Pork jowl
In the Southern United States, there is a tradition of eating black-eyed peas and greens with either pork jowls or fatback on New Year's Day.  This is to ensure prosperity in the new year.  The tradition goes back hundreds of years.  During the American Civil War (1861 to 1865), the peas were thought to represent wealth, while the Northern army considered the food to be fit as livestock feed only. Some people saw pigs as symbols of "wealth and gluttony" and eating jowls or fatback on New Year's Day guaranteed a good new year.