What will WE be having for dinner?

So I was cooking up a wonderful meal after a strenuous day of trying to get that pay. Needed to vent I realized I also had an appetite for conversation, at least the distant convos we of the 21st century (are we not leaping faster by now, or slowing down?) are apt to. I pulled out my iPhone and was about to text my good friend to ask if she preferred a particular food outside of her own. Correction, I was about to demand that she choose a food that she would prefer on occasion (I believe this point is important, later I hope you will see why). It then dawned on me, as I prepared a defense to the expected switch-a-roo, that I myself could easily name a food that I preferred besides my “own”. Indian, Jamaican (extra oxtail gravy, please), Liberian...quote on quote “Chinese”; but what did I have to prefer these to?

So I began to ponder.

-A wonderful bowl of vodka, herbed spaghetti. In sauce that does not lack, positioned next to that good ole spinach green. Organic olive oil made an appearance also. Bon Appetit!-

But this delicious meal,

Or am I supposed to claim my set? Biscuits and mac & cheese all day ya heard? I mean, if you make it vegan anyway cause honestly that cheese and my stomach got beef (what a sentence). Yet even at that, is it Soul Food? Is that my calling? Will that make my fellow Afro-Americans on this here East coast of the USA, proud? EHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

After a couple of bites, it became a real delima. Walk up to a Jamaican. Ask them what we eat. Mcdonalds, Burger King. Well what do you eat, if you don’t mind me asking, sir. “Rice and jerk chicken. Some porridge for breakfast.” That might be stereotypical, but you get the point.

So what do I say? Mimic the jollaf wars with my potato salad (hold then mf grapes Susan)? It just lacks the glory it seems. Or am I looking at it through my limited lense. I don’t perhaps doubt.

Who comes to my country to try my candied yams and sugared grits? Does Amsterdam yield such gold? Do the hills of down under produce such? Can all the spice of India withstand the cool of my cherry sugar water?

I can, and will bodly defend. At the same time I question. Why is this food my identity. Is my story no greater. A product of colonizing? Or rather the correction of it [i.e seasoned chicken. End argument or see me at 3pm outside (we shall have words)].

Or am I as my yams, candied. I used to be hearty as my maize.

Seeing this delima, where are the culinary arts of my people over here on the East coast of the USA, repping with our fist up, going? What story can we tell?

Let’s get it poppin, just like our maize.