Symbols of health, wealth and history on New Year’s Day

January 1, 2018

Lafayette,LA

New Orleanians, even living miles from home, know that January 1 is not complete without a traditional meal of collard greens, black eyed peas, cornbread, and pork. My Lafayette, LA, hosts and great friends Rubia and Bernard hail from New Orleans and Dublin respectively, where people take food and drink seriously.

Rubia remembers the meaning of the meal. retold almost as a catechism, as she ate the dinner with her parents and siblings in New Orleans' seventh ward.

Collard greens symbolized folding money; black eyed peas represented coins; cornbread with its gold color represented riches; if you could afford pork you were living high off the hog - if you were poor, your mother would find a piece of pork to drizzle into the beans or greens. Rubia added pickled pork that added a salty flavor to the greens and beans.

Back in the day, money for many was scarce. Families could grow the greens and beans in their garden, cornmeal was inexpensive.

I’m not so sure history is invoked but black-eyed peas might still be a touchy subject. During the War Between The States, Union soldiers grabbed up all the food they could carry to feed themselves and laid waste to the rest on the way to Atlanta in 1863. Black eyed peas were plentiful but grow on scraggly looking bushes. Northern soldiers had no idea of their value and left them alone. They were practically the only kind of protein left, were easy to store, and fed those southerners through thick and thin for the rest of the war.

Life seems be changing at warp speed these days. This chance to share a meal freighted with such regional history may or may not be recreated in another generation or two.


But right now, as I cut into a perfectly done breaded, fried then finished in the oven pork chop, collard greens, black eyed peas, pickled pork and a mound of corn bread, I feel about as southern as a Yankee from Boston is ever gonna get.

 

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Comments

[RUBIA SOLIS]

You're always invited to break bread at our table.

[Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. aka pt at large]

Thank you, Rubia...some of the best cooking in Lafayette happens right in your kitchen!