This is definitely a Soul Food Sunday post I’ve been looking forward to writing a long time. Lucky for me, my mom offered to cook the traditional Southern new year’s day dinner for all of us! It was awesome.

Dinner was INCREDIBLE. My mom is a magician in the kitchen.

There are meanings attached to a couple of the dishes, which is why they’re traditional for the first day of the year. Collard greens that represent the dollars we hope to gain in the new year:

Black-eyed peas represent the coins!

And then other deliciousness for good measure. AWESOME fried chicken!

Candied yams:

And I made some cornbread to go with it!

We were all very hungry and dug right in to all the amazing dishes!

Honestly, every dish was equally incredible and I ate until I couldn’t eat any more. 🙂

And as if all that food wasn’t enough, mom picked out a pound cake with lemon curd glaze for me to whip up for dessert!

So much good food. So little time. I can’t move because I ate so much. This was the perfect last meal of the holidays. Indulgence can be a good thing, even in a healthy lifestyle.

Hope you’re having a great start to 2012! Thanks for reading.

-Lauren