Elesean Fields

I weighed myself this morning and was disappointed that I was two pounds heavier.  I normally weigh in my underoos, but I was in full on pajama mode this a.m.  After a cup of coffee, I thought, "Maybe it's these sweatpants?"  And it was!  I was actually 4 ounces lighter!  Who knew sweatpants weighed so much?

I weigh once every morning, and once every evening (actually, I weigh myself every time I walk into the kitchen, just for giggles.  My scale is kind of cool.) and I average the weights.  I only count my weight twice a week, though, and that I write down with a dry erase marker on my bathroom mirror.  Once a week, I do my measurements.

This does sound compulsive and horrible, I realize, but it's entertainment to me.  See, I may hate muffin top, but since I don't hate me with muffin top, I can be sanguine about my weight and my measurements, and I look at the fluctuations with more interest than upset.  There is a number that I will not allow myself to pass.  I got close to it this last time around, but I beat it to the punch.

Anyway, my sweatpants weigh two pounds.

I forgot to track on The Daily Plate today.  My office had a Southern Food Lunch catered in.  Now listen.  I am from The South.  My family is from Georgia, Alabama, and north Florida (which may as well be Alabama).  I was born in North Carolina and I was weaned on boiled grits.  I know Southern Food.  This was not Southern Food.  This was southern food.

You cannot serve me boiled collards with sad little dollops of back fat in it and tell me that is Greens.  It is not Greens unless it is cooked with tablespoons full of bacon grease and whole whopping bits of bacon or chunks of ham in it, and has pepper sauce on the side.  The pot liquor ought to have a fine sheen of grease making oily rainbows on top.  For heaven's sake, there has to be pot liquor!  You cannot serve greens and cornbread and not give a girl some pot liquor.

You also cannot serve me fried cornbread that is gummy in the middle and call it Cornbread.  No capital letters for you!  Or baked chicken.  Baked chicken is not Southern Food.  Fried Chicken is Southern Food.

I was saddened.  It was a sad day for my mouth.  

I miss my grandparents' and my mother's cooking of my youth.  Before the doctors started saying words like cholesterol and heart disease to them.   I miss breakfasts that went:  Fry the bacon, cook your eggs in the bacon grease, use some bacon grease to mix up your biscuit dough or cornbread batter, and use those to sop up your egg yolk--which you have mixed into your buttery grits.  God, Southern Breakfasts are good.  Don't even get me started on biscuits with syrup and butter.  Or cornbread and milk.  Or tomatoes fresh from the garden, skinned and chopped up into mayonnaise, with salt and cracked pepper.  I'm so hungry now.

Don't try to pass off sweet rice, nasty beef tips, and baked yams as Southern Food.  I will slap your jaws with Paula Deen.   I am not even playing.