Patti Labelle: And my family, everybody made the best peach cobbler. There was no competition because you know if you tasted her's and her's and her's, all of them would be delightful. 

Dan Pashman: Let's get a little detailed here, Patti. 

Patti Labelle: Okay. 

Dan Pashman: What temperature — you like the peach cobbler still warm, out of the oven? You like it room temperature?

Patti Labelle: It has to hot. And then for those who love the melted ice cream on top?

Dan Pashman: Hmm. 

Patti Labelle: That's cute. 

[LAUGHING] 

Patti Labelle: Who wants a cold peach cobbler?

Dan Pashman: So you like hot peach cobbler...

Patti Labelle: Yes!

Dan Pashman: With the ice cream on top. 

Patti Labelle: Yes, when I can sneak a bite. It's so good. 

Dan Pashman: And would you put the ice cream right on top or would you...

Patti Labelle: Right on top. 

Dan Pashman: So like — you want that ice cream to melt. 

Patti Labelle: Yes, so to melt. And I prefer melted ice cream when I can have it. You know, I even sit it on a heater or something cause I love the soft sides. 

Dan Pashman: Yes. 

Patti Labelle: Ohhh. Wish I had some now. 

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: This is The Sporkful, it’s not for foodies it’s for eaters, I’m Dan Pashman. Each week on our show we obsess about food to learn more about people. Today I sit down with Patti LaBelle, who’s not just a music icon. She’s also a food icon. She’s written best selling cookbooks, hosted a food TV show, she’s even cooked for Elton John, The Rolling Stones, Prince. In fact, she says she cooks better than she sings. And Patti? Patti can sing.

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: Patti will talk about the role food played in the turbulent home she grew up in, share stories of touring the segregated south in the 60s. And of course, we’ll discuss the viral video that made her sweet potato pie a Walmart sensation.

CLIP (JAMES WRIGHT CHANEL): If anybody know Patti Labelle, tag her in the video. Patti! [SINGS] Woah! Yeah!

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: In West Philadelphia born and raised, in the kitchen’s where Patti LaBelle spent most of her days... Seriously, her mom used to offer to pay her to go outside, but she wanted to see what was cooking. She joined her church choir at age 12. By 16 she was in a band and at 18, Patti and her group The Bluebelles had their first record deal. That was 1962.

Dan Pashman: Since then she’s gone on to sell more than 50 million records. Her biggest hit, "Lady Marmalade", is better known as, "Voulez-Vous Couchez Avec Moi, Ce Soir". In 1995, Patti collapsed on stage and was diagnosed with diabetes. She made big changes to her diet, then released her first cookbook, LaBelle Cuisine, which featured healthier versions of many soul food classics. It was a New York Times best seller. This past July, the 20th anniversary edition of LaBelle Cuisine was released. 

Dan Pashman: Now at concerts, Patti’s known for her stage presence. Up there, she’s in charge. And it’s the same in the kitchen. Here she is cooking with Steve Harvey on his TV show. 

CLIP (PATTI LABELLE): It's done. The fish is done, okay? So now — darn, Steve. Come on. Now we've played it, Steve. 

CLIP (STEVE HARVEY): All the people be trying to help in all this stuff. 

CLIP (PATTI LABELLE): I ain't helping you. 

CLIP (STEVE HARVEY): They guests on my show. 

CLIP (PATTI LABELLE): Steve! 

CLIP (STEVE HARVEY): People...

CLIP (PATTI LABELLE): Give me the God darn waffles! 

CLIP (STEVE HARVEY): Okay, we're here! I'm trying. 

[AUDIENCE LAUGHING] 

CLIP (PATTI LABELLE): Get me a knife... 

Dan Pashman: Am I right? You travel with your pots and your pans when you're on tour?

Patti Labelle: I have to. Yes, because you know room service can be a little shady and so I don't give them a chance. I cook in the hotel suite. 

Dan Pashman: So tell me about your set up. What's the actual— what's Patti's gear when you get up to that room? 

Patti Labelle: I bring my electric fire pan, like, usually two. And if they have a stove with their pots and pans, that's even better, but I plug my pans up and I sautee my fish and then do my kale greens in the other one. And dinner is finished in about twenty minutes. 

