New Year's Day, southern style

Happy 2013 to ya'll!!

    We just finished our very southern traditional New Year's Day meal, and it was so delicious, I just had to share some stories with ya'll.

     My family has always had a meal of pork, greens, and black-eyed peas on the first of January.  After all, those are the ingredients that are supposed to bring you good fortune and prosperity throughout the year. My mother always prepared the food according to the way my father's grandmother had . . . baked pork loin or tenderloin (sometimes marinated), steamed curly kale, and black-eyed peas that had been soaked, cooked, and then slightly mashed.  The crowning glory was my great-grandmother's bread-and-butter pickles, supposedly chopped up and added to the peas, but I always preferred mine on the side.

     I did not fully appreciate this meal as a child.  Oh, I liked all the items, just not necessarily in the same meal.  If the slightest bit of grit still resided in the kale, I would not take another bite.  Also, I never fully understood the need to mash the peas - were they not suitable as is?

     Now that I run my own household, I have made a few changes.  I always use a marinated pork tenderloin - the only change is whether I bake it or my husband cooks it on the grill.  I started out insisting on kale, but since my children will actually eat wilted spinach, I have switched.  I simply sautee some garlic and oil, add the spinach and kosher salt until wilted.  DELICIOUS!  Some years I soak the peas and then cook, others I cheat and buy canned (yes, I know, my female ancestors are rolling over in their graves.)  What I never do is mash the peas, but please do not tell my mother.  The only thing I truly miss is those pickles.  My grandmother is gone, and while my mother still makes them some years, I have yet to have a kitchen large enough to undertake that process.  (For those of you not from the south, it takes over a week to make those delectable green slivers.)

    We've all eaten our share to guarantee us good luck in the new year.  I wish you and yours many blessings and days of happiness in 2013!