Happy New Year!

It's been one of those years where I feel so much has changed but when asked I cannot describe one thing. Luckily 2008 was when I chose to dive into my blog. I have almost completed a full year and each day I come across something I think I might blog about. Of course then life gets away with me and the post does not happen. Many do await in draft form, waiting for life. I am definitely glad for this blog. It's a lot of fun and it does give me an outlet from time to time for my excessive cookbook collecting and fooding.

In keeping with a New Year superstition that is not my own, we had black eye peas for dinner this eve. I had only encountered this a couple of years ago at a friend's New Year's gathering. No one really knew where eating black eye peas for luck came from. This year I became curious again and did a quick little google and turned up a couple guesses:

"My mother always told me that the origin of eating Black-eyed peas on New Years day started during the Civil War. The Northern soldiers raided the South's food supplies one New Year's Eve night and took all the food except for the dried black-eyed peas and the salted pork. On New Years day, all that the southern soldiers had to eat were the peas and pork to keep them alive, so it is considered good luck to eat black-eyed peas on New Years because of this event."

"Supposedly, the Yankee soldiers burned all the southern crops, except for the black-eyed peas, which they thought were weeds. So, the southerners considered it good luck they still had something to eat. (This may have some validity, since in parts of the north black-eyed peas are still known as cow peas.)"

It seems to come to the idea that the peas (and greens) were the only things left to eat at that time of year for whatever reason. Eat poor today to eat rich the rest of the year. Peas for coins and greens for paper money.

I'm not so sure this is eating poor though. This was pretty gosh darn tasty. Quick and easy too! No greens though. I guess I'll just have coins to look forward too. Pretty typical for me.

Black eye pea hummus with grilled eggplant and roasted red peppers.
Happy 2009!