament to the power of food as a connector of people and emotions.
Her father, not much of a cook, had his own unique culinary style. He knew how to grill, how to smother steamed crab in spices, and how to order at a restaurant. But his Caesar salad, a dish he never shared with his daughter, has become a legend in its own right. People remember it, they talk about it, and Chang finds herself asking everyone but her father: what went into that salad? Does hers come even close?
The Desire to Preserve Memories
Chang’s fascination with her father’s salad is more than just a quest for the perfect recipe. It’s a desire to preserve the memories of her loved ones, to keep their ideas and their impact alive even after they’re gone. She thinks often of what will happen to her own recipes when she dies, a fear that drives her to can, cure, freeze, and ferment, to spend her life ensuring that her food lives on.
This desire is not unique to Chang. It’s a universal human experience, a longing to be remembered, to leave a mark on the world. As she puts it, it’s the bathroom tag in sharpie, the etching beneath a dining room table or school desk, the whisper: please, please, don’t forget about me?
Chang’s friend Suzanne, in her late eighties, understands this desire all too well. She keeps alive a fig tree clipping given to her by a friend who died of AIDS in the 80s. The fig branch, clipped from Plato’s Academy in Athens, Greece, and smuggled back to the states, is now a symbol of her friend’s enduring presence. When Chang left Suzanne’s apartment, she was given a clipping of the fig, a piece of Suzanne to keep with her. It’s a powerful reminder of how food, like plants, can be a connection to the past, a way to keep loved ones close.
The Power of Food as Love
Food is love, and that is not hyperbole or inflation. Chang fed her wife elaborate frittatas and a warm, winter stew when they first started dating. She labored over that stew for a whole day, purchased a military-grade thermos, and overnighted it to her wife in Texas so that when she opened it, steam rolled out, the meal still hot. It was a ridiculous gesture, one that earned Chang the nickname TK Suavé, but it worked. Years later, her wife married her.
This is the power of food. It’s not just about nourishment; it’s about connection, about building root systems, about propagating love however we best know how. Soil, seed, bud; pan, salt, plate. It is love, to feed someone.
Chang’s Caesar salad may not be her father’s, even when she uses his wooden bowl. But it is a rebuttal, a resistance, to an end. It’s a way to keep her father’s memory alive, to ask person after person after person: How did he make it and why was it good? The act of asking is perhaps more important than the taste itself. It’s a way to keep the conversation going, to keep the memory alive.
