Good Luck for the New Year: Pass the Black-Eyed Peas!

black-eyed peas for luck in the coming year

I’m not sure where this thinking comes from, but Southerners have long held that chowing down on a serving of black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day is essential to the coming year’s good luck. I had a college roommate who, in spite of celebrating the incoming year a little too freely, still managed to choke down a single black-eyed pea one New Year’s Day. And with that, she was convinced she’d gotten the year off to a proper start. I didn’t say anything, but I figured she needed all the good luck she could get in light of the wealth of trouble she’d stirred up the night before.

Oh well. Say what you will, but I do think that with all the culinary sinning going on during the holidays, it’s nice to have something as basic as a bowl of black-eyed peas to see you into the new year. And they’re cheap, which is a welcome relief after all the expenditures of the preceding weeks. Black-eyed peas are a great resolutions food. You know: I resolve to eat healthier next year. I resolve not to spend as much next year…

I come from a farm family where every dinner and supper (we didn’t have anything called “lunch” there) was of the meat-and-three variety. There was always a serving of meat–a hunk of meat, not just little bits of it stirred into rice or pasta–three vegetables (seasoned with bacon drippings), bread and dessert. In spite of this, I’m perfectly happy with a one-dish meal, and Himself usually prefers this, too. But if we’re going to sit down to a meal made up almost entirely of legumes and rice, it better be a dang good dish of food.

For New Year’s Day this year, it’s black-eyed peas on a bed of brown rice. There’s really not much of a recipe here. You rinse the dried black-eyed peas and sift through, looking for any small rocks that might have gotten in during the harvest. Bring them to a boil in a large pot of water, then kill the heat, slap on the lid and let them sit for an hour. Then pour out the water, add some fresh and simmer for an hour or so, until the peas are cooked to your liking. Where the creativity and personal preference come in is in how you season them. A chunk of fat back or hog jowl tossed into the pot during cooking is good. I was out of both, but I did have a nice piece of country ham with a bone in it, so I cut it into several hunks and threw those in, along with a red jalapeno pepper, quartered. The ham had enough salt that we didn’t need to add any more.

We sprinkled our black-eyed peas with some pepper vinegar and accompanied them with some home-canned watermelon rind pickles we’d bought at a recent church bake sale. It was a simple but satisfying meal–and our annual black-eyed pea immunization against all things diabolical for the coming year.

To be truthful, this isn't just black-eyed peas and rice. I was pretty generous with the "flavoring agent." In my opinion, the more pork the better!

p.s. As I was proofreading this entry aloud, when I got to the word “rinse,” I said, “rench,” which is what my dad always said. I have a feeling a lot more Southern words and pronunciations are going to come creeping in this year.

Well, thunderation! Daddy used to say that, too.