BY BETH VELLIQUETTE
bvelliquette@heraldsun.com; 419-6632
CHAPEL HILL -- For Mildred Council and her family, New Year's Day is not a day to sit nursing a hangover or to lay back on the couch and watch football.
"I used to go out and celebrate New Year's Eve, but since we're so busy now, I don't get a chance to," said Sandra "Lane" Council, the kitchen manager at Mama Dip's Kitchen.
"It's going to be a day that is going to be nonstop," Council said. "It's going to be hard."
Lane Council is the daughter of Mildred Council, known by most as Mama Dip, and today, the Councils and the rest of the staff will be cooking and serving the traditional New Year's Day meal of pork, collard greens, black-eyed peas and sweet potatoes or yams, depending on which word Mama Dip happens to use to describe them.
Mama Dip, 80, has been cooking the traditional meal for more than 50 years, first as a cook at Bill's Barbecue, where she worked for 20 years at the small restaurant that was once located down the street, and 32 years at her own restaurant.
"It's always been a big day," Mama Dip said. "People come from a lot of places to eat this traditional meal."
She's not exaggerating. On Thursday, a young couple from California stopped to eat breakfast at Mama Dip's. It was on their list of places to visit while touring North Carolina, they said.
The couple bought her cookbook, asked for an autograph and posed for pictures with her, and when they heard she was having the special New Year's Day meal, they said they'd be back today.
Each item on the New Year's Day menu has a special meaning.
"Collards represent the dollar bill," Mama Dip said.
Black-eyed peas represent coins.
Pork? "I guess because that was the most meat we had in the country was the pig," she said.
And the yams represent the strength from under the ground. Her father always taught her that roots provide strength, and she's never forgotten his words.
The meal will be served with corn bread or biscuits, but no dessert.
"We won't sell much dessert because the yams are semi sweet," she said. "When they finish that, they're full."
To prepare, Dip's ordered 75 pounds of pre-soaked black-eyed peas, 15 cases of collards, eight cases of sweet potatoes, and 40 pork roasts.
The cooks include Gene, who has worked for her for 18 years, Della, a 20-year employee, Tyron, Lane, her grandson Evan, and her son Joe, among others. Some of her other children and grandchildren work in the dining room.
After lunch on Thursday, they got down to the serious business of cooking for today.
"New Year's Eve is really the day to prepare for tomorrow," she said. "It's a continuous process throughout the day and throughout tomorrow."
The restaurant won't be serving breakfast today, Mama Dip said, because no one gets up that early on New Year's Day anyway.
The restaurant will open at 10:30 a.m. to begin serving the traditional meal, and if it's like previous years, by 11 a.m. the line will be out the door, winding around on the big porch.
The restaurant closes at 9 p.m., and after they clean everything up and go home, that's when the celebration begins, said Lane Council, who bought a bottle of bubbly Wednesday night.
"Then I get to have a glass of champagne," she said with a smile.
