THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 1, 1995 TAG: 9501010060
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: PAUL SOUTH
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
Prosperity grows close to the ground in northeastern North Carolina in the winter. It's a leafy shade of deep green. And if you believe in New Year's traditions - Southern style - prosperity is cooking in a pot with water and ham hock, a concoction that gives off an aroma that makes children and grownups alike shed tears.
Children cry with disgust. Grownups get misty-eyed in anticipation of culinary nirvana.
For the unenlightened among us, who have come to this blessed land from places like New Jersey, Ohio and points north, there is a two-word explanation for all of this New Year's Day emotion:
Collard greens.
That's right, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, friends and neighbors. Collard greens. It starts with C that rhymes with D, which stands for Dee-Licious.
If you grew up anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line, you know that no New Year's Day meal is complete without pork, black-eyed peas and collards. Pork means wealth. Black-eyes peas are for luck. And collards are for ``folding money,'' so my grandmother told me.
But students of collardology - including Alex Albright, a faculty member at East Carolina University - are quick to point out that the southern cousin of the cabbage has powers beyond the dinner table.
In the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Albright writes that folk healers believe a collard leaf placed on the forehead can cure a headache, and that one above the door wards off evil spirits. ``Female nervous conditions'' can also be cured by collards. (As a male, I can only assume that such nervous conditions occur when the Visa is maxed out.)
Collards can also be credited for stimulating the creative process. Jazz legend and Rocky Mount native Thelonious Monk wore a collard leaf in his lapel when he performed in New York nightclubs. Playwright Paul Green, author of ``The Lost Colony,'' once gave a seminar titled ``Collards and Culture.''
Sam Ragan, a former poet laureate of North Carolina, recalled that Green ``urged us all to move out of the commonplace and bring a new dimension to our collard lives.''
And while this has not been documented, I believe that when Scarlett O'Hara pulls up a handful of dirt at the end of her ``As God Is My Witness'' speech in ``Gone With the Wind,'' she is holding on high a clump of collards.
There is a magical ingredient that is a byproduct of collards, known as pot likker, the juices created when cooking a mess of greens. A former editor of the Charlotte Observer, J.P. Caldwell, wrote ``The North Carolinian who is not familiar with pot likker has suffered in his education, and needs to go back and begin it over again.''
Indeed. Not only can pot likker enhance the flavor of a piece of butter-smothered cornbread, say the folk healers, it also can be an aphrodisiac. So for those of you who want to rekindle the flame in 1995, toss out the Sinatra records and cook up some collards.
Now the chances are pretty good that eating black-eyed peas to celebrate the new year won't bring Ed McMahon or the Prize Patrol to your door. And putting collard leaves above your door may not keep tough times away.
But they will help us get off to a fresh start toward loving our families and friends a little more, and making the world a better place.
So have a Happy New Year. And pass the collards, please. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
COOKING COLLARDS
According to S.R. Dull, who wrote ``Southern Cooking,'' collards
are best after the first frost, which makes the greens tender. The
former food columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution says to
cover the collards with water in a pot, add ham hocks or other
seasoned meat, and cook slowly for two hours or until tender,
keeping the greens under water. If the aroma is too strong, toss a
whole nut of any kind into the pot.
by CNB