Kirkepiscatoid

"For surely you know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with a hope." Jeremiah 29:11

Rural northern Missouri is a strange mix of "North n' South". Families have "northern traditions" and "southern traditions" and it may not even matter, for the long time natives, which side your relatives fought in, as Granny Clampett used to say, "The war of Northern Aggression."

We have two New Year's day food traditions here. The "northern" one is eating cabbage on New Year's day, b/c it symbolizes the green leaves of money. The "southern" one is eating black eyed peas, because they roughly resemble coins, and because they swell up (get fat and prosper) when you cook them.

Despite the fact my great-great-grandfather, Henry Brammer, fought for the Union, that side of my family ALWAYS ate black eyed peas (usually in a dish called "Hoppin' John") on New Year's Day for a lucky new year. So as I type, I am cooking up a batch of the little boogers to take to friends K. and T. tonight. They are providing the cornbread. (Naturally, this HAS to be eaten with cornbread!)

Now, my friends know "I'm too freewheeling to use recipes." I like the thrill of no two dishes I ever make tasting exactly alike, and the little unique aspects of them reflecting my mood. So I will tell you how I cook "Hoppin' John", but remember, this is "not a recipe."

I make a mess of black eyed peas and rice by soaking the peas overnight, draining them, and throwing them in a pot with some rice. The peas to rice ratio is skewed to the peas for me. Sometimes I use white rice, sometimes brown rice, sometimes rice medley. But it has to be the long cooking rice. Add broth (either beef or chicken, doesn't matter) till it safely covers the mess and allows for the peas and rice to swell...like an inch over the solid stuff.

Boil the rice and peas together with a ham hock, or salt pork, or bacon, or whatever salty bit of treyf trips your trigger, along with an onion, some green or red bell peppers, and shake in a little salt, pepper, garlic powder, cumin, paprika and rosemary till it suits your taste. When I make this for my solo consumption I throw in a sliced jalepeno pepper, too.

Bring it to a rolling boil and cook till the peas are soft. I like mine a little "al dente", not mooshy. Eat with cornbread.

But that is my version of Hoppin' John. My granny's rule on people who did not like black eyed peas was that they had to eat three peas, or else they would screw up the luck for everyone at the table. That was never an issue for me as a kid--I love the stuff--but I can remember a couple of cousins having issues with Hoppin John. If you really do it up right, you put a dime in the pot, and the person who gets the dime in their bowl is the luckiest of all!

So, I am sitting here this morning thinking to myself about our various superstitions about "lucky meals on New Year's Day." They don't have to be "just superstitions". I am thinking of each of those black eyed peas as a bowlful of little tiny prayers for prosperity--not just prosperity for ourselves, but for those in the world who cannot see prosperity because of economic recession, war, poverty, and personal tragedy. Just as these little peas were once dry and now are swelling up to tasty goodness in my cooking pot, may the Lord reach in all of us, hydrate our dry parts, and swell us up with the nourishment from his healing broth, safely incubated in his holy graniteware cooking pot!