A Funny Little Love Affair with Southern Cooking

Currently I am reading a novel by Donna Tartt called The Little Friend. It came out in 2002 and honestly I have trying to read this novel for a while. Mainly because the cover looked really intriguing, so haunting and mysterious. It shows a close-up of an old-style-looking doll whose eye is looking to the side in a worried expression. The novel is about a young woman named Harriet who is still grappling with the death of her brother, Robin, after he was found hanging dead from a tree when he was a child. Harriet asks around about his murder but no one seems to know what to tell her. The novel takes place in Mississippi in the 1970s, and as I was reading it for some reason the idea of Southern cooking came up. It is totally random, but I kept thinking about Southern cooking, and it reminded me of Paula Deen. As a child I loved watching Paula Deen’s cooking on the Food Network. She had this one recipe I was obsessed with called Not Your Mama’s Banana Pudding, and in my pre-vegan days I craved some of this banana pudding. I was quite fortunate a few years down the road to have joined a volunteer orchestra because one of the moms of the participants sold this delicious banana pudding in these tubs. It was a delicious creamy yellow mixture of banana pudding, topped with Nilla wafers and whipped cream, that had me craving at least ten tubs if I had my druthers and could buy all the banana pudding in the world. It was pure goodness, and of course my poor vegan stomach couldn’t stomach that delicious dish anymore, but when I had it it felt like serious Southern comfort food. Also watching Paula Deen making doughnuts in the Dutch oven was a treat. I then begged my parents if I could make doughnuts in the Dutch oven. I can’t remember if I even went through with that plan, but it was a great idea while it lasted.

And in all honesty my vegan ass still loves the smell of Southern fried chicken and other Southern foods. Even if I can’t eat them. Hearing the sizzle of the drumsticks as they hit the deep fryer, tasting the key lime pie in that little Flying Fish diner in Arkansas as I paused to make room for my stomach, that fried catfish po’boy dunked in tartar sauce digesting itself in my stomach. Smelling that spicy sizzle of steaming crayfish piled high atop a mountain of butter-drenched corn-on-the-cob. At least I still can eat things like grits, cornbread and collard greens. You can never go wrong with those. And I love to put maple syrup on my grits, and vegan butter. I used to put veggie sausages but then I found out that the veggie sausages had egg whites in them, so I stopped eating them. My favorite Southern favorite? Eggs and biscuits. Of course, it’s not an exclusive Southern favorite because plenty of people in the West, East, and North eat eggs and biscuits, but somehow it just always made me feel Southern.

Of course, overtime and after a much-needed continuous education about racism and antebellum slavery (sorry, Paula Deen), I have had to reform my love affair for Southern food and the South. But even with my reforming education and changing perspective I still savor the delectable creaminess of piping hot 20-minute Quaker grits on a Sunday morning, rivers of melted butter and sugary maple syrup traversing those mountains of white hominy. I still love a good vegan version of country fried steak at the vegan diner in Chicago. I still chow down on collard greens and fluffy cornbread even without the eggs in it. I’m just gonna try to be more woke while I eat them.

Author: The Arts Are Life

I am a writer and musician. Lover of music, movies, books, art, and nature. View all posts by The Arts Are Life