Happy New Year, fellow bloggers! I trust everyone had a great holiday weekend. I did. I awoke this morning to the aroma of collard greens w/hamhocks, black-eyed peas and cornbread wafting through my home.

My mother and aunts were in my kitchen cooking a New Year’s Day dinner, and I started thinking about the tradition of cooking these dishes for New Years and what it stood for.

So I did a little research and found out that the tradition started with the Civil War, when Northern soldiers stole the food supplies of many Southern homes one New Year’s Eve and left the families with only black-eyed peas and salt pork to survive on, which left the Southern soldiers with nothing but the peas and pork for dinner the next day.

Black-eyed peas swell when cooked, so it was viewed was a sign of prosperity to the Southerners. Many years later, collard greens were added to meals because they were green and folded like money, so that stood for wealth. Also added later was cornbread, because of it’s golden color, symbolized gold for the new year.

So there you have it, the meaning behind the tradition of collard greens, salt pork, black-eyed peas and cornbread for New Years.