Feeling Southern this afternoon, I cooked a 'mess' of spicy collard greens, drizzling them with red balsamic vinegar......as they were served by my maternal grandmother..... Now, should I serve them with corn pones or cornbread sticks?

I couldn't resist...not that I wanted to.....a couple of Kroger 'mark downs'.....$1.99 for a huge bag of collard greens and $2.49 for a pound of hickory-smoked bacon......I cooked the greens in chicken stock, adding lots of chopped scallions, pomegranate liquor, ground peppers, Cajun seasoned salt, pulverized raisins, tobasco sauce, chopped garlic, rice wine vinegar, Mexican Valentina salsa picante and the tiny bits of honey-roasted cashew nuts that were left at the bottom of a bag......something that my grandmother would never have considered, of course...... thick, Prelibato red vinegar was dizzled over the cooked concoction......I decided to serve them with feather-light old-fashioned white cornmeal corn sticks, carmelized in the old Martin Stamping and Stove cast iron cornstick mold.......Now, I wish that I had made some black-eyed peas to accompany this N. Alabama-ish afternoon treat...

The eventual destination.....after the cornsticks were all eaten......on a potato pancake......