{Throwback Series}...Farmer Family Christmas Card!

Proverbs 31 describes a woman of high character, a wife, a homemaker, a cherished lady and so amazingly too describes a beloved mother. This particular verse from Proverbs 31 kept running through my mind this past holiday season – our first without our Mama. But a thought kept running through my mind – a thought that pierced the chaos of the holidays, work, travel and life in general. It was a thought that the “Proverbs 31” woman was blessed – by her children. What a comfort and joy!!!

In the wake of losing a parent, kind words, delicious meals, warm thoughts, fond memories, heartfelt letters and cards and flowers and calls and texts and emails pour in after the fact. Then, there is the melting of the ice that packs around our mind and heart and you realize a month later, a few months later, a season or two later – whenever – that your parent is gone. And you are faced without the shield of shock with the brutal reality of your loss.

The “firsts” are the toughest I feel. The first birthdays, holidays, events and even simple life happenings without your Mama just wind your heart and soul into knots. Yet, you get through them. Peace finds its way amidst the disorder and disarray. Even your faith grows stronger too. Friends and family remember to call, write or simply send a text. Those notions mean the world you. And, somehow, you want to thank them all – thank them all from the bottom of a broken heart… but thank them nonetheless. You want to be as good a friend as they are to you – and you have refined their friendship like gold through a fire.

So, as Christmas came zooming at lightning speed towards us, I realized I just could not pull it together and send a card this year. Then, that verse in Proverbs kept pummeling through my mind and onto my heart. The Proverbs 31 woman is glorified by her duties, actions and love. So much so that even “her children rise up and call her blessed.” Blessed is the life – however it ends – for the children to rise up. That I feel is our honor, our duty and joy.

From the 2015 side of the holiday season, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year y’all! And thank you for all your love and support! Trust me, it means the world to us!

  

In the Kitchen: A Rosemary Tableau - VIDEO

Video by Room Eleven Media

In this video, the Farmer shares about the New Year's meal, Lucky Money Stew.... be sure to check out last year's post for recipe - Lucky Money Stew.

Lucky Money Stew

 .........a continuation of Monday's post, Roots of New Year's Food Traditions

As with any Southern celebration, the table will be donned and decked with the literal pieces of our family’s legacy. A great aunt’s china, grandmother’s silver, or mama’s linens. We Southerners know our people and know their worth–a worth laden with sentiment, honor, and legacy if not anything monetarily per say. The memories of those who celebrated this meal are held dear as we utilize their treasures as we shepherd our lives into this New Year.

The garden shall provide our centerpieces. It is wintertime after all, and time to put the garden to bed for a long winter’s nap. Cedar, cypress, boxwood, holly, and magnolia will be clipped and set into a coiffure bouquet only the garden can provide. Pine boughs and cones, bowls of pecans in silver dishes, blue juniper berries and deep aubergine privet berries will augment the serenity of the season and a dose of color to our homage of garden greens. Touches of white from early Paperwhites, silvery artemisia, and popcorn tree will truly sparkle against the deep evergreens’ foliage, looking ever so dapper in any cachepot, tureen, pot, or pail.

We shall eat for progression, luck, health and wealth, and a myriad of good things, and will end the dining festivities with sweet morsels of Southern goodness. Our gardens and land shall be ever present as our décor–a gentle reminder of where our provisions were grown and raised. The food may be spiced with meaning, tradition, and superstition, but the lore has become a part of our culture. For a few hundred years, we had to eat what we had, what we grew. Though times have changed, eating that food, eating “poor,” is still cherished and revered so we may truly eat “rich.” We shall have rice for riches and peas for peace and be no worse for the wear. From this Farmer’s table to yours, Happy New Year!

Lucky Money Stew

Cook’s Note: Use leftover collard greens, black eyed peas, and ham from the holidays for the base of this stew. I froze said ingredients and simply add them to the pot to thaw. Since they are cooked, all they need is to be warmed through. Measurements are give and take and depend on your leftover amounts. Of course, you can always make this stew from the scratch if no leftovers are at hand.

• 1 Vidalia onion, chopped
• Teaspoon of garlic, minced
• Salt, pepper, Lawry’s and Nature’s Seasoning to taste
• About 4 cups of leftover cook turnip greens
• About 4 cups of leftover black eyed peas
• About 4 cups of leftover ham, chopped
• 4 cups of water
• 4 chicken bouillon cubes

Brown the onion, garlic, and celery with butter and oil, seasoning to taste.
Add chicken bouillon cubes,diced ham, cooked greens and peas.
Add two cans of white beans with their liquid and water, bring soup to a boil and then serve with cornbread. Luck and money headed your way!