Dan Pashman: So you got two electric burners. 

Patti Labelle: Mm-hmm. 

Dan Pashman: You got—

Patti Labelle: Those pans, you know, that you — with the little lid? And you plug them in. 

Dan Pashman: Right. 

Patti Labelle: Mm-hmm. 

Dan Pashman: And you have your spatulas and you have your...

Patti Labelle: I have everything. My friend Norma? She makes sure we have a trunk with spices, all my spices. Because you know you're not gonna buy spices in every city. 

Dan Pashman: Right. 

Patti Labelle: So we bring our own. Everything is in that case. 

Dan Pashman: But sometimes Patti’s hotel cooking can get her into trouble. Like that time she was performing with Arsenio Hall. After the show, she made him dinner.

Patti Labelle: I made liver and onions. And security came up and said, "Something's burning.", and I said, "Hush, honey. It's liver and onions. You want some?" And he said, yes. 

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHING] 

Patti Labelle: It was liver and onions and a salad and some cabbage. Mm-hmm. 

Dan Pashman: That sounds delicious. 

Patti Labelle: Yeah. 

Dan Pashman: How do you do your liver and onions? 

Patti Labelle: I don't use flour. I use a little grape seed oil, just enough to shine the bottom of the pan. Season it with sea salt, black pepper, and I cook it, like, one minute on each side. 

Dan Pashman: Ohh. 

Patti Labelle: It's thin liver.

Dan Pashman: Right.

Patti Labelle: People overcook liver like rocks. You know, and most people say, I hate it because they've never had mine.

[LAUGHING] 

Patti Labelle: No, I'm serious. My friend, Norma's husband, despise liver because his mother used to make it, and she wasn't a great cook, he said. So Norma told him, "Please try Patti's.", and he tried my liver and onions. Slams. It's really good. 

Dan Pashman: It sounds delicious. I love them. 

Patti Labelle: And I like a little rare. 

Dan Pashman: Hmm. 

Patti Labelle: Mm-hmm. 

Dan Pashman: Yeah. And then you put it over a greens?

Patti Labelle: No. On the plate by itself with the sauteed vidalia onions on the side. 

Dan Pashman: Ohh.

Patti Labelle: And, you know, with the veggie or salad or whatever. And I just— like, I love liver. Do you like chicken livers? 

Dan Pashman: Oh yeah. I like just about any liver I can get my hands on. 

Patti Labelle: Right. I love chicken livers.

Dan Pashman: And then so you do the liver in the onions on the plate separately but you combine them in each bite.

Patti Labelle: No, no, no. I have— I don't like to bite the onion and the liver at the same time. So I'll eat some onions and then I have some liver. I don't like piling stuff in my mouth like that, two things or three things at once. 

[LAUGHING] 

Patti Labelle: I try not to. Hmm. But either way, it's good. 

Dan Pashman: Does the food that you want to eat or whether you cook after a show, is it sometimes dictated by how you feel about how the show went? 

Patti Labelle: Heck, no. 

[LAUGHING] 

Patti Labelle: How could that be? I don't, I don't— I couldn't do that. The energy that I get from every show is so, so awesome. I come back happy. And the only time I'm not happy is when my voice might have given out, and I felt as though I then give a great show. Then I'm sad and I go to sleep quick. 

Dan Pashman: And when she’s not on the road? Patti says she cooks even more.

Patti Labelle: Everyday that I'm in Philly, I cook for 12 people and it's only me eating. 

[LAUGHING] 

Patti Labelle: But I love to feed the neighbors and I have people working in the house. They always get a great lunch and I just love to see smiles on faces after eating my food. 

[LAUGHING] 

Dan Pashman: Is that a similar thrill to what you get when you're on stage singing? 

Patti Labelle: Yes, because on stage I get standing ovations. And that's a turn on. And when they eat my food and they come back and ask me for," Could I have seconds and then could I take some home?", that's a real turn. I love it. And so I have little baby containers to give everybody those little throwaways, not my real Tupperware kits. 

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] 

Patti Labelle: I make sure everybody takes it home, like my son and his wife. They're always running and busy, and he's my manager and they have a little sweet baby and they don't get a chance to eat. So I'll say, OK, I'm making food tonight. I making some whatever they want. Just tell me what you want and I got you.

