[Yosemitest]

Enjoy, and Happy New Year.

[Hoodat]

American by birth. Southern by the grace of God.

[yldstrk]

I just go with ham...............

[Jane Long]

We forego the hog jowl and have fried cabbage as our *greens*.

[Tennessee Nana]

In SC they eat Hoppin John

[Rebelbase]

Red beans and rice with ham, Andouille sausgage and french bread for supper tonight.

[Hugin]

Mrs. Hugin is Russian/Polish descent, so the lucky meal is kielbasa, sauerkraut and dumplings every New Year.

[Ditter]

We had our black eyed peas and ham hock, we are OK for 2014!

[dalereed]

I’d put it in the garbage!

[yarddog]

Mother used to always cook black eyed peas and hog jowls for new years day. She almost never cooked collard greens because I didn’t like them. If one member of her family didn’t like something she would very seldom cook it.

She did cook mustard greens and turnip greens. Also what she called corn bread but everyone else calls corn pone. She also cooked an unusually good “hoe cake”.

Mother cooked Southern because that is the way her Mother cooked. She use a lot of grease but only a fraction of what my paternal grandmother used. Grandmother’s greens would be swimming in grease.

My brother said the reason Mother’s vegetables were so good was she used grease but not a lot.

[bigbob]

HNY! I’m a northerner but just bought a bag of Martha White he other day. Cracklins, now yer talkin!

[Lurker]

Why eat it? Because its GOOD!

[montanajoe]

I have a buddy in Alaska visiting, we had King and Snow Crab..
Louisiana oysters and a bit of Jack..very satisfying

[Impala64ssa]

Yum! I miss the bagels and lox, eggcreams, real NY-style pizza, but I love Southern cooking also. Pinging for later. Happy New Year everyone!

[SatinDoll]

I made split pea soup with pepper bacon yesterday, and Manhattan clam chowder the day before.

Put up twelve cartons of soup yesterday: six (6) Manhattan Clam Chowder and six (6) Split Pea w/Pepper Bacon.

Had a New Years Day dinner of hot clam chowder with garlic bread, a glass of red wine, two kinds of cheeses, and a hand-full of toasted unsalted nuts. Since both soups are loaded with veggies I do not bother with a salad.

Happy New Years to everyone!

[srmorton]

Great article! That's what we had for our midday meal today with minor adjustments. Although I am a true Southerner, both by choice and by birth, I do not care for collards. I like almost all other "greens", but my mother rarely cooked collards so I did not grow up eating them. We also had them for both Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, but my husband got them already cooked at the Piggly Wiggly because I have not ever cooked them myself. We had both cabbage and turnip greens today instead. We also did not have hog jowl, but we did have a delicious baked ham from Honey Baked Hams. I baked some corn bread, but my husband made some fried corn bread which is a particular favorite of my SIL. My 8-month old grandson ate his first traditional New Year's Day meal as did two 18 year old neighbor boys who happened to stop by just as dinner was ready. All three enjoyed it very much as did we all!!

[count-your-change]

Very nearly the perfect meal.

[Prospero]

Interesting. My mother, God rest her, would insist I eat at least as many black-eyed peas to equal the number of my years, every New Years Day, and was remarkably free of any other such traditions. She rose out of grinding poverty in Texas, as did my father, and both observed the rite. I would just as adamantly refuse, since I detested the taste of all beans as a youngster. It led to an annual standoff, though by her persistence she ultimately prevailed until I reached a certain age where my father intervened on my side, and I afterward celebrated an empty triumph, and over the years forgot the thing.

Today, after a difficult year and relieved to be free of ever again living in a year numbered in any way with a 13, I renewed the tradition on my own, though at my advancing health more to honor her. A man should keep faith with his parents even when they're dead, and honoring our father in mother, in the commandments, comes also with a promise, "that it will go well with you in the land."

Searching back, I was surprised to discover the southern side of this tradition prevails from Texas, even in families of many generations dating back before the WTBS, to North Carolina, at least, where leaving the Union would not have occurred (and nearly didn't) had the latter not found itself surrounded by separated States after having first rejected secession.

Someone here speculated the black-eyed pea symbolized the "evil eye" tradition, though I did not believe that. It is not a tradition common in the South, among the Whites, anyway, and especially among those families who, in North Carolina, still remember the oral tradition praising the former slaves who, at legal risk, fed their White neighbors, sometimes with Freeman benefits. This is not the case in Texas, where the Freeman Bureau's brief influence was not as widespread, though many hundreds of thousands of poor Whites did migrated there during, so-called, "Reconstruction."

There are those who believe that federal policy never ended, though resistance to it did cease at the admonition of Nathan Bedford Forrest. Those same people say the policy just went nationwide, to those places in particular where the Klan, for example, enjoyed its greatest membership, at its peak and afterward; places including Indiana, Illinois, etc.

An interesting tradition, indeed. Regardless of your own celebration for the New Year, to my fellow Americans, God grant you joy!

[JoeProBono]

[prisoner6]

My family likes to make Hoppin' John's. several variations. Basically black eyed peas, brown rice, onion or garlic and pork. This year we used this recipe from Betty's Kitchen Betty's Kitchen

[MagnoliaB]

We did our part yesterday to uphold this Southern tradition.