Onion, sweet bell pepper and garlic, sautéed in bacon drippings, topped with black-eyed peas, chicken stock, chopped ham and a pork hock and cooked under pressure in the Instant Pot. 

Instant Pot Black-Eyed Peas

Black-eyed peas are always on my New Year's Day menu. Always. And... maybe I'm especially superstitious, but this year I think it's even more important to uphold that tradition, don't you?

Typically, I have made mine in the style of which I do most southern peas - using dried peas and cooked right on the stovetop - but, with the popularity of the Instant Pot {affil link} and other electronic pressure cookers, the past few years I've switched over to making them this way for the New Year's Day meal.

A casserole of lump crab, a highly seasoned cream sauce and a mix of two shredded cheeses.

Crabmeat au Gratin

Crab au gratin is a delicious, decadent treat for sure, because, unless you are doing your own crabbing, boiling and picking, it can be a pricey dish for sure. If you've ever done any of the above though, you know the work that goes into picking crabs, and the effort required to get those nice, large lump pieces, so it's worth the price.

This dish can be used as an entrée, served with a nice garden salad and some hot French bread, or as an appetizer, served with some nice, sturdy crackers. As an entrée, I prefer to serve it in individual au gratin dishes {affil link}, though it can also be prepared in a casserole dish and spooned out onto plates. It's much more atheistically pleasing in the individual dishes. 

A quick, small batch soup, made using a vegetable mirepoix of onion, carrot and celery, with fresh minced garlic, okra, tomatoes, leftover cooked chicken and rice and a quality commercial stock or broth.

Southern-Style Chicken and Rice Soup

Whole chickens are on sale around here often and I sure take advantage of them, always buying a larger one for intentional leftovers. Sometimes I'll roast one, sometimes stew it, or cut it up and bake it.

Very often I'll use my Instant Pot {affil link} to cook a whole chicken using my "ready chicken" recipe, use some of it for a meal, then reserve the rest to use in a soup, chicken and dumplings, a casserole, some chicken salad, or even just to put up in the freezer for another day.

Chicken wings, baked in a barbecue sauce, infused with onion, garlic and pepper jelly, that provides that sweet heat we all love here in the Deep South!

Pepper Jelly Barbecue Wings

Here's another one for the wing collection! 

We eat a lot of chicken around here and wings are an all time favorite cut for me. In fact, as white meat goes, I prefer them over chicken breasts, and the flats section of the wing are my favorite over the drumettes. The Cajun will eat either, so you can bet that I make sure that I pick out the flats I want first!