Dan Pashman: Patti’s family comes up often in her cookbooks, where she shares a lot of personal stories. Her book, Desserts LaBelle, is full of memories of people she’s lost over the years. All three of her sisters died of cancer before the age of 45. Patti still feels guilty about the end of her sister Jackie’s life. She told the story on Oprah.

MUSIC

CLIP (PATTI LABELLE): The day before she died, she asked me to make her egg sandwich, and I had just gotten off the road and the hospital's five minutes from my house. And I said to my aunt, because Jackie couldn't speak very well then, I said, "Aunt Hattie Mae, tell her that I'll make it tomorrow." The next day I made the sandwich. I said, "Hattie, I'm on my way." She said, "Don't rush your sister just passed." And I held that and I still hold it because it's a minor thing for me just to make a sandwich because she loved the way I cook. I miss my sister Jackie like crazy. 

Dan Pashman: Food was always really important in the house when Patti was growing up. Both her parents cooked a lot and that inspired her to begin dabbling at a young age. 

Patti Labelle: When I first started, well, making things that I call cooking, it wasn't. It was ketchup and hot sauce. We we would go in the little back shed and I would mix up a bunch of stuff and just, of course, not have the cat and dog taste it. But I knew that I had done something special and I took it into my mother. And she said, "That's great hot sauce, baby." 

Dan Pashman: I know growing up, your parents fought a lot and eventually got divorced. You've talked about this. 

Patti Labelle: Yes. 

Dan Pashman: You said even that as a kid, you broke out in hives from the stress of watching them fight. 

Patti Labelle: Mm-hmm. 

Dan Pashman: So was food and cooking, was that sometimes part of the tension? Or was that like— what was the relationship between cooking and the tension that you were living with? 

Patti Labelle: Well, the cooking and the tension, I mean, it did get serious. I mean, of course, my mother had hot grease on the stove, you know, and my father would bother her. And he might have gotten a little teaspoon of hot grease.[LAUGHS]  But the food kept coming and they kept cooking and they kept loving each other, but not liking each other. And so it was fights all the time, and I did break out in hives. So every Monday, my mother would take me to get this shot, but then we would have good food after that. 

Dan Pashman: Is there one food, a recipe that you especially associate with each of your parents? 

Patti Labelle: The sweet potato pie? That was their recipe but, you know, since I have my pies in Walmart, I tweaked it a bit. 

Dan Pashman: What do you think would have been their reaction seeing the reaction of sweet potato pie Walmart thing? 

Patti Labelle: Oh, gosh, it was, I knew my baby could cook. 

Dan Pashman: Right! 

[LAUGHING] 

Patti Labelle: Yeah, they would do a hallelujah on that one. Yeah, they will love it. 

Dan Pashman: Yes, the sweet potato pie Walmart thing. This was the event that took Patti’s fame as a food person to a whole other level. It was 2015, Walmart was selling a line of her pies, and sales were pretty good, but then one day a guy named James Wright Chanel posted a video review of her sweet potato pie…

CLIP (JAMES WRIGHT CHANEL): Greetings! So I went to the store after seeing somebody post that Patti LaBelle pie. I love Patti LaBelle. I love— shout out to Patti LaBelle, honey!  I went and bought…

Dan Pashman: Warning to parents, this video contains a bit of profanity. James Wright spends the first minute of the video just trying to get the box open. 

CLIP (JAMES WRIGHT CHANEL):  Patti, what'd you seal this bitch with? Gorilla glue? Oh, there we go. Oh, come on, Patti. You better come out. Come on, Patti!

Dan Pashman:  Finally, he gets the pie out. 

CLIP (JAMES WRIGHT CHANEL): Oh, it's so pretty. Look at that. 

Dan Pashman: He cuts himself a slice. Then he picks up the whole slice with his hand and takes a huge bite. His eyes roll back in his head. Then he takes another bite and then... 

CLIP (JAMES WRIGHT CHANEL): Patti, if anybody know Patti Labelle, tag her in the video! Patti! [SINGS] Woah! Yeah. Bitch, I turned into Patti. You'll turn into Patti after eating this. 

