Trisha Yearwood Reflects on Mother’s Legacy of Cooking, Kindness, and Family

Published: December 14, 2022

Trisha Yearwood Reflects on Mother’s Legacy of Cooking, Kindness, and Family

By Movieguide® Staff

Singer Trisha Yearwood recently shared how cooking became a second career, just behind her Grammy award-winning music career.

Yearwood, who is married to country singer Garth Brooks, said that her mother taught her everything she knows about cooking and the kitchen.

“Cooking is right up there with singing for me. It’s become a second career. I learned from the best—my mom, Gwendolyn,” Yearwood shared in a recent article published by Guideposts. “An elementary teacher by day and cake decorator on the side, she was an excellent cook. Mama and my sister, Beth, and I compiled some of our favorite recipes—hundreds handwritten on index cards, more scrawled on napkins—and shared the stories behind them in our first cookbook.”

“Those recipes and stories have become even more important and special now that our mom has passed,” she added. “After the success of the first cookbook, Food Network came calling, and now I’ve done 17 seasons of Trisha’s Southern Kitchen and written three more cookbooks with the help of my sister. Cooking has become a wonderful way to honor our parents’ memories.”

Yearwood said that while her husband does not have the same wealth of knowledge about recipes, she is thankful for his effort to help.

“Garth sees the benefits in all of this for him. He does cook, but he doesn’t really do anything fancy,” she explained. “If we have company for dinner, he’ll say, ‘Okay, what needs to be chopped? What needs grilling? How can I help?’ We both know I’m the recipe gal, but he’s the ‘whatever it takes guy’ and I love him for it.”

Just like cooking, the Christmas season brought Yearwood’s family together, she recalled.

“I grew up on a farm in the small town of Monticello, Georgia, where Christmas felt like something out of a storybook. Beth and I would go with Daddy to chop down the perfect cedar tree in the woods. Without fail, we’d discover we had picked one that was way too tall and we always had to drag the tree back out to the carport to trim it down. I guess measuring would have taken the fun out of the ritual,” she said.

Yearwood said that she tries to express the connection between her current love for cooking and the community of her childhood in her cookbooks.

“Our Methodist church had a beautiful Christmas Eve service. In the processional out, we each carried a candle and sang ‘Silent Night’ a capella under the stars. I tried to capture that memory in one of my favorite Christmas cooking episodes. My sister and I made the Christmas Eve meal, and then we cut to a little candlelit church service, where I led the congregation in ‘Silent Night.’ It was just like home. The preacher and his wife came back to the house for dessert, a cranberry pear crumble,” she explained.

She added: “Mama’s Christmas Eve meal was impeccable—a classic ham, green beans, potato salad and her ambrosia served alongside fresh coconut cake. She made her breakfast casserole on Christmas Eve too, so all she had to do the next morning was pop it in the oven. I can still smell the sausage, egg and cheese mixture wafting into the living room as we unwrapped our gifts.”

Yearwood said that kindness was the greatest lesson her mother taught her, and is something that is expressed in many forms, especially cooking for the ones we love.

“I hope the kindness we show one another this season is a practice we can all carry throughout the year. Each of us has the essential ingredients to do that, in our own unique way. Love one another,” she said.