A Little Bit of Dixie on New Year’s Day

You can take Dixie out of the South, but you can’t take the South out of Dixie, at least when it comes to food, particularly on New Year’s Day. And, when I say Dixie, I don’t just mean the song, the cups, or the Chicks. I mean me. Yep. My first name is Dixie, and I’m named after my dad, known as Dixie for his entire life. Perhaps to avoid confusion, I have used my middle name, Howell, for as long as I can remember. Well, with one exception.

When I attended college at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., I joined a fraternity, Phi Sigma Kappa.  I tried to cling to my middle name, but for some reason, my fraternity brothers not only learned of my first name but became somewhat enamored with it.  The name I had never used would become the basis for my pledge name, “Cups.” It would also be the name (sometimes shorted to Dix) that I would be called — then and now — by a diverse group of lifelong friends.

Although I have tried at times to escape my first name, as I have grown older and, hopefully, wiser, I have embraced my name and my family heritage. Part of that heritage is food. Traditional Southern food. Whether it’s cornbread dressing (not stuffing) on Thanksgiving or Chicken ‘n Dumplings (my great-grandmother’s were the best) anytime, food connects us to family and tradition.

Like many families, New Year’s Day is filled with culinary traditions handed down from generation to generation.  The smell of black-eyed peas cooking on the stove (today it will be in the Instant Pot), the sound of frying hog jowl crackling in the pan (alas, no hog jowls to be found in southeast New Mexico this year), and the aroma of homemade cornbread (Martha White Sweet Yellow Cornbread Mix will do the job today) transport me back to my grandparent’s house, standing next to my Gram as she cooked another New Year’s Day meal for the family. Such is the power of food.

Traditional meals are wonderful ways to link us to family spread out across the country and to family members who are no longer with us to celebrate on these special occasions.  When I fry up white bacon (a poor substitute for hog jowl), I’ll think of my dad, Dixie, who meticulously fried the hog jowl every New Year’s Day until he died in 2006.   As I eat my black-eyed peas, I’ll remember my mom and grandparents and all those New Year’s Day pasts when we sat around the table in Lake Placid, FL, enjoying food and family.

Of course, what would New Year’s Day be like without new traditions? In my family today, only my brother-in-law and I eat black-eyed peas. My wife will eat one pea mixed in with mashed potatoes, but usually under duress. None of my boys will even attempt to eat peas. As for hog jowls, those are messy to cook. Maybe I can use another part of the pig this year, say baby back ribs, and still call it good for tradition.

Whatever your family’s culinary traditions are on New Year’s Day — posole and tamales in New Mexico or black-eyed peas and hog jowls in the South — from the heart of Dixie, I wish you a happy and healthy 2025. Now and always:

May the Lord bless you and protect you. May the Lord smile on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord show you his favor and give you his peace. Numbers 6:24-26 (CSB)