Roots of New Year’s Food Traditons

“Eat poor that day, eat rich the rest of the year… Rice for riches and peas for peace.” 

Old Southern saying for New Year’s Menu 

Collard greens, black eyed peas, cornbread and pork are the foodstuffs of the South, rich in legend, lore, and superstition. Money or not, every Southern family I know dines on these same vittles for their New Year’s supper. Not too poor of eating if I say so myself.

       
According to this Farmer, the New Year’s Day menu is a Southern supper at its finest. Steeped in tradition, flavored with history, and doused with a touch of superstition, this meal encompasses the South’s ebb and flow of classicism and eccentricity–a meal of our heritage. Here in America’s Deep South, the cultures of Europe, Africa and the Native Americans combine with their respected refinements and sentimentalities making this meal fit to usher in a new year.

Growing up in rural Middle Georgia, we knew our food’s legacy before it arrived on our tables. This Farm to Table movement of late has always been the custom for those of us raised in a more bucolic fashion. We know our farmers and growers. In his blessings before a meal, my brother-in-law’s father always gives thanks for “not only the hands that prepared the food but grew it as well...” whereas our New Year’s meal is of no exception. This is a meal seeking to begin the New Year with the blessings of life. Binding Southern commonality, our New Year’s meal is the food of the people, regardless of class, who eat will eat “poor” (common food) so we may eat “rich” (eat well) for the remainder: farm to table is as rich as they come.

Pork, in various forms, is used throughout the meal. The noble pig moves forward in life, progressing in its rooting for food, finding truffles and treasures of nourishment, while a chicken scratches backward for food. This old Southern axiom begins to shed some light on the development of our traditions and superstitions for New Year’s cuisine. We prefer to move forward as well, thus the basis Sus domestica’s appeal–why we eat pork on New Year’s Day and not chicken.

Braised or grilled sausage seasoned with herbs, spices, and other local flavor; roasted tenderloins sliced into medallions and served with biscuits; or chops barbequed and smoked with oak, pecan, or hickory wood–pork generally takes the lead role as main dish for a Southern New Year’s Day. What better way to start the New Year than with a pig–the mark of a year to come that is full of promise. A good pig can feed a family for months, and as for the better part of our country’s (and our world’s history for that matter) can attest, a pig with which to commence forward into the new year is a very good sign.
       
As we progress, good fortune and its accoutrements, luck, money, health and wealth, shall hopefully be at our side. Black eyed peas, collard greens, cornbread, and Hoppin’ John, a Southern staple, shall be served across the Deep South on New Year’s Day and throughout the year. A mix of rice, dried peas or beans (usually black eyed peas), and some pork, this dish is more so a slice of Southern history.

Some of the finest rice in the South, Carolina Gold, was grown (and still is) in the Low Country. From Savannah upwards through coastal Carolina, this rice was a major cash crop in antebellum years–a doyenne of our lifeblood foodstuffs. After the Civil War, the Gulf States became major rice growers as well as the Mississippi River marshes of Arkansas. We Southerners eat many dishes over rice as a result. African and Caribbean influences further ensured the grain’s presence on our culinary tableaux, Hoppin’ John, Dirty Rice, and Jambalaya thus becoming ensconced into our heritage. For New Year’s Day, Hoppin’ John will be the dish du jour, bringing the progressive representation of pork with luck from the black eyed peas and brought together with a common grain that has fed us and much of the world for years. Rice for riches–its plentiful grains in hope will garner plenty for us as well.

Another Southern standard for New Year’s Day is Lucky Money. Combining black eyed peas with collard greens ensures luck and the hope of green–economic fortune. Seasoned with pork, may it be fatback, streak-o-lean, jowels, or back meat, this dish is another all encompassing way of bringing the greatest of expectations to the table for the New Year. Lucky Money, with its pot liquor, should be eaten with cornbread–crackling, corn pones, or skillet–whatever will allow you to sop up the liquor or flavor left in the pot after cooking the greens and meat. Sop it up indeed, for the cornbread represents gold and will continue your meal’s countenance to send you into the New Year with good fortune as your guide. Freeze your leftovers and make a delicious soup later on that will fill you again with the hope of goodness for a new year!