I smiled, thinking of the "new" natural food stores. Black people, especially in the South, have long based their lives around a vegetable-heavy diet, and shunned store-bought ingredients. Down-home cooking, or soul food, is really based on purposeful combinations of home-grown produce or livestock. Poverty has altered that wholesome, natural diet, especially for those in the cities, who have come to rely on cheap starches and drive-through junk, leading in turn to a high incidence of heart disease, obesity and related problems. Older African Americans, at least the ones like Miss Maidie, who haven't been trampled beyond repair, still think of food as "good for you" in the most fundamental sense. The white society which once enslaved them has not yet poisoned them. Like the Rastafarians of the Caribbean, they have stayed close to the earth, which they can trust, and which is, as the ancient priests of voudou knew, the source of mortal power and health.
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It had gotten into twilight by the time we finished talking. I decided to drive back to Meridian for the evening. En route, the June rain turned to pelting sheets. The radio talked about tornadoes in Alabama, which wasn't that far away. I got stuck behind a line of pickups and we slowed to ten mph, barely able to see through the downpour. Chunks of pine branches blew out of the forest to litter the highway. Tornado bank clouds of black and green rolled up, filled with lightning flashes.
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I didn't quite outrun it. I got back to my motel tired, wet and hungry. Talking to Miss Maidie had deterred me from grabbing a quick greaseburger en route. Another Sarah's Kitchen would've been perfect but I was too exhausted to look for one, so settled on a Thai restaurant called Faraway Places, only four blocks down. I sat at the bar, studying the many Buddhist statues and altars along the walls. Kind of unusual in Missisippi. I said so to the owner, a Thai woman named Tim, as she took my order for lemon grass soup. She laughed and said she was aware of that. We talked a little, and I asked if she knew anything about voudou.
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