When my friend Sarah once told me that fried chicken and okra was soul food after I professed loving them, I stood before her, perplexed. I finally admitted, “Sarah… I hear about ‘soul food’ all of the time but I don’t really know what it means!”

She laughed so hard, slapped her hand on her hip, and said something I’ll never forget: “Girl, you don’t know what soul food is? It’s when you get your feet in there, and your arms in there, and everybody’s in that food!” I remember being delighted with her answer. The only food that I knew of like that was spaghetti, and that’s just because it was so messy it always got all over you.

When I looked it up on my own, I got some really vague answers. Perfunctory definitions included “food traditionally eaten by Southern African-Americans,” and “food such as chitterlings, ham hocks and collard greens.” Not only did these not seem like enough information, they further confused me (what the hell are chitterlings?).

June is actually Soul Food Month—likely because Juneteenth, or June 19, African American Emancipation Day, is this month. So I decided to do a little more research into this mysterious but magical culinary phenomenon. Here is what I discovered:

“Soul” became a connotation for anything that went along with Black culture in the 1960s. But soul food is actually much older than that. It started in Africa, with foods such as sorghum, okra and rice, which are all common West African foods. When slaves needed to cook filling, hearty meals with what they had on hand, they developed recipes for things like chicken fried steak, Hoppin’ John (a rice and beans dish), and yes, chitterlings—which are pig intestines.

Like my friend Sarah said, soul food is all about creativity—making whatever you can out of whatever you’ve got.

Other common ingredients used in making traditional soul food are chicken gizzards and livers, ham hocks, fish, black-eyed peace, different sorts of beans, sweet potatoes, corn bread and cabbage. Though today’s soul food is usually condemned by the medical community because it’s so unhealthy, it’s still a tasty treat we can indulge in sometimes.

So this month, I say we salute soul food and the amazing food creations and inventions the Black community has given this country (peanuts, rice cultivation and sugar refining, anyone?) by eating up some delicious soul food. My family is going to try to cook some Hoppin’ John; what will you be doing?