Dan Pashman: Then as if to prove his point, he starts singing Patti's songs. 

CLIP (JAMES WRIGHT CHANEL): [SINGS] How was it that two people who laughed together and love together sometimes — Ooh, ha-ha! Patti! Mm-hmm! Go to Walmart and buy the Patti LaBelle pie. Patti? Bitch, you are my friend. I never knew until then, but I know now. Hmm. Yeah! 

Dan Pashman: The video went viral. For three days Walmart was selling a pie a minute. They had to scramble to get another 2 million pounds of sweet potatoes to keep up with demand. Patti started doing TV interviews with James Wright Chanel. She even brought him on stage to sing with her at one of her shows. And clearly, a big part of why the video resonated is James Wright Chanel. I mean, this guy… 

CLIP (JAMES WRIGHT CHANEL): PATTI!

Dan Pashman: …is amazing. But that wasn’t the only thing going on here. To help me dig deeper into this video, I reached out to Adrian Miller. He writes about soul food and African American food history. The first thing he and I discussed is a comment that James Wright Chanel makes in the video, kind of in passing as he’s opening the pie.

CLIP (JAMES WRIGHT CHANEL): Remember, it's the poor Black people, Black businesses…

Dan Pashman: Here’s Adrian. 

Adrian Miller: So that's a long running complaints going to the early 1800s. African-Americans will be making a good product. It's out there. But for whatever reason, African-American customers won't necessarily support that business and may even prefer a white entrepreneur who's offering something similar. It's really messed up. So any time that there's a African-American entrepreneur really doing something well, there's always a rallying cry to support that business and help that person break through. 

Dan Pashman: And Patti heard that rallying cry loud and clear. She told Huffington Post that the spike in pie sales was showing people, “the power of the Black dollar”. Another reason why this video resonated, it’s not just any pie. It’s sweet potato pie. That was why the Black lifestyle site Madame Noire called the Patti pie phenomenon the Blackest Moment of 2015. Sweet potato pie and pumpkin pie are both descended from English carrot pie. In the U.S. pumpkins grow more in the north, so you see more pumpkin pie up north. Sweet potatoes grow more in the south, so sweet potato pie is very much a part of both southern and soul food traditions. Which, as Adrian Miller explains, are similar, but not the same.

Adrian Miller: The difference between southern and soul food is that soul food tastes better. 

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] 

Adrian Miller: But if you want something more deep than that, first of all, you have to understand these are shared cuisines. So there's a lot of food items in common. So I can see why people are confused between the two. But I find that soul food tends to be more intense in terms of flavors and seasoning and the use of variety meats. For instance, I think the big dividing line is chitlins, which are pig intestines. You find that a lot on soul food menus. I just don't see that in white restaurants, in the south or elsewhere that often. 

Dan Pashman: Right. And is it fair to say that southern food is more of a regional distinction? Soul food is more like a race culture distinction? 

Adrian Miller: I think that's a good way to look at it. I mean, it's controversial, but what I argue in my book is that soul food is really more about what African Americans are eating outside the south. I argue that soul food is an immigrant cuisine where the old south is the old country and all these parts, the rest of the United States, is the new country. And like other immigrants, they try to recreate home through food.  

Dan Pashman: Where it is sweet potato pie fall into that spectrum?

Adrian Miller: Sweet potato pie is one of those foods that fall into the sweet spot of southern and soul. Right up there with fried chicken, mac and cheese, watermelon, to some extent, okra, cornbread. You know, it's one of the shared foods. 

Dan Pashman: And can you give me a sense of how Patti LaBelle is perceived as a food person in the African American community in the world of African American food culture. What's the perception of her and food? 

Adrian Miller: PSPP, which is pretty sweet potato pie. She was known really as a symbol of kind of healthy eating in the soul food tradition, because in the 1960s, when soul food became really popular, you had a lot of traditional cookbooks and restaurants opening. And that momentum carried on for a couple of decades. But then in the late 80s and the 90s, you started to see a reassessment. A lot of people were facing chronic health problems from eating a lot of rich food. And I wouldn't say that all the blame is with soul food, but that's where it was often laid. So you start to get this soul food light, down healthy soul food and other things emerging in the 1990s. And I would say that Patti LaBelle was really the first big name to be associated with that current of soul food.

