black-eyed peas

Yesterday's post was about Hoppin' John, made with black-eyed peas, and on this quiet January day, I started thinking about this midwestern girl's path to making this southern dish.

When I was a young girl in 2nd to 5th grades, my family lived in Owensboro, KY, and this was where I had my first taste of black-eyed peas. Once a week they were served at the school lunches and they were nasty. Why an elementary school would serve those to a building full of young kids is beyond me. All I remember is that there were squeeze bottles of ketchup on the tables on black-eyed peas day and you wanted to get as close to the ketchup bottles as possible to douse the flavor out of them. At that time, the lunch ladies walked around the tables, surveying who was going to have a clean tray, and the glares you would get when you took your tray to the dish washer with food on it. In those few years in Kentucky, I never acquired a taste for black-eyed peas.

Fast forward to my first post-college job. Black bean soup was becoming popular and I would get it when I went our for lunch. Other than baked beans, that was my first foray into the legume world. My favorite grocery store marketed their Heavenly Ham Bean Soup recipe by putting together a container of dried beans with the recipe for the soup. Of course it was right next to the meat department where you would buy the Heavenly Ham and then use the ham bone to make the soup. This was good soup, even if you used another brand of ham.

When T and I started dating, his parents always made pork and sauerkraut for New Year's Day. My family didn't do this. When we married, we began the pork and sauerkraut tradition. One time I asked T why they did this, he wasn't sure, so it was research time for me and that's where I discovered more New Year's Day good luck food traditions. I enjoy exploring food customs and broadening menus that way. We liked the Hoppin' John and it's been on our New Year's Day menu for quite a few years. 

And it doesn't have a drop of ketchup in it.