what is this tradition of black eye peas on new years. enquiring minds want to know

[AllaN01Bear]

[hlthe2b]

1. It represents good fortune (the round beans represent coinage)...

Black-eyed peas on New Year's Day is traditional in the South for luck; Other cultures eat grapes at midnight (12, one for every month of the new year). There are other similar traditions--but most center on the coin-representation for good fortune.

I usually make a big batch and freeze individual servings for later. I use a bit of ham, lots of garlic and onion, and a bit of Andouie sausage with lots of parsley, a little red pepper, and a few other spices. The Instant Pot makes it a lot easier.

I'm cheating this year since I worked and am eating Annie's frozen black-eyed peas entree, though I may well make some later in the week.

[AllaN01Bear]

2. thanks.

my late dads 2nd late wife made black eyed peas and grits and corn bread. filling,

[LoisB]

8. I love black-eyed peas and cornbread but you couldn't pay me to eat grits.

[Warpy]

12. Grits are actually pretty nice

if they're not made soupy and/or loaded with so much daity that they end up soupy. As a breakfast side, they're actually quite nice, the flavor is fresher than thaty of the northern equivalent of cornmeal mush. I made my peace with those years ago. Just don't make 'em sloppy and runny and let me doctor them up, m'kay?

Hoppin' John, which is the traditional pork/rice/black eyed peas good luck charm for New Year's Day, was an impossible sell. While I like the rice and black eyed peas and like them together, gussying them up with bacon or sausage or both plus greens and other fare doesn't appeal to me. I think the good luck comes from the fact that the original dish was likely just beans and rice, food of the extremely poor, meaning the year was going to have to get better after a start like that one.

My start will be salmon, rice, and green peas. I've had to live on beans and rice enough during my lifetime that I don't need the reminder, thanks very much.

[LoisB]

13. I like your start.

I made black-eyed peas and rice for tomorrow. I agree with you about no meat in the peas and I couldn't imagine putting greens in them. I will still pass on the grits though; grits, oatmeal, cream of wheat, cornmeal mush...can''t handle any of them.
Have a wonderful New Year and a happy, healthy, peaceful 2024.

[yellowdogintexas]

14. just let me make you a cheese grits souffle. You will not (believe it is grits

It is awesome with the other traditional New Year's day foods.

I hated grits when I was growing up. We often had them when mom made "Breakfast for Supper" and we would have fried eggs, bacon or ham, biscuits and grits. She and my dad always put sugar and butter in their grits and I could not stand it. Seriously if I wanted hot cereal I would just as soon have oatmeal. Now that I like grits, I have them plain with salt and pepper with my eggs. (for some weird reason they also did this sugar business with rice when we had it as a side. I did not learn to really like rice until my uncle made me some rice with gravy. My whole world changed)

So anyway I was at a church pot luck with my folks and my mom got really excited over this dish of cheese grits. She told me I had to try it so I did. She was right. Now I make it often to take to pot lucks.

[CanonRay]

3. My Southern friends make it every New Years Day

[Jilly_in_VA]

4. I've never done it

As long as I lived in Tennessee (35 years!) I never did, and not about to start now. My mother was raised in southwester Missouri by a mom who was born and raised in Kentucky, and she never did either. But I am making pork chili verde tonight, if that's even close.

[brer cat]

5. I'm from the south, and we always ate black eyed peas and greens

on New Years. As stated above, the peas were good luck and represented coinage. The greens represented folding money and were for prosperity. I will be cooking both tomorrow.

[ratchiweenie]

6. My mother, who was from Texas, always made us eat black eyed peas and cornbread for good luck on

new years day. I hated them. Tried them again a couple of years ago to see if it was just a kid bias but no, I still hated them.

[yellowdogintexas]

15. My mom always made us eat a bite or two for luck. I did not like them either

Over time I grew to like them, and when I lived in The North I started craving them, along with turnip greens which I had also hated growing up.

Now I love both, especially turnip greens.

If you don't care for black eyed Peas, try to find some fresh or frozen ones. It is a whole other world. Fresh ones are a slice of heaven. Folks with giant gardens grew them and would eat the fresh ones when the beans first came on the plant, but always saved a couple of rows to let the beans mature and dry for the winter.

[LoisB]

7. My understanding is that eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day is supposed to bring good luck all year.

Maybe I had better make a pot.

[Lochloosa]

9. Don't forget the greens for good luck 😁

[AllaN01Bear]

10. update ,sometimes norma would also make biscuts and gravey also. mmmmm.

[sinkingfeeling]

11. My ancestry is from Ohio and we always ate black-eyed peas on New Years Day. I remember my

grandma cooking them and then, my mother. We did have a Southern branch of the family, which split from us right after the Civil War.

[yellowdogintexas]

16. Black eyed peas were considered "low class food", fit only for the pigs

slaves and poor whites. When the Civil War was drawing to a close, and food was scarce one thing that they had was black eyed peas and greens, so everybody ate them. It was not much but it was what they had, so as things got better they became associated with good fortune.

So I was told, anyway