New Year

I was thinking this morning of New Year’s Day and how my family traditionally celebrated it when I was a child. I came from an Irish/English family on my Mother’s side that had many traditions centered around food. Sometimes my family has been poor and sometimes just middle class. Through the generations it has varied little.

And so, we have always passed down these food traditions of farmers and poor folks including New Year’s Day foods. Not that these foods were commonly served in Ireland or England, but they were the foods of farming folks in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries in the U.S.

Since we are in the Mid-South of the US the usual New Year’s Day meal has always meant hog jowl, black eyed peas, greens of some kind, usually turnip but sometimes collards, cabbage, potatoes and cornbread. Most everything was what grew in cold weather in the garden or that we had put up the year before. Years ago we didn’t go to the store and buy food that wasn’t grown where we lived. We grew the food and then stored it all winter and ate it all winter.

Mother or Grandma would walk out to the garden and cut turnip greens, dig turnips and cut a cabbage early in the morning while the mist and fog of the night was still in the air. I remember them taking the excess cabbage leaves and turnip greens to the chickens who were already wide awake and waiting.

Other cold weather crops we grew were kale, spinach, broccoli and parsnips. When we had mashed potatoes it was common for Grandma to put a layer of mashed seasoned parsnips over the surface of the potatoes.

When mother or grandma brought in the turnip greens and turnips, it was my job to wash and trim them and get them ready for the pot. I got to use Grandma’s little paring knife for that and I through I was so grown up. I had a little step stool that I used to reach the sink and I would scrub the tubers and roots and then peel and slice them up.

Then I’d pick through the greens and chop them up enough to fit in the big iron pot. The peeled chopped turnip roots went in next, then some red pepper flakes and a piece of smoked ham.

I was told one time how to do something in the kitchen. After that, any mistakes I made I learned from but I was never berated for them. I think that’s why I learned to love working in the kitchen. I learned how to use a sharp knife by the time I was 7 or 8 year old.

Usually, the potatoes were cooked and then just buttered and salted and served in chunks, but I like them mashed and buttered and that layer of parsnips on them.

The meat we had on New Year’s Day, we cured and smoked ourselves, so it was ham and jowl meat. Hog jowl or cheek meat is sort of a delicacy here. We saved it for New Year’s and other special occasions. We would slice it thinly and fry it. Very often today, I cook some ham as well. We would slice the jowl meat and put it in a crockery bowl waiting to be fried while the cornbread was baking.

Once the food started cooking my job as a child was to wash bowls, pans and utensils to keep the kitchen clean while the cooking was going on. I still clean as I go and I’m thankful for that habit.

Black eyed peas are a late summer crop here so when we pick them we dry them and then try to freeze them if possible to keep insects out. Mother dried them and stored them in jars or crocks with bay leaves to repel insects.

I love pulling a jar of frozen, dried peas from the freezer and popping that seal. It brings back so many kitchen memories. She would pour the dry peas into an iron pot and add cold spring water that Papaw had brought in that morning and a piece of smoked meat, usually a ham hock, and then let it cook til the peas were tender and flavorful.

The other foods we sometimes had were just traditional winter time food that farmers usually have on hand like cabbage, winter squash, onions and other greens. My Mother always put a dime in the cabbage and who ever found it was supposed to have good luck and money all year. I tried putting a dime in the cabbage a couple of times but since my children didn’t like cabbage I didn’t do it much in later years. It was kind of silly but traditions die hard.

This morning, as I washed turnips and peeled potatoes I thought about all the women in my family who came before me who stood at their sinks preparing food for a big meal. The kitchen sounds of coffee brewing, quiet conversation, the chopping, peeling, washing and frying are soothing to me and they take me back to long ago New Years days.