January 5, 2011- Black Eyed Peas and Good Luck for the New Year!

     According to Southern tradition, eating black eyed peas for New Year’s represents good luck.  In Alabama, black eyed peas are accompanied by hog jowls or ham for New Years, and I really wasn’t sure why that was included, so I looked it up. According to Wikipedia online, it states, “In the Southern United States, the peas are typically cooked with a pork product for flavoring (such as bacon, ham bones, fatback, or hog jowl), diced onion, and served with a hot chili sauce or a pepper-flavored vinegar. The traditional meal also features collard, turnip, or mustard greens, and ham. The peas, since they swell when cooked, symbolize prosperity; the greens symbolize money; the pork, because pigs root forward when foraging, represents positive motion. Cornbread also often accompanies this meal.” I remember mostly black-eyed peas flavored with bacon and/or ham and cornbread growing up in the south, but some of that is because I have never been a fan of the infamous Southern staple, collard greens. Yuck! This may also be telling about me as the green symbolizes money, which has never been much of a focus in my life.  It is necessary, of course, but other than that, money does not equal happiness to me as I have experienced this first hand.  I had everything I ever wanted or needed growing up and most would call me spoiled, although I was only middle to upper-middle class most of my life, but I had no peace, not from money at least.  Peace has come in bits and pieces with life experience, age, wisdom, and mostly from my faith in God, but least of all from the green stuff that drives so much of the world today. I broke a bit from tradition this year as I was on Roi with few options for cooking black-eyed peas to consume on New Year’s Day, so I soaked them last night and cooked them in the crock pot all day today with a little salt, seasoned pepper, garlic, and onion and enjoyed them tonight for dinner sans the cornbread.  They were delicious, and I hope they do bring the promised good luck for 2011, but in the end, black-eyed peas and hog jowls or no black-eyed peas and hog jowls, every year is about what you make it, and I am planning to make 2011 the best it can be.