My husband and I are a lot alike.  We are both oldest children.  We are both ENFPs.  We were both campus ministers before we married.  In fact, we like to say, “We liked ourselves so much, we married people just like ourselves.” (Sounds healthy …)

But we part ways when it comes to cornbread.

I take mine sweet (modern, post-1930), and he takes his unsweet (traditional, pre-1930).

If you didn’t know there was a sweet/unsweet debate that has something to do with milling techniques which changed around 1930, and you want to know more, feel free to refer to this article:

http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/08/why-southern-cornbread-shouldnt-have-sugar.html

What we do agree on is that we like New Year’s Day better than New Year’s Eve.  Primarily because we’re not young and spry, and we enjoy being awake during parties.

This year, for New Year’s Day, we had about 75 neighbors over lunch. Half were kids, but nonetheless, the big crowd was pretty much all the Disco Tudor could hold.

The lunch was fairly impromptu, and it was a fun way to get everyone together and introduce each other to some neighbors one of us have met and the other hadn’t.

And, of course, we had all the traditional New Year’s Day foods, including cornbread (sweet), black-eye peas, and labor-of-love collard greens:

After hours of chopping greens, chatting with neighbors, running out of trash bags (thanks to our neighbors for letting us raid theirs), this was the scene:

Safe to say a good time was had by all.

We are thankful for all the blessings and sustenance of 2017

Happy 2018!