On New Year's Day, there is not much open in Clarksdale, Mississippi. There are Bowl Games on at the Delta Amusement and Blues Cafe, where the Arkansas fans are drinking hot coffee, tipping back their chairs and cursing, wondering how a) it got so goddamned cold in Mississippi (28 degrees, bitches), b) how the fuck did Arkansas fuck up so badly, and c) where the hell IS everybody? (Oh, right, it's 28 degrees, and we're in Clarksdale.) I'm not leaving the hotel room, I got a hangover and a sudden urge to lie around and watch Bowl games myself, but my traveling companion is starving at some point, and succumbs to road hunger first. She heads over to the cafe, and her brown Venezuelan skin, and Spanish accent, not for the first time on this trip, raise more than a few eyebrows from the large-belt-buckle-wearing, cowboy-hat-doffing, shyly charming, Southern gentlemen. This is a culture clash in which she has a lot of trouble deciphering the accents, and they hers, but it will all be sorted out over some hot coffee. When she asks what smells so good, and what is it that that gentleman is eating, it turns out he is the co-owner with his wife, and she has cooked up a big pot of black-eyed peas, a traditional southern good luck treat for New Year's. It guarantees good luck all year if you eat black-eyed peas on New Year's, in fact, and she spoons a big heap into a bowl for the Venezuelan, who of course feels compelled to mention that her companion is Jewish, to make her seem less exotic. “Oh, we have some of those here,” they nonchalantly reply. Of course there's some tasty pork in there, and she gives her a bowl to go for me. They don't see many Jews here, especially them what eats pork. And that's not all-the breakfast in the take-out styrofoam container, that we each devour in our motel beds, has eggs, toast, grits, biscuits, a short stack (the butter already politely placed between the pancakes for better dissolvement), homemade, dare I say, delicate, hash browns, and homemade sausage patties. “Now I know why people eat these things,”says someone who has never had anything but frozen. Yeah, pork is its own food group in the south, and Good Luck will be our companion all year.
Day Four of the Raw Foods Cleanse brought quiet. I juiced some carrots. beets. apples. celery, and ginger, then squeezed some tangelo (clementine) juice on top. Really delicious and energizing. Feel 'lighter'. Coffee and booze missed much today, dreaming about espresso and red wine. And Manchego cheese. Had several raw macadamias. My companion spit them out. She'll regret that. For more info on the 21-Day Raw Foods Cleanse, or to play along, go to www.chetday.com I've lost seven pounds, and my skin is positively glowing...
