On a recent Easter holiday, SweetArt Bakeshop’s owner Reine Bayoc hosted her extended family. True to her vegetarian lifestyle—superbly showcased at her shop—Bayoc prepared the feast without meat. Although her mother happily relinquished control over the holiday, she still smuggled in a pot of chicken wings, holding fast to her food traditions.
While the story’s humor makes one smile, the fact that Bayoc’s mother died three months ago adds a poignant heft. Never before have memories of her mother and food been more intertwined, so much so that Bayoc has changed the focus of a memoir she’s been working on about food and family, as her husband Cbabi predicted she would do the day after her mother passed.
Imagining her mother feeling out of place at a standard cooking class, where one learns healthy alternatives to traditional dishes, Bayoc dreamed up a class series for people like her mom who need “to learn how to cook differently, how to cut the cholesterol and fat, how to eat not in an effort to extend their lives but in an effort to help them feel better because no one knows when their time is up,” all in a safe space.
Beginning this Sunday, September 23, Bayoc will hold free—yes, free—cooking classes once a month, after church, between 3 and 5 PM. The series’ title, “The Love and Magic Cooking Club,” reveals Bayoc’s literary aesthetic, while its subtitle, “Reinventing the Black Kitchen,” provides a purpose and demographic until now absent in the St. Louis culinary education scene. Bayoc explained, “A lot of local food classes aren’t aimed at the African-American palate, and a lot of the classes don’t have African Americans in them.”
Bayoc envisions much more than a typical cooking class: she hopes to foster an “environment that’s community based where you feel like you can talk about anything.” That might mean trying a new food like eggplant in the comfort of like-minded people or having a safe place to vent about a hard day at work.
“People get so emotional about their food,” Bayoc said, noting that she understands what it means to use food for comfort when feeling overwhelmed or tired. Her goal, then, will be to teach people not only how to cook more healthily on the cheap, but to try to gain some control over chaotic lives that routinely lead to overeating—something she said often plagues African Americans: “We are the ones who tend to suffer more from high blood pressure and diabetes that we feel have become part of life, but they don’t have to be.”
For more information about the classes, email Bayoc at info@sweetartstl.com. SweetArt 2203 S. 39th Street 314-771-4278 info@sweetartstl.com First class: September 23
