Blackeyed Peas!

New Year’s Day is just around the corner, and Mama’s gonna advise you to eat your peas — blackeyed peas, that is. Blackeyed peas are the culinary symbol of good luck for the New Year, and I make them and force the family to eat them every year. Even my youngest, who hates them, eats at least one single pea for New Year’s Day (mostly to make his superstitious Mama happy).

To be honest, I never even thought about blackeyed peas until I met my husband. His family on his mother’s side migrated north, and he grew up surrounded by Southern cooking traditions. According to this Southern tradition, blackeyed peas served with greens (I prefer collard) symbolize financial good fortune for the New Year — the peas represent coins and the greens represent paper money. Anyway. The hubby let me in on the blackeyed pea good luck tradition, and we decided to pass the tradtion along through our family.

This year, as usual, I’ll be serving my blackeyed peas with a pot of collards and a bigass ham.

Here’s my simple and tasty recipe for blackeyed peas.

First of all, try to find Melissa’s Blackeyed Peas in your grocery store produce section. They are ready to prepare, and cook well in just about an hour or so minutes. For my family, I get two of the 11 oz. containers.

Spray cooking spray on the bottom of a soup pot. Finely chop one medium-sized onion, one small jalapeno and 6 cloves of garlic (more or less of the veggies to your taste, of course). Saute the onion, jalapeno and garlic in the soup pot until they’re tender. Next, pour 5 cups of liquid into the pot. I use about half and half proportions of both chicken broth and the pot likker from my greens, and throw a cup of the greens in, too. Then, add the two containers of blackeyed peas. Add any combination salt (or garlic salt) and pepper that suits your taste, bring to a boil, then simmer for an hour or so, until tender. Viola. They’re done. I don’t add meat to the blackeyed peas, since I serve them with both ham AND greens cooked with ham hocks. When serving, splash Louisiana Hot Sauce on your peas snuggle them up with the greens on your plate.

Additional recommendation: cornbread is a MUST with this meal.