Talking about hog jaw and our New Year’s Day traditional meal
Let’s cook together! Plus, 4 things that will probably/definitely/maybe make 2023 better
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Nearly everything in 2023 rides on this one meal. No pressure!
My oldest daughter, Iver, told us over Christmas about a conversation one of her classes had about family traditions. She said she told everyone about how we have a tradition of making and eating black-eyed peas, collard greens, cornbread and some kind of pork on New Year’s Day. It’s a traditional meal I had every year of my life as a kid, and one I went on to make as an adult and as an adult with kids.
She said that she was the only kid in her class whose family did this. What’s happening here?
This baffled me because we’re in the South and I would have assumed that surely she wouldn’t be the ONLY kid among 20+ whose family did this. It’s a celebratory Southern meal, and one that’s supposed to bring good luck, health, wealth and prosperity. Each component has a symbolic significance especially the black-eyed peas are for luck and collards and pork are for money and prosperity. There are other theories about what these foods mean, too, based on where you live. It was and still is unthinkable to have Jan. 1 go by without this meal.
So I thought I’d devote this Our Great Life newsletter to this New Year’s Day tradition. Maybe this tradition is rare where I live because it is Southern “country” cooking. It’s also been called Black food or soul food. Could it be that a lot of her classmates come from families who aren’t from the South originally? Could it be that it’s hard to find food like this where I live? I’m speculating, really, but I think it does play a factor.
For me, the tradition goes back to Willa, my mother. She was the chief cook in our house, and she was raised in Tipton Hill, in very rural Mitchell County in the Southern Appalachian mountains of North Carolina. After she left home and married my dad, they settled in rural Davie County, where I grew up. Technically, Davie County is in the Piedmont foothills and the most eastern reach of the Appalachians (so say some, inexplicably) in North Carolina.
Willa was an excellent “country” cook. Our tiny kitchen was one of her favorite places, and I have a lot of beloved memories of us peeling apples or shelling beans together together at our round kitchen table. She passed away in 2003, and I miss her food every day, especially her chicken and dumplings, chess pie, fried chicken, pinto beans and chow chow, stewed cabbage, cornbread, coconut cake and more.
So it is no surprise that she spent every New Year’s Day cooking. She made back-eyed peas, collards, cornbread and hog jaw with familial precision. It was all-together delicious. The peas were gently salty and silky and brothy. The collards, having simmered for hours, would melt in your mouth. I would take a pie-shaped slice of skillet cornbread and crumble it over my plate, scattering it like snow, and scoop it up with a spoon. I’d crunch on the snappy and fatty fried hog jaw (some call it hog jowl or smoke jowl and it’s very much like bacon, even though it’s not from the belly, but from the jowl of the pig) along the way.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this meal and its components have a rich history. I just Some say it can be traced to the Civil War and further to the descendants of slaves originally from West and/or North Africa. Also, I’ve read that the black-eyed peas may reach all the way back to 500 A.D. as a part of the Jewish holiday Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.
Bryant Terry’s book “Black Food,” a collection of stories, art and essays, includes riffs on the tradition. John Egerton’s “Southern Food: At Home, on the Road, in History” writes about these traditional celebratory meals.
From every Southern state, and from a multiplicity of subregional backgrounds and locales, the hosts and their guests assembled a grand banquet of authentic Southern culinary treasures. There was the traditional New Year’s Day good-luck vegetable, black-eyed peas, cooked with hog jowl and served with rice—an ancient dish somehow pegged with the name hoppin John—and there was another good-luck food, collard greens, their color symbolizing money and promising rising fortunes. With them on the main table and the sideboards were such time-honored favorites as candied yams, fried okra, green beans, stewed tomatoes, cole slaw, congealed salad, ambrosia, pan-fried chicken, barbecued pork shoulder, Brunswick stew, smoked fish, roast venison, cornbread, and hot biscuits. The drinks ranged from buttermilk to bourbon, and the desserts included pecan and sweet potato and black bottom pies, fudge brownies, and a spectacular snowball icebox cake. From the first nibbles of cheese straws and salted pecans to the last sips of boiled custard, the food was altogether worthy of the rich heritage from which it sprang. From “Southern Food: At Home, on the Road, in History”
This meal and its ingredients are easily attainable and affordable. The recipes are really quite simple. But what you won’t see in the recipes and ingredients lists are the invisible but very important strings that tie these “humble” foods to me and my own history, my own family, and, more broadly, our culture and the past and present of the South. There is so much to strive against here, but this food is a connector to the soil and the people who have struggled and built lives and families and communities here.
