Slave Food

I spent most of the day in the kitchen cooking Sunday dinner for my family. It was one of the rare occasions we all get together, and it was my big debut as a master chef. I made all the classics: mac-n-cheese, collard greens, chicken and turkey wings. Black eyes peas. Cornbread. Rolls. Ox tails and okra. In short, I threw down, stuck my foot in it – every dish a culinary explosion, my blood and sweat instead of salt and pepper. And five hours later, we all sat down, said grace, and started to dig in. The table was silent  – always a good sign, because that means everybody is too busy moaning over my delicious food to be distracted with conversation.  I was feeling good, proud like, until I look over at my cousin, whose plate is full of salad.

I didn’t make a salad. Where’d she get salad?

I didn’t think too much of it, figuring she wanted to start with some roughage before she started shoveling down the good stuff. But by the time the rest of the family was ready for the peach cobbler, she still hadn’t touched any of the dinner I’d prepared. Not only that – but she was now in the refrigerator looking for lunchmeat so she could make a sandwich.

“What the hell?” I roared. “ All you ate so far is a salad – which we all know wasn’t on the table before you got here – and now you wanna make a sandwich? Is there something wrong with the food I made?”

“Oh honey, I don’t eat slave food,” she said curtly as she pulled out the mustard and cheese.

Now, anyone who knows me can image how pissed I was at that moment. Because not only was this heffa rummaging through my refrigerator without asking, but she had just insinuated that I, by cooking a loving meal for my family, had become The Oppressor. That the rest of us were bamboozled, led astray by our appetites and that only she held the wisdom to avoid the trappings of soul food.

Everyone else at the table rolled their eyes at her or shrugged their shoulders before they all broke into laughter. Their general attitude was hey, more for me – but I couldn’t let it roll off that easy. I took it personally that she referred to the cooking of our mothers and grandmothers – my cooking! – as slave food. I barely spoke to her for the rest of the night, and shot dirty looks in-between rounds of Scene-It. But even in my righteous indignation, I knew I wasn’t really angry with her.  I was angry because I knew she was right.

Soul food is an African American tradition. Food that feeds the soul of the family, as I was taught. Most of us grew up with our mothers and grandmothers in the kitchen, the smells of pork and lard filling the house on Sunday mornings, our stomachs rumbling and our tempers hot as we knew we wouldn’t be eating any of it until later on that day.  Cooking it now, most families try for healthier options – using turkey instead of pork – and view the dishes as a celebration of our ancestors, and the creative options they came up with to survive. The dinners and holidays where family from far and wide comes together, there is no question of what the meal will be.  I suppose this is true of any ethnic family – Indian, Ethiopian, etc – that when it comes time for parties, you know what you’ll be eating.

But the thing that most African Americans don’t talk about is the origin of our soul food. Most of the dishes we’ve come to know, love, and be identified with are from a time when our colored ancestors where slaves. A time in history every black person still holds a quiet secret bitterness over, when ‘Massa’ would only eat the best, and leave the worst pieces– like pigs feet, ham hocks, chitlins – for the slaves to fight over like dogs. The slaves learned how to cook these stuffs, foraged for spices and boiled everything for hours in order to make the pieces edible. Weeds cooked down with pork fat become tasty collards. Parts of the pig best left in the dirt became seasoning, and the small bits of meat in a diet.  Our ancestors learned how to make due with what they had, and over time, these dishes became our history, our culture, even though the basis of every bite is rooted in poverty and subjugation.

It seems as though every colored people have this vice – eating the foodstuffs oppression served up and now calling it a part of the culture. Hawaiians have it with white flour, Mexicans with menudo, Native Americans with fried foods and alcohol; the list goes on. Somehow, our ancestral subjugations have become the basis of our memory (“this is what we’ve always done.”), forgetting that our people, whatever the culture, had a long line of history before tyranny and feudalism entered the picture.

So now that “we have overcome”, why are we still eating slave food?

When I first asked myself this question, the simple answer was “because it’s good! Because that’s what I know how to cook. Because that what my mama ate, and what her mama ate…” But truly, how “good” is a food drenched in fat and grease, food made from unwanted parts, foods created out of such desperation and negativity that it cant help but to carry that same energy?   In this way, it seems as though the perils of slavery are still killing us, still holding us down – only now the Master is no longer the white man or the dollar, but rather our people’s misconstrued sense of tradition.  These foods are literally poisoning our bodies, and we continue to serve these big plates of death at every family function.

When I judge my meals from that standpoint, its ridiculous to me that I would put anything into my system with such a negative rooting. Why would I feed my body poison? Why would I knowingly ingest low quality? Why would I eat the meat of a tortured and eventually murdered animal?

“Because it’s good! Because that’s what I know how to cook. Because that what my mama ate, and what her mama ate…”

This answer simply won’t work anymore, especially knowing what we do about energy, metaphysics – and the basic functioning of the colon and intestines. The body can hold onto food we ate years ago, and the negative feelings that came in with it.

The basic truth is humanity’s relationship with food has to change – particularly spiritual people. Maintaining a healthy diet is our first step on the spiritual path, because everything we ingest is a literal fuel for the body, the mind, the spirit. The food we eat echoes in our lives, hinders or helps our decisions, our relationships. Our bodies are all we have, and regardless of our weakness of spirit when it comes to food, we can control what we put into them.  From the heaviness of energetically poisoned food to basic white sugar, it all affects us (and if you don’t believe that, just skip your first cup of coffee tomorrow morning). What affects us ripples out and flows through our lives and the lives of others, causing an effect on the world.  And like every relationship gone wrong, the key to saving yourself is first recognizing what is no longer good for you, then finding the strength to let it go.

So does that mean I’m off soul food for good? That I’m moving on to grains and fresh-water fish, eventually embracing the vegan lifestyle?  It’s doubtful.

Extremely doubtful.

I like my chicken fried, my steak bloody, my dessert before the main course. My day doesn’t start without the minimum two espressos. Smoking is awesome – a pink lung is a wasted lung. Somebody pass the orange juice, and don’t forget the Grey Goose.

So no, I don’t think there is a single container of soybeans out there with my name on it.

However, I know I can move past these things. I just have to look at the way ingesting all of those foods make me feel; recognize that just like a drug, I am addicted and these things are destroying my quality of life. I need to check myself in to food rehab, and embrace better choices: eating and cooking organically, finding a kosher butcher, shopping for fresh vegetables instead of frozen. Baby steps. Remembering that my body truly is a temple; that it deserves to be nurtured with the flavors of life instead of the spoils of oppression.

And maybe – just maybe – at the next family dinner, I’ll start with a salad.