So here we are in the midst of the holiday season, and it’s a long season marked by very rich foods and overeating.

I think the food thing starts around Halloween, slowly gaining momentum toward Thanksgiving and then is in full swing by Christmas with some tapering effect around New Year’s.

Now while I enjoy all the holiday fare, it tends to get a bit old after a while, to the point that I’m ready for a bologna sandwich. 

Holiday feasting goes back centuries and will continue long after we are gone, though we are much more educated about the cause and effects of our nutritional tendencies than our forefathers were.

For instance, we have learned that turkey has a way of making us sleepy. Given the quality of some football games on Thanksgiving day, this effect may not be a bad thing.

Cranberry sauce is laden with sugar, so I have to limit my intake relative to A1C levels. When all of these festive meals were first thrust into the lives of humans, cholesterol, triglycerides and acid reflux had not been invented. I have tried to educate myself, at least at a layman’s level, on these conditions. In that pursuit, cholesterol became a main target. Parallel to that knowledge, I learned that triglycerides comprise everything else that taste good.

Fortunately there are medications we can take to moderate these conditions. And that way we don’t have to limit ourselves to eating tree bark and tiny bales of hay soaked in honey.

I’ve often wondered why some foods are so closely associated with a particular holiday. When we think of Thanksgiving, we think of turkey. But I also think of giblet gravy, dressing, roast pork, etc. 

Yet I eat turkey sandwiches throughout the year.

One feature that always shows up at our Thanksgiving meal is cracklin’ pone bread. I tried to explain this food to a Yankee friend many years ago. He had trouble wrapping his mind around pig skins cooked in corn pone. And another favorite side treat for me is pot-licker bread.

For those who don’t know, it’s made from corn meal and cooked turnip juice. 

Of course my Yankee friend had never met okra until I treated him to a meal at Miss Pitty Pat’s Porch in downtown Atlanta. He could not get over the fuzziness of boiled okra. I tried to explain a boiled okra sandwich to him, but he thought I was kidding. You see, I had almost convinced him that in addition to hunting squirrels we also hunted naugahs. I even explained the process of curing and tanning Naugahydes. The boy was so gullible, but a good friend and a nice guy. He became a student of Southern life. And I helped him all I could.

I think many of us are conscious of our feeding frenzies especially as they relate to the holidays. And I think that’s why many of us taper off on New Year’s Day to the tradition of black-eyed peas.

Some people put hog jowls in the peas. I prefer hamhocks. While hog jowls are flavorful, they have very little meat on them. And for those who don’t know, hog jowls are hog jaws and hamhocks are hog ankles. They don’t call them that because those references would probably turn some people off that food source. It’s kind of like brisket. How many people would order cow neck? And such analogy might also be extended to rump roast.

It’s said that some people live to eat and some eat to live. I’m probably somewhere in the middle. I have an eating problem however. I have met very few foods I don’t like. I call it the Will Rogers syndrome, a condition relative to “the great waist land.”

Email: dwain.walden@gaflnews.com