DblFeast Days~ Kwanzaa 2020~ Day Six, Kuumba(Creativity) & Twilight Zone Marathons~

Kuumba is to do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.

KUUMBA, day six of Kwanzaa

Soul food feasting DOwn is the name of the game for New Year’s eve(!) and it dovetails very nicely with the Kwanzaa feast of Kuumba, Freedom’s Eve and with the tradition of having a bowl of hoppin’ John first thing New Years day.

I will make more mac N cheese and collards, but if I am in a city worth its salt and don’t feel like going full out I will shamelessly order in Popeyes chicken and biscuits to happily nosh with some quickly braised greens and mac during the Twilight Zone Marathon.

No classic scifi head worth their salt wants to be frying chicken or making biscuits while taking notes from Rod Serling! & no, it doesn’t matter how many times one has seen the episodes, you always find something new! No classic scifi head worth their salt wants to be frying chicken or making biscuits while taking notes from Rod Serling! & no, it doesn’t matter how many times one has seen the episodes, you always find something new!

& Yeah, no, it’s not all “Party on, dudes!” A good 14 or so New Year’s eves wilding out in Manhattan can lead to one sincerely appreciating some sock slippers and soul food on the last day of the year, especially after being introduced to Night Watch after becoming a Christian. Maybe that’ll come back someday, but #Findyourrituals.


Hoppin’ John was a recipe I didn’t even hear about until Vegas 2010. I loathed black-eyed peas so vocally as a child nobody bothered to tell me about this dish. Then again, if they’d made it like what hoppin’ john actually is, I would’ve devoured it.

A recipe out of an old Essence magazine I was shredding for paper paint[collage materials] out in Vegas is what caught my eye. I oddly folded it up and put it in my pocket. Then I went back to New Orleans on assignment and all thoughts of attempting it were pushed out of my head by po’boys and etoufee and jambalaya and gumbo- there were other things afoot. I think the first New Year’s eve I made it was 2015 into 2016, with Venezuelan roommates, looking out over the Biscayne bay on New Years day. It was epic and has become a mainstay.

Hoppin’ John gets made on New Year’s Eve with whatever you’re making for that feast…so it can thicken up and blow your happily boozy mind in the morning. Don’t eat it before New Years day, Emancipation Day.