As soon as I popped the lid on the pot of field peas, I had ritual remorse. As a faithful New Year’s Day black-eyed peas and rice disciple, the superstitious vein in my neck pulsed.

“Tempting fate,” said a warning voice in my head. “Turn your back on tradition and good fortune will not find you in the coming year.”

But it turns out field and black-eyed peas are kissing cousins, so, knock on wood, I may be spared bad luck for being uppity. A recent article, enlightening us in the ways of the Southern food movement, offered wiggle room for respectful changes to Hoppin’ John.

Here’s the history. After the American Revolution, hundreds of varieties of rice grew along the coasts of the Carolinas and Georgia. From their slaves born in Africa, plantation owners learned to rotate crops of rice with peas.

During harsh winters and droughts, those two staples, eaten together, sustained plantation life. In warmer weather, peas were eaten while they were green, in a dish with rice called “reezy peezy.”

Black-eyed peas came on the scene later. They were the garden tough guys.

Mechanical pickers did them no harm. Today, in a white tablecloth restaurant on the Carolina coast, a serving of Hoppin’ John is most likely a meal of heirloom rice, topped with small red beans.

After I decided to replace black-eyed peas on the New Year’s Day menu, substituting last summer’s field peas, bought at the farmer’s market and frozen, I came across a recipe for turnip greens, 2012.

It involved garlic and nutmeg, a cooking time of five minutes and an ample cup of cream. I passed. There’s just so much mutiny a family will tolerate, particularly the kith and kin partial to pot likker.

The bigger story, of course, is the new-found respect for Southern cooking and chefs, both making their mark on the national scene. Who would have believed the farm-to-table movement, sweeping the country, could find its’ voice in food grown below the Mason-Dixon Line?

We are, after all, the folks of barbeque and grits, cornbread and fried chicken, once taken about as seriously as canned gravy in the world of “foodies.” These days, our

backyard chickens, our pork, blackberries and biscuits are no longer the stuff of “Bubba” jokes.

The scuppernongs of your grandmother’s secret stash of wine are finding their way into sorbets and fine dining jellies. Figs are brought straight from farms to restaurants, where they are pickled or sliced raw as crowns for salads pleasing the ladies who lunch.

Southern chefs, serious about finding the best cornmeal, work in tandem with growers and dairy farmers, with guys who pick watercress by hand and plant organic peanuts.

Local farmers check on forgotten peach trees in old orchards, searching for heirloom fruit varieties, sweeter, new tastes for discerning palettes in restaurants as far away as Maine.

Even sorghum syrup, that staple of Depression days, poured over everything from stale biscuits to sweet potatoes, is making a comeback. Once a kitchen table staple, good sorghum is hard to come by these days.

In reading about the revolution of Southern cooking, I came across a young chef’s recollection of tagging along to sorghum parties as a child. Sean Brock, a star in the world of fine eating, whose restaurant, Husk, in Charleston, serves only food grown in the South, (Georgia olive oil) wrote of neighbors bringing their favorite dishes, coming together to eat, stir and skim.

There was a time when a get-together involving a wood fire, paddles and home-made syrup was labeled “rural,” but that was before sorghum was “cool.”

Today, we are a South with “regional chic.” Folks favor our bacon. We grow heritage tomatoes and pigs and turn grits into an art form. There is dignity in claiming a farmer’s life and roots.

My great-uncle August would be proud. In a cotton-growing hamlet in Alabama, he was known for his sweet, mild honey and his watermelon rind pickles.

Judy Elliott is an award-winning columnist from Marietta.