Food for the soul

Oct. 29, 2009

Dear Julie,

Every culture has its own version of soul food. In Latin America everything begins and ends with rice and beans. In India, yogurt and lentils and flat bread are basic. A winery nearby serves Swedish soul food, delicious meatballs and the like.

Soul food nourishes the soul, makes us say "mmm."

In America soul food is a mixture of African-American and Southern cooking that begins with pork, okra, collard greens and such and spreads everything with butter.

A St. Louis restaurant called Sweetie Pie's serves soul food. The portions and the plates are bigger at Sweetie Pies, maybe because there's no going back for seconds, and you'd want to. Last weekend at Sweetie Pie's my meal included roast beef, dressing with gravy, macaroni and cheese and green beans, and a black cherry soda.

I did not feel guilty before or afterward. Eating at a soul food restaurant is guilt-free. It's not as if you could choose from the healthy part of the menu. Of course, you did choose to stop your car in front of the restaurant.

The food at Sweetie Pie's is served cafeteria-style by busy women who have no time for anyone to stand there making up their mind. The menu is displayed in big letters on the wall behind the steam table. Sunday the choice of meats is meat loaf, roast beef, fried chicken wings or baked chicken. The choices change every day. The side dishes are always the same. You've been standing in line for 10 minutes. Be ready to order.

At the end of the line, as you balance a tray laden with delights that can hardly wait to be tasted, a waiter meets you, takes your tray and guides you to a perfect table by the window.

Our accommodating waiter's gold teeth sparkled when he smiled. He brought us glasses with ice and joked with us. One member of our party is a vegetarian. He had okra, collard greens, dressing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, rice and gravy to choose from and presumed that few of those dishes were pristinely vegetarian but didn't mind. Some vegetarians are sticklers, some aren't. Some eat Jell-O.

The cornbread didn't need butter. It glistened. The macaroni and cheese probably contained enough butter, cheese and milk to make a dairy farmer think about sleeping in. Saltiness also wasn't in absence.

Another member of our party e-mailed a dietitian friend a photograph of our plates as we were about to begin eating. I know the dietitian, too. She would say, Go ahead if the food is worth it, knowing you'll account for your calorie binge somehow, either by cutting back on calories for the rest of the day, working out a bit extra or perhaps both.

A practical dietitian.

Most everyone walks out with leftovers. I could eat only half my meal and brought DC home her own dinner of meat loaf -- her favorite meal -- dressing, collard greens and macaroni and cheese. Some of it was too salty for DC's palate. Hank and Lucy gobbled up her leftovers.

The owner of Sweetie Pie's used to be one of Ike Turner's backup singers, the Ikettes. She knows from soul.

"When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy," Rumi wrote.

Eating at Sweetie Pie's is a joy.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a former reporter for the Southeast Missourian.