Pork, greens and blackeye peas - in a convenient soup, with a slow-stewed and concentrated, vitamin-enriched potlikker base. Serve with skillet cornbread to complete the meal.

Slow Cooker Greens and Potlikker Soup

Even though this is a good soup anytime, with New Year's around the corner, I wanted to prepare a true potlikker soup, meaning not a shortcut version like my Beans and Greens or Swamp Soup, both of which could technically qualify as a potlikker soup.

Instead, I wanted to prepare a more genuine homemade version using a long, slow stewing of the greens to form a solid potlikker from the greens. What better way to do that than with a slow cooker?

This is actually my first slow cooker recipe in awhile!

A tender brown sugar and pecan cookie widely known in South Louisiana as cocoons and very popular around the holidays. Pictured here with Pecan Crispies and Sugar and Spice Cookies.

Brown Sugar Cocoons

I'm sure you'll recognize these cookies as they are a holiday favorite, for sure!

These wonderful cookies are known by many names, mostly depending on how they are shaped. Some of the more familiar ones being fingers, ladyfingers, crescents, sand tarts, sand dabs, Mexican wedding cookies, Russian teacakes, Chinese tea cookies, butterfingers, petticoat tails, pecan dreams, snowballs, moon cookies, sandies and Italian wedding cookies, they are well-loved. I'm sure there are many other names they are known by around the world!

A traditional noodle pudding made with wide egg noodles in a sweetened egg custard sauce with cottage cheese and sour cream and finished with a buttery, brown sugar cornflake topping.

Sweet Noodle Pudding

I just want to first start this off by saying I am not Jewish.

I don't know a thing about traditional Jewish holiday meals or traditions.

I don't know what foods are most appropriate for certain occasions or when.

When I ran across this recipe for noodle pudding in the cookbook by Julie Albert and Lisa Gnat called Bite Me, I was fully skeptical, but I decided to give it a try,

A classic sugar cookie with the inclusion of spices, perfect for the holiday cookie tray.

Sugar and Spice Cookies

Certain spices just speak to the holidays don't they?

They make their way into a lot of baked goods during the season and just the aroma can stir up some memories of holidays past - those days we all seem to miss and long for in today's trying times.

Most spiced cookies use molasses though, and the flavor of molasses can be a bit overwhelming. I didn't really want that depth of flavor in these cookies. I was searching for a lighter sugar cookie with just a hint of the flavors of the holiday.

A quick small batch turkey or chicken soup with corn and noodles.

Turkey or Chicken and Corn Soup

Tis the season for soup!

Even though the weather has been pretty consistently inconsistent here in the Deep South.

We've been flip-flopping between freezing to humid and warm down here along the beach - and mostly warm and humid lately. But you know what they say... just wait a day or three and that's subject to change of course!