I have to give my father credit for one thing: when he wasn’t on a brutal rampage of terror, abusing his family both physically and mentally, he was a damn good cook.
Growing up in Depression Era rural Oklahoma, as poor Choctaws living in Waurika, he was taught at an early age how to make delicious due with some flour and water, a bit of lard, a basket of greens and yams, and if you’re lucky, some fatback to dump in a pot of beans; it’s a starvation-inspired magic trick that, though he’s long dead, is a constant craving I can still find in the area soul food joints that continue on in that tradition of rustic eats, now, thankfully, more a divine delicacy than a life-or-death situation.