Taco Seasoning — Brenda’s Folgers Can Blend, Passed Down by Feel

The funeral was Saturday. April 22nd. New Birth Missionary Baptist Church. Over four hundred people came. Four hundred people who knew Brenda Jackson's name, who had eaten at her table, who had been fed by her hands, who knew that the woman in the casket — wearing her good wig, her best dress, looking like she was just resting, just tired, just needing a nap — was someone who had spent her entire life making sure other people were full.

I delivered the eulogy. I don't know how. I stood at the pulpit and I looked at four hundred faces and I opened my mouth and I talked about the Folgers can. The seasoning blend. Garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, cayenne. How she kept it on the counter. How she taught me to season by feel, not by measure. How every meal she ever made started with a pinch from that can. How the can is still on her counter. How it will always be on her counter. How the recipe is in my hands now, and in Jasmine's hands, and in the hands of seven girls at New Birth who learned to fry chicken because Brenda Jackson raised a daughter who believed that cooking is love made visible.

I made it through. Barely. My voice cracked on "She taught me everything" and I stopped and breathed and the choir started humming "His Eye Is on the Sparrow" underneath my words and I kept going because Mama told me to keep going. "Don't stop because of me." So I didn't stop.

The repast was in the fellowship hall. Every church woman in Brenda's orbit cooked something — fried chicken, mac and cheese, greens, potato salad, cakes, pies, enough food to feed an army. They made her recipes. Women I barely knew walked up to me with covered dishes and said, "Your mama taught me this." A woman from the choir made Mama's peach cobbler. It was almost perfect. The crust was slightly thick. Mama would have noticed. Mama would have said something. I ate a piece and tasted every imperfection and loved it.

Curtis didn't eat. He sat in the corner of the fellowship hall and nodded at people and shook hands and received condolences with the stoic grace of a man who has lost the only woman he ever loved and will spend the rest of his life in the aftermath of that sentence. I brought him a plate. He looked at it. He looked at me. He said, "Not yet." I said, "Okay, Daddy." I sat next to him. We didn't talk. We just sat. Two people who loved the same woman, sitting in the wreckage of her absence, not eating, not talking, just being.

The Folgers can is still on her counter. I haven’t moved it. I don’t know that I ever will. But I wrote this down — the blend she kept in it, the one that started every single thing she ever cooked — because that’s what she would have wanted. She never measured. She just knew. I’m writing it down now so that Jasmine knows, and so that the seven girls at New Birth know, and so that one day somebody who never met Brenda Jackson can stand at their own stove and season by feel and not know why it feels like church.

Brenda’s Folgers Can Seasoning Blend

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: None | Total Time: 5 minutes | Servings: About 20 (makes roughly 1/2 cup)

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons paprika (smoked or sweet — Brenda used sweet)
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder
• 1 tablespoon onion powder
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (or more, to feel)
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

Instructions

1. Combine. Add all spices to a small bowl. Whisk together until fully blended and no streaks of a single spice remain.
2. Taste and adjust. Pinch a little between your fingers and taste it against the back of your hand. More cayenne if it needs heat. More paprika if it needs warmth. That’s how she did it.
3. Store. Transfer to an airtight jar, a clean spice container, or — if you have one — a repurposed Folgers can. Keeps at room temperature for up to 6 months.
4. Use it. Start with 2 tablespoons per pound of chicken, beef, or pork. Use it on fried chicken, in greens, on roasted vegetables, in ground meat for tacos. Use it on everything. That was the whole point.

Nutrition (per serving, approximately 1 teaspoon)

Calories: 8 | Protein: 0g | Fat: 0g | Carbs: 2g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 115mg