Happy New Year. I hope that 2025 brings you happiness, good health, and gardening prosperity. Here in the deep south, we love our traditions and traditional holiday foods. How else could one explain the annual December appearance of green bean casseroles, sweet potato casseroles, and the shimmering blob of cranberry gelatin still bearing the marks of the metal can from whence it came? Many of us celebrate the onset of the new year with meals including collard greens, black-eyed peas, and cornbread.
According to folklore, eating greens (collards, turnip greens, cabbage, or my new favorite, roasted brussels sprouts) is supposed to ensure that one has plentiful green paper currency in the coming year. Black-eyed peas represent coins. Cornbread is supposed to symbolize gold. Newly landed European immigrants adopted cornbread from Native Americans, although I wonder how it compared to today’s version. Jiffy mix, anyone? My husband is a cornbread purist, insisting on no sugar or wheat flour, and mandating that buttermilk is a required component of the mix. I can forgo the sugar, but like to add chopped jalapenos for extra flavor.
Commonly, these traditional new year foods are seasoned with some type of pork – bacon, fatback, cracklings, various and sundry porcine parts. My husband grew up having a couple of pigs as part of the farm livestock. I was a city girl, so had no experience with the animals. I understand that pigs are intelligent, affectionate, and trainable, so they can almost be treated like 600-pound dogs. The swine circulatory system is similar to that of humans. They are often a source for human heart valve replacements and I saw a recent new report about a woman who had received a porcine kidney transplant. Over the weekend, I saw a large (at least 400 pounds) pig free-ranging on fallen acorns not more than fifty feet from a state highway. I hoped that the owner would soon corral him/her, but have seen multiple neighborhood reports that indicate this free spirit is still on the loose.
My preferred calendar-change kick-off includes a good book, a pot of coffee, a dog warming my feet, and at least one cat in my lap. The next two months are typically gray, cold, and gloomy. Some people suffer from a disruption of their circadian rhythms, and experience a form of depression called SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder. If you are similarly troubled, please seek professional advice. Or, take my non-professional but well-intentioned recommendation to GET OUTSIDE. A thirty-minute walk outdoors always lifts my mood, even on the grayest of days. A walk is even more regenerative if it includes the companionship of a friend and takes you through a park or wooded area.
Enjoy the lull right now, because February ushers in the season for dormant pruning. More about that later. Right now, resolve to greet each new day with a positive attitude, confident in the knowledge that spring will arrive again.
Black eyed peans and pork, a staple of the New Year’s Day menu.
Photo by jeffrey w, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons