Eat Me Some Soul Food

I’m fixing to eat me some soul food.

I woke up this morning craving grits and gravy, collard greens and pinto beans. I’m talking about ham hocks floating on top of a pot of black eyed peas with crackling corn bread in a black cast iron skillet all washed down with a glass of buttermilk.

I haven’t had a glass of real fresh buttermilk in a lot of years. But I still remember the tangy taste of it with little tiny chunks of butter floating in it fresh out of the churn.

I also remember that pone of crunchy, brown corn bread coming out of the oven of a wood stove and what a warm and tasty companion it was with that glass of buttermilk.

Once a week that was supper to us. That corn bread made from meal we had ground from the corn we had shucked and shelled, and the buttermilk from our old milk cow after my momma had churned it and skimmed the butter off the top of the milk in the churn.

Oh, and let’s don’t forget that butter. A hunk of it on top of that hot cornbread was a beautiful site as it melted and sunk into the big wedge on my plate.

Sometimes there was a pot of peas or butter beans left on the stove. I liked the juice from them. I would spoon that juice from the pot onto a big chunk of cornbread, fork it into my mouth and chase it with the buttermilk.

A piece of that butter was also mighty good on a hot baked sweet tater. I would pull one out of the oven and juggle the hot globe while I walked across the floor until I could drop it on my plate.

The next morning those big old cathead buttermilk biscuits would come out of the oven just bursting open like they were asking for some blue ribbon cane syrup to be poured on them out of a tin bucket.

Later on we would use a finger to bore a hole in one of those biscuits and fill it up with syrup. I have a friend named Jack who wore one of his fingers down to a nub doing that.

After thinking about all that great food I decided I better step on the scales and check my weight before getting started.

When I saw the results, I’m sad to say, I’m fixing to just have me a bowl of corn flakes.