Wednesday, January 02, 2008

A VENERABLE SOUTHERN TRADITION

It’s an old Southern tradition to eat black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day, a tradition that I have happily adopted as a transplanted Son of the South.

Brings luck, so they say, and who am I to argue? For no matter how much misfortune may come one’s way in any given year, it could always be worse. That it is not worse, we may choose to attribute to our eating of black-eyed peas.

As goes New Year’s Day, so goes the New Year - another bit of Folk Wisdom. And so, I look forward to a Windy 2008, for amongst my food intake yesterday I counted not only the above-noted black-eyed peas, but a substantial portion of Brussels sprouts. Or, as they are known in Brussels, “sprouts.”

They don’t call them things “Fart Balls” for nothing, Esteemed Readers. For a Brussels sprout, resembling as it does a cabbage in miniature, possesses a delicate, slightly bitter flavor coupled with the flatulence-generating capabilities of the catering wagon at a Mexican refrito factory. The black-eyed peas serve as a mere accelerant.

I guess one of the first tasks of this New Year will be to replace the kitchen wallpaper. The old stuff appears to have blackened and peeled off...

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