And, even more simply, as Iver said when we talked about this: How can we deny ourselves an opportunity to have an even luckier year? She said, “Just imagine what the Covid years would have been like without it?”
Nope, not going to happen, sweetheart! We have the collards in the fridge and I’m off to get the black-eyed peas prepped!
Let’s cook together! (Vegetarian versions included)
Want to make this meal virtually with me on Sunday, Jan. 1, 2023? Whether this is new to you or something you’re very familiar with, I love the idea of us cooking “together” no matter where we are.
To help, here are some links I found to recipes that are most similar to Willa’s cooking (and mine) because of course she didn’t write anything down! As I said, these are relatively simple recipes. You can “fancy” things up with bay leaves, thyme, garlic and other alliums, special salts, etc. You can omit the hog jaw and grill chops or roast a tenderloin. I’ve done that, too.
And while you’ll also notice that pork and pork fat is in a lot of these dishes, don’t let that discourage you if you don’t eat pork. It’s very easy to completely remove or reduce the pork and pork fat in these recipes. You can replace it with butter, oil, chicken fat or any other fat you like. I had this meal, without the pork, every year I was a vegetarian (RIP 1990s vegetarian Angie). I’ve even used olive oil, something my mother probably never did even once in her life. You do you!
If you make any of this, would you let me know? You can leave a comment on this post on Substack or message or tag me on Instagram with #ourgreatlife or our.greatlife.
The Luckiest New Year’s Day Meal Ever
Cornbread (NO sugar, OK? I’m firm on this. 😂) with an adaption for using a cast-iron skillet (my favorite)
Hog jaw, also known as hog jowl or smoke jowl (very similar to bacon)
Add your favorite iced tea with a slice of lemon to this and it’s perfect!
Four things that are definitely/most probably going to make my life better in 2023
🎧 I love this podcast all about the crazy rude things people do and how to respond and/or not make the same mistakes, according to Nick and Leah with Were You Raised By Wolves. I’ll follow their advice whenever possible. Also, writing thank you notes like it’s my job [gift link]. Would it be rude to casually send these links to certain people in my life? I’ll ask Nick and Leah.
💭 I recently wrote a list of 100 dreams, or things I want to do. Might I suggest that you try it? There are no rules, really. You can include personal, professional, creative, spiritual, parenting, and and and dreams on your list. Whatever works for you. I now have some items that I’ll definitely do in 2023. I’m planning it all out now. I’d LOVE to know what’s on your list! Maybe we can share in a future issue?
✒️ Speaking of planning, I’m back to partially analogue planning after being all-digital for at least a decade. No upset about this because I get to use my favorite pen.
🗓 I’m going to do a daily practice in 2023. I’ll write about this later because I’m still deciding what I want to do. Right now, I’ll considering an embroidery journal. Are you considering a daily practice next year? I’d love to hear.
Thanks so much for reading and subscribing if you haven’t already. Thanks so much to those of you who have already subscribed to this newsletter! I’m excited to see how this little spot in the world can help us build conversation, community and connection, and how we can explore what Our Great Life means together. Please share with others who might be interested. There’s a handy button below to help.
And Happy 2023! Wishing you all the health, wealth, good luck and prosperity a good New Year’s Day meal and collective good will can muster!
See you next year/Friday!
~Angie