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: That’s Adrian Miller, his book is Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time. He also wrote a book about Black Americans and barbecue history entitled, Black Smoke. Coming up, more with Patti LaBelle. She’ll share her thoughts on the role that race played in the sweet potato pie phenomenon. And she’ll tell us about her experience touring the segregated south in the 1960s. Plus, she explains why one recipe in her new cookbook is perfect for women going through menopause.

Dan Pashman: As we go to break, let’s hear a track off Patti’s jazz album from a few years back, Bel Hommage. It’s called, "Peel Me A Grape".

[CLIP "PEEL ME A GRAPE"] 

 

+++ BREAK +++

 

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: Welcome back to The Sporkful, I’m Dan Pashman. Next week’s episode will be Mission: ImPASTAble part 7. Yes, a pasta update! Of course, if you want more regular updates, follow me on Instagram, @TheSporkful. If you followed me there, you would already know that castatelli is now in the fresh markets. 170 stores across the eastern United States. Go out and get it! And please note that Sfoglini’s shipping times are now down to just a few weeks! So get those orders in now, especially if you have you pasta for the holidays. Place your orders at Sfoglini.com.

Dan Pashman: Before we get back to my conversation with Patti LaBelle, let’s hear a bit of her performing the song, “If You Don’t Know Me By Now.” This tune was originally written for her in 1972 but she didn’t record it back then. Over the years it’s been done by Harold Melvin and The Blue Notes, Simply Red, Seal and Rod Stewart. But for my money, nobody does it better than Patti. Here she is performing it live on stage.

[CLIP PATTI LABELLE SINGS "IF YOU DON"T KNOW ME" LIVE] 

Dan Pashman: Back in the 60’s, when Patti and her group The Bluebelles were starting out, they played gigs on what was called the Chitlin Circuit. The Chitlin Circuit was the nickname of a group of venues in the northeast, south, and midwest where Black performers were allowed to perform. James Brown, Ray Charles, Billie Holliday, and so many more. I mean, they all played these places. Patti hasn’t forgotten those days. She told Dan Rather about dealing with racism as she and her bandmates traveled through the south. 

CLIP (PATTIE LABELLE): We rode through the hate, we sang through the hate, and we all grew into fine ladies because you let that hate diminish you if you focus on it. You know that's the way of the world. That's the way most people are in this freaking world. They ain't love you boo. So keep on doing what you do and give them a kind word and say to them, have a good day. 

Dan Pashman: But Patti admitted to me that, as much as she tried to stay positive, it was rough. Especially when it came time to eat.

Patti Labelle: We carried our tuna in the car and starting in June they were, like, 10 cent a can. And we have our little candy bars because we would go to restaurants. Of course, we couldn't get in. And sometimes we would go to the back and that back food was like garbage, but we had to take what we could get. And those are awful memories. You know, riding through the south and then performing and knowing that everybody is thinking another way than you are thinking, but you have to perform. And then when you leave, you might end up sleeping in the station wagon because there were not many hotels, you know, for Black performers traveling through different cities. 

Dan Pashman: Were those audiences mostly white or Black?

Patti Labelle: They were white. And a lot— we were on the show. We drove to California to start touring with the Rolling Stones. So we, of course, that was a whole white audience, but they liked Patti LaBelle and The Bluebells. So we got over. I mean, we were good, but I knew that Mick was staying at some place that Patti better not think of staying. 

Dan Pashman: So I'm curious. Obviously, you've had to face down and overcome racial barriers in your music career. 

Patti Labelle: Mm-Hmm. 

Dan Pashman: Do you feel like you've encountered similar barriers in the food world? 

Patti Labelle: I don't think I have. 

Dan Pashman: I asked because we did a whole series on our podcast about food and race in particular. 

Patti Labelle: Mm-hmm. 

Dan Pashman: I did an interview with a woman, with a bunch of different people. One that's coming to mind as I speak with you is a woman named Nicole Taylor, who's an African American cookbook author. 

Patti Labelle: Uh-huh. 

Dan Pashman: And she talked about how she's from the South. She came up. She lives in Brooklyn now. She kind of want to do a cookbook that was going to be sort of southern traditions mixed with all different cultures that she's experiencing in Brooklyn. 

