I'll bring the hot sauce...

I might be romanticizing, but the food, drink, music, art and other aspects of culture in a place are fascinating, and separate one otherwise indistinct place from another. Since we've moved across the ocean I've pretty much stuck to English and Continental food, with the occasional foray into Chinese, per Honey's newfound interest. I love Southern food, and I still cook a good Southern meal about once a month, but without the stoneground grits, the gorgeous pink turnips stunning array of winter greens, it just doesn't feel, well, Southern.

Of course a lot of major components to the Southern meal can be found in England, and that's what I've tapped whenever culinary homesickness strikes. For New Year's Day, I bought some spring cabbage, English cider, smoked streaky bacon--ham hocks can be found, but it requires more planning than I'd invested--and broke out the black eyed peas that came as part of our flat's furnishings. A little chunky tomato sauce went into the peas, in the hope that Honey would like them if they tasted less like peas. And my gorgeous, gleaming cast iron cornbread pan was pressed into service, along with the stoneground cornmeal from Riverview, smuggled in a Dutch oven back in July.

I should have made pepper sauce months ago, when we emptied our first bottle of olive oil, but I'm indolent at best, and the greens needed something. So I dredged up and modified a friend's hot sauce recipe: Equal parts cider and white vinegar, a good bit of cayenne: at least 4 tablespoons for about 250 mL, and about an equal amount of hot and sweet pimenton, mixed evenly. This is all based on taste, as I sure wasn't measuring while trying to make hot sauce, retrieve cornbread, and dish out peas and greens.

Sitting on the couch and eating for money and luck, with my good smokey hot sauce, humming "Unhappy" by Oukast, I felt comforted, even I daresay optimistic. And honey and won respectably at the casino the next night, so maybe there's something to these old rituals.