It's a southern tradition to eat black-eyed peas and cornbread on New Year's Day. The store sales flyers are full of ads for fresh (shelled), frozen, and canned black-eyed peas. We eat them rather frequently, so I have a fully black-eyed-pea-stocked pantry already.
The thing is, I don't really just love black eyed peas. I like 'em well enough, and I do eat 'em when they are served. I even serve 'em from time to time, especially when I have some with jalapenos.
What I really, really like is purple hull peas. These delicate little peas are small and green when fresh, turn a pale taupe color when cooked, and taste delicious with very little seasoning. Their shells are just what the name says: purple (and green).
Wasn't I just totally surprised when My Prince's Stepmother (AKA #2MIL) informed me that these were really young black-eyed peas? That would be why they are smaller than a regular black-eyed pea and why they have that tiny little eye. The purple and green hull is an immature stage of growth. #2MIL knew this, of course, because her #2Son is a truck farmer in New Mexico and raises, among other fine things, black-eyed peas. She brought me a nice bag full of purple hull peas a couple of seasons ago, and I sat on the couch in the den and shelled them all in one go. They made a perfect "mess o' peas" for dinner that night.
While we don't have any fresh purple hull peas at this time of the year, we sure do have some cans of Allen brand purple hull peas hauled in from Houston. I'm thinking that that will be close enough for the old tradition, and that's what I'll be serving on New Year's Day. With cornbread, ham, fresh tomatoes, and iced tea. Mmmm.
2 comments:
I am from the South and can't do without my blackeyed peas on New Year, but this lady was telling me that she was from the North and the eat lentiles there instead of the peas. She also told me that they eat that with rice and call it "hopping Johns". I told her down here it is blackeyed peas and rice. She said the reason that it is called this is before you eat you are suppose to hop around the table a couple of times. I said that must be a Northern thing, because I never heard of us Southern people doing that. Have ypu?
Big Kid Cousin
Well, I have heard of Hopping John, and I have eaten black-eyed peas with rice a few times (without calling it Hopping John). I just don't remember the name going with the dish. Perhaps I didn't pay attention when I was young, because there were some fine cooks up there in East Texas and over in Louisiana who would have mentioned it if they were cooking it.
As for the hopping part, no one that I knew ever did that. If I had tried, on New Year's Day or any other, I do believe that Daddy would have popped my rear and told me to "straighten up."
Happy New Year, BKC!
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