from the dept. of don't wait to use the china

From the NYT obituary of Jonell Nash, longtime food editor of Essence:

Even when Ms. Nash would eat at her desk, another former colleague, Sharon R. Boone, recalled, she would first put down a china place setting and silverware on a small tablecloth. Taste matters, she explained in her cookbook.

"Even more than specific dishes or ingredients, soul food represents a certain spirit, an attitude, a flamboyance, a kind of loving that one brings to the kitchen and stirs into the pots," she wrote. "In essence, it's a flava."