In preparation for yesterday’s run of recipes, I fried onions in bacon fat Saturday. I have never fried in bacon fat before. Butter, yes. Various oils, yes. Bacon fat, no.

I have been feeling, in the words of one of my tweets, like an “overstuffed foie gras duck”. I’ve been trying to gain weight. I dropped a few pounds since I’ve been home. Maybe the medication has done this, as it has been known to cause weight loss in some (and weight gain in others). On top of which I lost an additional 25 pounds in the last two years, through no effort of my own. Weight loss seems to coincide with me going off medication, and creeps back on when resumed. With this one, weight creeps off. I like having curves, and I am a bit perplexed. So I have been stuffing my face with carbs and fat. Bring on the croissants, bring on the cheese, bring on the peanut butter banana smoothies.

My body staged a protest Saturday. I ran to the bathroom after the customary breakfast smoothie. I cooked a lunch of bacon parmesan risotto and baked buttered salmon. Another bathroom trip. I was on the couch with nausea all afternoon. The Met Opera broadcast of Der Rosenkavalier, one of my favorites, did make things a smidge better. Antacids made things A LOT better.

This is all coinciding with this blog post I’ve been dreaming up, which uses large amounts of bacon fat and butter. (Lord, give me strength.) I started with that bacon fat experimentation on Saturday, from a book called Princess Pamela’s Soul Food Cookbook, copyrighted 1969. It was written by Princess Pamela. Her first place was a small spot in Manhattan called Princess Pamela’s Little Kitchen. The cookbook dispenses her luscious recipes and wise sayings in equal measure. Here is one I HAVE to share. Foodies, please take note:

“This social type woman

she asked me if I

read Ess-ko-fee-yay

and I told her

I’d catch it when they

made a movie out of it.”

Hahaha, all pretention goes out the window.

I wrote that these recent blog posts are to honor my father and his upcoming birthday. Well, he loves soul food. And you really can’t get much around here. I mean, I live in rural western New York. Seeing a black person is a rarity. I spot one now, and I want to jump for joy and hug them. I know, a little naive and extreme. But a black man was my home not too long ago. I moved from a place where I was the minority to a place where I am the major majority.

And I feel it. You know that white privilege thing? I am now more aware of it back home. You take it for granted until you experience what its like to not be the only thing that exists. Being with the difference makes me more conscious of what I know. And what I don’t know. You can take the girl out of the white, but you can’t take the white out of the girl. Yes, we are in the age of Obama, but there are still undercurrents which can’t be ignored.

So yes, soul food. Can this white girl make soul food? I wanted to try. Though approaching it is sort of like I’ve approached my Billie Holiday songbook. Some songs are universal, but Strange Fruit is a song I will never sing because it doesn’t belong to me. Soul food doesn’t belong to me either. But, as usual, like a puppy dog running up to a pond, I will dive in this time. I am just too curious. And the food is so damn good.

Yesterday started out in calamity. I expect things to work, like an oven. Or a digital camera. Nope on both counts. Our electric stove’s “motherboard” is screwed up, and the oven apparently fails if you go over 400 degrees. My digital camera kept displaying the low battery signal, no matter what batteries I shoved in. I was very close to a conniption fit. (Still working on that patience thing. Thanks for putting up with me, Mom.) Well, improvisation happened, like it usually has to in these situations: adjustment of cooking times and ekeing out of battery juice. (In the case of the camera, I am blaming the batteries. Never buy batteries from the dollar store. Ever.)

But everything turned out nicely. I started with a battle plan. And an FYI: I am not going to include any recipes. The book is worth buying. You can get it for cheap online. (Addendum: Maybe not. A brief scan of Amazon and ebay indicates outrageous prices right now. Adding recipes, however, would make this post too freakin’ long. You may have luck at a fleamarket, garage sale, or used book store.)

The yam biscuit recipe was when the oven pooped out and we had to fuss with it. In my mind, I envisioned giant fluffy biscuits like I get anywhere else, but mine turned out smaller and more compact. Still very tasty. We ate them all except for those meant for the big feast.

The blueberry cobbler was next, made with frozen blueberries picked from a local blueberry farm last summer.

Next up was the sauce for the ribs and the ribs themselves. I usually have trepidation approaching major meat. (The one time I cooked an entire Thanksgiving, I think I had a back-up rotisserie chicken for the turkey.) But it came out beautifully. Best ribs yet!

And collards. And grits. We couldn’t wait for the grits, so this is what we ate.

Grits did ensue, but how does one make food porn out of grits? They can’t be photographed.

We ate. I ate food soul. Not soul food. Body issues be damned, race issues be damned, everything else be damned. In such a moment, nothing really matters at all.