Isolated in her Los Angeles home during the lockdown, Rohina Hoffman takes a metaphorical journey connecting her roots to food through the rituals of daily meals. Recording family members holding dinner ingredients turned into a way of expressing a new, deep gratitude for that food: she often thought of all the effort and all the hands that had touched the produce before it reached her family.

Food also became the means of connecting with her family and of reconnecting with her Indian roots more profoundly. As part of the generation that immigrates as children rather than as adults, she has struggled with identity and with a feeling of otherness. The frames of food and family are seasoned with her poetry, and her essay, published in English and Hindi, serves as a bridge between the two projects.