Historically, on New Year’s Day in the Mississippi Delta families ate black-eyed peas, rice, and collard greens and shoot out the old year and shoot in the New Year with their guns. “All over you could hear guns going off,” says one Delta native. Then on New Year’s Day folks would eat right at twelve noon insuring a favorable new year. The men might go hunting while the women folk stayed in the kitchen making deserts, candied yams, and homemade cranberry sauce.