My mom would make black eyed peas once a year when I was a little kid. Shortly after eating them I'd get the WORST stomach pain. This happened every year. After a few years I figured out it was the black eyed peas and I stopped eating them. Have not touched one in 40+ years. You all can have mine.
We always put hog jowl in the black-eyed peas. (Originally from Arkansas) Hard to find hog jowl around here, but a great butcher shop on Fulton Street in Brooklyn had it!
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The black-eyed pea recipe looks great, but I’m way more curious about the smoked collard greens — anyone have a lead on how she does that??
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Thanks for reminding me to go to the grocery store!
Black-eyed peas, collards, a ham and cornbread for New Year's Day is a tradition I keep no matter what.
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My wife of 40 years is a WASP born and raised in Canton, Miss. I’m a Yankee born and raised in NYC South I.e. Ft. Liquordale, Fla
I’ve had to eat black eyed peas every New Years for 40 years and its brought me profound luck because she’s still with me and we have two great grown kids and a new grandson.
Happy New Year everybody!
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My wife grew up poor in Memphis and although she is not African American she brought the tradition of black eyed peas for luck to our family here in Nebraska. She has now passed it on to our grand children as well. Great traditions deserve to be carried on.
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Foodways are not only shared, they also travel. I grew up in Chicago - grandchild of people from Vicksburg and Birmingham (via Ypsilanti, Mi) who came north at the start of the Great Migration and we always had black-eyed peas (salt pork or ham hock) and greens on New Year's Day. I brought the habit with me to London - along with a cabbage leaf over the door. Always good to start the new year right.
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This article makes it sound as if only African-Americans eat black eyes peas and collards on New Years Day. If you are born and bred in the South (no matter your color), then on New Years Day, you eat black eyes peas and collard greens; and, not all of us can afford a ham hock. It is a tradition among all Southerners.
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@vivian
No it doesn't. This is an origin story as the peas were brought from Africa, it makes sense to talk about how the tradition has thrived in the diaspora. As clearly stated in the article: “This tradition carries over from the black American community into the GENERAL SOUTHERN COMMUNITY in many places, and persists in the North as well as a result of the Great Migration.”
Also in the article: "Black-eyed peas were domesticated in West Africa and carried to the South and the Caribbean in the era of slavery, Dr. Harris said. Dried legumes were looked down on as poor man’s food, but the economic scarcities of the Civil War severely impacted the diets of both enslaved Africans and white Southerners."
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Black eye peas are technically pulses, the edible seeds of plants in the legume family. Home gardeners across the South grow all sorts of peas and many families have their own heirloom varieties grown from seed saved from year to year, handed down through generations. Highly nutritious, super for the environment. Easy to cook with or without meat. Grown everywhere around the world. Food that knows no race or income level. Just good.
The North Carolina-based Harris Teeter store in my neighborhood sells about 6 varieties of peas in their frozen food case, including crowders, cream peas, and field peas with snaps.
Great food year round.
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Ooopps, we were apparently early and had a pot of black eyed peas last night during a family reunion on St George Island. Cooked for several hours with a ham bone, served over yellow rice with fried shrimp. We're headed to Cumberland Island in Feb for that outdoor oyster roast. No surprise, my Mom is from nearby Brunswick. Soul food celebration.
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The reason black-eyed peas are considered lucky for New Year in the South is that the Union army considered the crop only suitable for livestock, so they were left undestroyed and became a survival food for the Confederates during the Civil War. Be that as it may. (I'm not sure why so many southerners consider delicious raw green peas right out of the shell poisonous). Black-eyed peas are a favorite staple of mine. I usually add lentils, barley and wild rice. Too much of the latter two can turn the mix woody, so be careful.
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Thanks for publishing a recipe for meatless black-eyed peas! I'll give this a try, using the fresh black-eyed peas that usually show up in the grocery store around now. They cook up relatively quickly since you don't have to soak them.
It's interesting to hear about food customs in other parts of the country. My former roommate's husband, who is from Alabama, always had black-eyed peas and collard greens for New Year's. A friend from Ohio cooked fish "to swim into the New Year", and pork and sauerkraut on January 1.
My family had no traditional foods for New Year's, though we did for Christmas Eve.
This year I plan to prepare black-eyed peas, collards, and fish ... just to cover all the bases. :)
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Much like music and religion, food has always been a bridge connecting the races in the South. I cannot recall a New Year's dinner from my baby days 'til now without these staples. Maybe they brought good fortune-life is a gift-but no one disputed that they supplied heaping bowls of flavors garnished with love and laughter.
Happy New Year Ms. Bailey!
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I am irritated that I cannot access the recipe from this article. I am a digital subscriber and I think I should be able to see this recipe as it appears with the article and not have to subscribe to another app/subscription. Sheesh. Or am I doing something wrong that I can’t see it?
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@Itsnotrocketscience I agree as a subscriber we should be able to access the recipes that are featured in the articles. Very frustrating.
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@Itsnotrocketscience
https://tinyurl.com/ybth8jkp
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Please take a moment to call the NYT subscription customer service. They may be able to help. I recall having this issue last year.
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Best wishes of continued success and a Happy New Year 2019 CE on Earth to Ms. Bailey in her efforts to bridge different ethnic cuisines.
As to myself, I admit to having no acquired taste for black-eyed peas and ham hocks.
But, bon appétit to all who love them!
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It many years into my young adulthood before I realized the historical significance of those black-eyed peas that my Grandmother, her sisters, my Mother, and Aunts served us cousins, as children, on New Year's Eve, and at other times when the family was together. It can take a lifetime to see what the elders are telling us, what they are quietly demonstrating to us, elucidating our story. As the song goes, Youth is wasted on the young. Alas.
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If you ever get the chance to eat Mashama Bailey's cooking, take it! She is brilliant. I was introduced to her food magic through the Southern Foodways Alliance, an organization dedicated to preserving the history and tradition of southern food, its influences, and ways it has influenced popular culture.
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