Who's Your Mama, Are You Catholic, and Can You Make a Roux?

I suppose I should get to the part where I start a blog and call it Southern Fried Femme.  I'll start with the Southern. 

I was born and raised in Louisiana.  By general account, I was a good girl.  At times, too smart for my own good.  At others, a real smart aleck (alleck? alec? is that an actual word?)  I went to Mass, I (mostly) minded my mama, and I learned to make a roux at a very young age. 

I was different, though.  In my high school government class, our teacher gave us a quiz to help us figure out if we were democrat or republican.  Turns out, I was the second most liberal girl in the eleventh grade at the Academy of the Sacred Heart that year.  My friends were a mix of scandalized and amused.

I left the South for college.  I'm sure I'll get into the reasons at some point.  There, being Southern was a novelty.  I cooked for my new Yankee friends and got lots of attention. 

When I turned out to be sort of gay (I'll get to that later as well), my queerness and my politics became more of a priority than my heritage.  Since they seemed mutually exclusive, I gave up on being Southern.  I stopped watching football.  I distanced myself from the uncles barking about the cult of environmentalism.  I went home only in small doses.

One thing I never lost was the food.  Gumbo always made me happy.  Beignets always meant a party.  Fried chicken didn't have politics.  Food, especially of the Southern ilk, remained a comfort and connection.  Like an old friend.