Cashew Milk — The Simplest Thing Someone Can Make When the Stove Stays Cold

The kitchen is cold. I have not turned on the stove in two weeks. This is the longest I have gone without cooking since I was eight years old and Mama put a spoon in my hand and said stir, and I stirred, and I have been stirring ever since — forty years of stirring, of heat, of the constant warmth that a working kitchen gives a house the way a beating heart gives a body life. The heart has stopped. The kitchen is cold. The house smells like nothing.

Nothing is the worst smell. I did not know this before. I thought the worst smell was burned food or spoiled milk or the chemical smell of the nursing home where Daddy sits and does not know my name. But nothing is worse. Nothing means the stove is off. Nothing means no one is cooking. Nothing means the house has given up, the way a person gives up, quietly, without announcement, just the absence of effort, the absence of heat, the absence of the specific smell that tells you: someone is here, someone is working, someone loves you enough to stand at a stove and make something from nothing. I am the someone who is not standing. I am the someone who has stopped.

The church women took over the kitchen. Sister Thompson and Sister Williams and Sister Davis and the rest of them — the women who have been my team, my soldiers, my kitchen crew for years — they stepped in without being asked, the way church women do, the way I have stepped in for others a hundred times. They are cooking for Wednesday Bible study. They are cooking for Sunday fellowship. They are cooking for the homeless feeding that I started and cannot sustain and cannot think about because thinking about anything that is not Marcus is a betrayal of the grief, and the grief demands everything, all of me, every thought, every breath, every moment that used to be filled with cooking now filled with the specific emptiness of a mother without her youngest child.

Calvin eats microwaved meals. Lean Cuisines from the freezer, the ones that come in black plastic trays with instructions I have never read because I have never needed instructions — I have Mama's recipes in my hands and God's recipes in my heart and I have never microwaved a meal in my life until now, until the life that does not include cooking because the life that included cooking also included Marcus and that life is over.

Destiny comes every day. She sits with me on the couch. She does not say it will be okay because she is smart enough to know it will not be okay, it will never be okay, and the people who say it will be okay have never buried a child and do not know that okay is a country I have been deported from and cannot return to. She just sits. She brings me water. She makes sure I drink it. She is my daughter and she is keeping me alive the way I kept her alive when she was small — with presence, with patience, with the stubborn refusal to leave the room.

Destiny brought me water every day, and I drank it because she stood there and watched me drink it. One morning she put a handful of cashews in a bowl of water on the counter and said, “These need to soak.” She did not say she was making anything. She did not ask me to help. But the next day she put them in the blender with fresh water and a little vanilla and she poured it into a glass and handed it to me, and it was cold and sweet and it was not nothing — it was something, made without a stove, made without heat, made by someone who loved me enough to stand in my cold kitchen and make something from nothing.

Cashew Milk

Prep Time: 5 minutes (plus 4 hours soaking) | Cook Time: 0 minutes | Total Time: 4 hours 5 minutes | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 1 cup raw cashews
• 4 cups water (for blending)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup or honey (optional)
• 1 pinch sea salt

Instructions

1. Soak the cashews. Place cashews in a bowl and cover with water by two inches. Let soak for at least 4 hours or overnight. For a quicker soak, cover with boiling water and soak for 1 hour.
2. Drain and rinse. Drain the soaking water and rinse the cashews thoroughly under cool running water.
3. Blend. Add the soaked cashews, 4 cups of fresh water, vanilla extract, maple syrup if using, and salt to a blender. Blend on high for 1 to 2 minutes until completely smooth and creamy.
4. Strain if desired. Cashew milk is naturally smooth enough to skip straining, but for an extra-silky texture, pour through a nut milk bag or fine mesh strainer.
5. Store. Transfer to a sealed jar or bottle and refrigerate. Shake well before each use. Keeps for up to 4 days in the refrigerator.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 160 | Protein: 5g | Fat: 12g | Carbs: 10g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 40mg