I’m Going Green in 2011.

“What stinks?”

“Your lunch,” I replied.

All these years, how could I have been so misled? From my very first New Year’s when mama smooshed a few with the back of a spoon and placed them between my toothless gums, it was all about the black-eyed peas. They were the marquee menu item whether pouring out of a Thermos in the parking lot of a football game or at a neighbor’s Open House. In our home, without them the calendar wouldn’t officially turn another year anymore than Christmas could have arrived without eating a plate or two of Joyce Few’s cheese straws. Any southerner knows, or aspiring southerner certainly should know, eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s brings good luck.

Looking back those peas never failed. They gave me great friends, a productive stubborn streak (but enough common sense to realize when stubborn was spiraling into stupid) and a wonderful husband. All this good fortune only could have sprung from a lifetime of eating peas on January first. But upon moving to Madison, I heard whispers of another crucial part to this culinary equation. A puzzle piece I had hoped to avoid like stepping barefoot on a cat’s hair ball during a midnight trip to the bathroom.

Greens.

With my mother always cooking some type on New Year’s Day, I was intimate with the smell of them on the stove. A scent my nine-year-old self thought rather stinky. Nothing in that smell made my stomach rumble even as much as a butterfly’s dying flutter. Back then I thought her at bit eccentric, like she was pining for her Georgia roots. But no smelly stuff that came pouring out of Popeye’s cans was going to be on my plate New Year’s Day. Which is all fine and good when you are nine and don’t have a mortgage. Heat just flows into the house, food just appears on the table and new shoes just sprout each time your foot grew. Unbelievably my mother never forced me to eat them. Considering what I know now, that’s almost child abuse.

What I didn’t know back then is that greens consumed on New Year’s turn into green lining your pocket the rest of the year. Silly me, I thought if you ate enough peas all that luck was certain to turn into money.

Not the way it works.

So with looming college expenses and rising transportation costs to Switzerland for anti-aging, stem cell treatments from a rare Swiss apple; I’m not taking any chances. This year there’s collards from my garden and I’m going to fix them myself. If it all works, I’m figuring triple the financial gain.

My friend Annie, said first cook the meat and then chop up the greens after removing the stems. This year, our greens suffered a hard frost, freeze and snow making them already tender. You don’t need to cook them long. No one wants mushy greens. (See Annie, I took notes.) Add a little cornbread and it’s the best financial investment a gal can make these days.

I can’t wait for the scent of simmering collards to fill the house Saturday morning. Really, who doesn’t love the smell of money?