• Sweet potatoes (often parboiled, sliced and then baked, using sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and butter or margarine, commonly called "candied yams"; also boiled, then pureed and baked into pies).
• Turnip greens (usually cooked with ham hocks, often combined with other greens).
Though soul food originated in the South, they are in every African-American community in the nation, especially in cities with large black populations, such as Chicago, New York, New Orleans, Los Angeles and Washington, DC.
Over the centuries, Soul food are usually cooked and seasoned with pork products, and the fried dishes are usually cooked with hydrogenated vegetable oil ("shortening" or "Crisco"), which is a trans-fat. More modern methods of…