- Hog jowl, thick sliced, with the "rind" left on, fried slow and crisp--fresh pork can be used, but aged is better; grease reserved for use in the following dishes;

- Boiled cabbage with red pepper, a generous pinch or two of sugar and bacon grease, cooked low and slow;

- Blackeye peas--or as we say, "Black eyed peas" --cooked long and low with bacon grease, traditionally in a cast iron pot, but today I use my crockpot for convenience;

- Cornbread - Southern style, no sugar added, baked in a cast iron skillet--this skillet is near a century old and has never, I repeat never, been used for anything else but cornbread, and is never immersed in water and no soap is used in its cleaning--and it still functions as it did when (nearly) new; well seasoned.

This menu has not varied in my more-than-half-a-century, nor has it changed, according to previous generations, in at least a century.