I’m running low on Camellia red beans, already, even though I returned home to Portland last month from a week in New Orleans with a four-pound bag that I picked up at the Wal-Mart on Tchoupitoulas Street. Red beans and rice are a constant in my life; I make them at least once and sometimes twice a month. They soothe my soul, which is no easy feat.

Red beans and rice take me back to elementary school in South Mississippi where they were served for lunch every Monday with a slice of white bread. I dreaded going to school on Monday morning. My stomach would churn as anxiety washed over me; the prospect of another week of school would seem more than I could possibly handle. I have spent my whole life struggling with some form of this fear, which might come as a shock to many people who have known me casually or even worked with me, although it will be no surprise to anybody who knows me well. The one bright spot on those grammar school Mondays, and many Mondays and other days thereafter, were those earthy, salty, slightly spicy red beans and rice. They provided solace as I struggled to manage my nerves and get through the day.

The jazz giant Louis Armstrong often signed off his letters with the phrase Red Beans and Ricely Yours. It was his favorite meal, and he was known to make two requests when he stayed at people’s homes during his many travels: a pot of red beans and rice and a little weed. Sounds like he was seeking some solace too.

What’s so great about red beans and rice? They take a long time to cook, but not a lot of effort. They are hard to screw up. Everybody has their own favorite version , and yet they all share something in common, the warmth and comfort they offer. Red beans and rice are the ultimate “soul” food both in their connection to a culinary tradition and in the way they nourish more than just the body.

I’ve made several other attempts to chronicle my personal perspective, but in each case they have fizzled under the weight of trying to say too much, to be too relevant. I opted to start this effort with red beans and rice because they are something about which I feel passionately, regardless of why or whether that passion holds any real significance for the rest of the world. They are important to me, and that’s all that matters as I embark on this effort to write honestly about my life, about my identity as a Southerner, about my relationship with food, about my family and my new home in the Pacific Northwest and about my lifelong dance with anxiety and how all of these various things are connected.

South Carolinians Matt and Ted Lee, TV show hosts and best-selling cookbook authors, launched their food empire by preparing boiled peanuts in their Lower East Side apartment because they were “homesick: for sea spray and sand and for something as soothingly simple as boiled peanuts.” So they went looking for raw peanuts in Gotham. To a similar end, I’m setting out on this adventure with a simple, modest goal: find the raw materials needed to bear witness, honestly, to this life I have been given.