Patti Labelle: Mm-hmm. 

Dan Pashman: And she felt like she got a lot of resistance because people felt like, oh, you're Black, you're from the south, you do soul food. That's your...

Patti Labelle: Right.

Dan Pashman: That's your category.

Patti Labelle: Ohh. 

Dan Pashman: And they kind of wanted to pigeonhole her and say, like, well...

Patti Labelle: You're a Black cook. 

Dan Pashman: Right. You're a Black cook in this book is for Black people.  

Patti Labelle:  And that's it. It's like with the sweet potato pie. We would go to the south and I would be on stage talking about the sweet potato pie. Everybody Black say, whoo, the white people, they love pumpkin pie until my pie— I have so many white followers now about that sweet potato Black girl pie that I understand what you're saying. Yeah. And it's like they put us in a soul food category like, we can't cook anything else. You know, soul food is good, but we can do other things, too. 

Dan Pashman: And it's interesting to me because your first cookbook came out in 1999.

Patti Labelle: Mm-Hmm. 

Dan Pashman: The Walmart sweet potato pie thing was 2015. 

Patti Labelle: Yes.

Dan Pashman: So you have been doing food for a long time, 

Patti Labelle: For a long time. Yes. 

Dan Pashman: Before that came along, you had the hot sauces. 

Patti Labelle: Mm-hmm. 

Dan Pashman: You had multiple bestselling cookbooks. And it's it seems like you weren't widely accepted as a food person by a white food audience.

Patti Labelle: Yes.

Dan Pashman: For a while. 

Patti Labelle: Yeah, at the beginning. Sure. I remember that now. Yeah, but you go through it and you just know that you must keep your mind on your product because you know, it's great. And one day people will say, yeah, you're right. You know, they won't see color then. People are so much gravitating to me in the singing world, you know, of different races. And the cooking, it's gradually growing because hopefully gradually they will come on the boat. And if they don't, I'm still going to cook. I'm still going to sing. 

Dan Pashman:  It is interesting to think that there are probably a generation of white people who knew very little about sweet potato pie. 

Patti Labelle: Mm-hmm. 

Dan Pashman: And they're always going to associate now that food with you, that you will have introduced this food to white people... 

Patti Labelle: And I have had people say that to me. It's like, we eat pumpkin pie. We never know about sweet potato— we know about sweet potatoes, but not a pie. And that's— that's a soul lift. That makes me feel so good. It's like I introduce something to you that you never thought you would eat. 

Dan Pashman: And also, I mean, just pumpkin pie is just the worst. 

Patti Labelle: Oh, I don't like it. [LAUGHS] 

Dan Pashman: I mean, just, you know? Am I right?

Patti Labelle: Well, I guess it depends on what you spice it up with or whatever. But I'm not a pumpkin girl. 

Dan Pashman: Well, pumpkin hardly has any flavor anyway. 

Patti Labelle: No. 

Dan Pashman: It's pretty much you're eating sugar and cinnamon and nutmeg. 

Patti Labelle: That's it. But that was what some people were used to eating, and they still eat them because I know there's some great pumpkin pies, but I won't eat it. 

Dan Pashman: I guess it's a testament to the power of tradition. 

Patti Labelle: Yes. 

Dan Pashman: And if people feel like, well, at Thanksgiving, I have to have...

Patti Labelle: I have to have. 

Dan Pashman: You just have to have that pie. 

Patti Labelle: Right? 

Dan Pashman: You know?

Patti Labelle: And that's so true.

Dan Pashman: You get blinded to the taste. 

Patti Labelle: Yes. 

Dan Pashman: You're like, Well, I guess I'm supposed to like this. 

Patti Labelle:  That's the culture. Mm-hmm. That's the way it is. 

Dan Pashman: Before I let Patti go, there was one last thing I wanted to ask her about.

Dan Pashman: There's a recipe in your new cookbook for a no bake double chocolate éclair cake, which first of all, sounds amazing. And then in the book you say it's perfect when you're going through menopause. 

Patti Labelle: Oh, well, chocolate.

Dan Pashman: Right. 

Patti Labelle: You know?

