Mary Hunter's Marinade Stick

Mary Hunter has always been happy to cook for her congregation at the Yes Lord Church in Gary, Ind. Her recipes, she told me, come directly from God. “I don’t have a cookbook,” she said. “God gives me my own.” Prayer is “where I get 99 percent of my recipes.”

Mrs. Hunter, who is 73, likes to cook big roasts for her church, “and if I had a difficult piece of meat I might marinate it in some beer and celery” with a blend of her secret seasonings. When she learned that she had diabetes and high blood pressure, though, she had to cut out her salty marinades and cook the meat more blandly.

I was writing down some recipes and God said to me that I should take that ink pen and stick holes all though it and put a clip on one side so that you can open it” — lengthwise — “and then put your onions and your garlic and your aromatics down the middle and put it inside your meat — then, you won’t have to eat bland foods."

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