Cookin' the black eyed peas? [View All]

I've got my pot of BEPs going as well as a pot of mixed greens (turnip and curly mustard). Tomorrow, we will have our traditional southern New Year's Day good luck dinner, consisting of smoked hog jowl, ham, BE peas, rice, coleslaw, sweet potatoes greens and lime pie. For those of you who haven't eaten hog jowl, it's a bit like thick, smoky bacon and we only eat a small piece for good luck. Does anyone else have a traditional New Year's Day dinner?

After New Year's, I render the fat out of the rest of the jowl, add some peanut butter, grits or cornmeal, oats, sunflower seeds, dried fruits and make it into suet for the birds (and squirrels). I cut it into suet-feeder sized hunks and put it in the freezer. Last year, the winter was so warm, I couldn't use all of it, because on some days, even in mid-winter, it gets up to 65 degrees here in N. Georgia. This suet is very popular with wrens, for some reason. When I lived in the NC mtns, a family of Carolina wrens made a nest in our utility room, using the cat door to come and go. We finally propped open the door for fear the cats would get the parents as they flew in and out. Anyway, they raised a family of babies on our suet, then they stayed on and raised another family later in the summer. Next winter, there were several wrens hanging around the suet feeder.