Dan Pashman: I say right. Like, I know. [LAUGHS]  

Patti Labelle: No, you don't really 

Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] 

Patti Labelle: It's like 20, 25 years now that I've been going through it. Is it — you know, it's not just that.  Anything chocolate like, I'll sneak a Milky Way if I can. You know, bites because I can't have the whole thing. But chocolate. Chocolate Hershey's with almonds and things like that. And I don't know if that's just because of menopause? It could just because I like it and I do. 

Dan Pashman: But you feel like your love of chocolate has increased since you started menopause?

Patti Labelle: I can't say yes. I can't say yes. No, I've always loved chocolate, and that's like my main, main dessert, chocolate anything. If I can have a little bite? And lemon bars or lemon meringue pie, those things I love. And cheesecake.

Dan Pashman: Hmm. 

Patti Labelle: And I'm not going to lie. Every now and then I will take a whole Milky Way and eat it in like one minute and then I say, "Well, I'll just do more insulin."

Dan Pashman: Right. [LAUGHS]

Patti Labelle: I have to be honest with the people. I can't lie and say, no, she never cheats.

Dan Pashman: Right.

Patti Labelle: Yeah, I cheat. 

Dan Pashman: Right? But but it sounds like since you were diagnosed with diabetes, you've made some pretty serious changes. 

Patti Labelle: I made every change possible. Of course, fried chicken is in my blood. And whenever I would make the fried chicken, I would eat the whole fried chicken within — you know, if I cook it in the evening, by nightfall, that chicken is gone. So I learned I was diabetic, and so I started steaming the chicken, sauteeing with lots of garlic because the garlic and hot pepper will make you think that it's just like fried chicken. To me, it gives my mind a good piece that I love. And I stopped using pork and, like, greens. When people would do the hamhocks and the greens and stuff. I'll do the smoked turkey and I'll do turkey bacon. And sometimes I'll do no bacon because, you know, I might just want eggs. But, um...

Dan Pashman: But once in a while, you got to cheat because you've got to live. 

Patti Labelle: I have to live, and my doctor has said to me, "Patti, whenever you feel like cheating, just cheat." 

Dan Pashman: When you do fried chicken, are you a white meat or dark meat person? 

Patti Labelle: I like the legs.

Dan Pashman: Hmm. 

Patti Labelle: I like the legs and the gizzard. 

Dan Pashman: Yes. 

Patti Labelle: And the neck. I love chicken necks.

Dan Pashman:  And the part— I also love the, um— well, my family is Jewish, we called it, tuchus.

Patti Labelle: The butt part? 

Dan Pashman: Yes. 

Patti Labelle: Oh, I throw that away.

Dan Pashman: No! Come on.

Patti Labelle: I throw the heart away and that butt. 

Dan Pashman: Oh, you gotta eat the butt. 

Patti Labelle: I can't do that. Ohhh! No, my mother-in-law used to love the butt.

Dan Pashman: Yeah.

Patti Labelle: No way. I chuck it. 

Dan Pashman: If I come on tour with you, will you saved me the butt?

Patti Labelle: Yes, I will. And then the other parts you like. Just come on tour. 

Dan Pashman: All right. All right. 

Patti Labelle: It'll be fun. 

[LAUGHING] 

MUSIC

Dan Pashman: That, my friends, is the one and only Patti LaBelle. You can pick up the 20th anniversary edition of her cookbook, LaBelle Cuisine, wherever books are sold. And she’s back on tour! You can check out her tour dates at PattiLaBelle.com.

Dan Pashman: Next week on the show, a brand new castcatelli update! I'll tell you the latest. Lots of exciting news to share next week. While you wait for that one, check out last week’s show, with Pati Jinich, host of Pati’s Mexican Table on PBS. She's spent a decade documenting Mexico’s vast and varied food cultures. Sometimes she encounters the classic dishes of a region. Sometimes she finds brand new ones, like when she travelled to Jalisco.

CLIP (PATI JINICH): It's a crunchy, crispy quesadilla that's filled with mashed potatoes or cheese or beans. And they take these crunchy, crispy quesadillas, from deep fried. They break it into your plate. And then they put carnitas on top.

Dan Pashman: Also, Pati takes a look into my fridge, and tells me what it says about me. That episode's out wherever you got this one.