I started with a simple post on Facebook. "1/1/11 and still that troubling question...what to make for dinner? And a good friend replied, "Are you kidding me? Black eyed peas of course! Do you want bad luck all year?"
I don't like bad luck, but I can't stand black eyed peas. I have never made them and am not about to start at this point of my life. I have always just considered it a "Southern" thing. I don't say that with any disrespect. In fact it appears that I am from the south. Ancestry.com doesn't lie. I have more ancestors south of the Mason-Dixon Line than I ever knew.
When I think of Black eyed peas I think of collard greens, ham hocks, grits, etc. I did not grow up with these items on my dinner table. I have not acquired a taste for them. In fact, I know that I horrify my friends from South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, etc when I say I do not like grits. Even if they are a "butter delivery system".
So off I went to find the history of Black Eyed Peas. No we are not talking the musical group.
As per Wikipedia:
"Eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day is thought to bring prosperity.
The "good luck" traditions of eating black-eyed peas at Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, are recorded in the Babylonian Talmud (compiled ~500 CE), Horayot 12A: "Abaye [d. 339 CE] said, now that you have established that good-luck symbols avail, you should make it a habit to see qara (bottle gourd), rubiya (black-eyed peas, Arabic lubiya), kartei (leeks), silka (either beets or spinach), and tamreidates) on your table on the New Year." However, the custom may have resulted from an early mistranslation of the Aramaic word (rubiya (fenugreek).[4]
A parallel text in Kritot 5B states that one should eat these symbols of good luck. The accepted custom (Shulhan Aruh Orah Hayim 583:1, 16th century, the standard code of Jewish law and practice) is to eat the symbols. This custom is followed by Sephardi and Israeli Jews to this day.
In the United States, the first Sephardi Jews arrived in Georgia in the 1730s, and have lived there continuously since. The Jewish practice was apparently adopted by non-Jews around the time of the American Civil War.
In the Southern United States,[5] the peas are typically cooked with a pork product for flavoring (such as bacon, ham bones, fatback, or hog jowl), diced onion, and served with a hot chili sauce or a pepper-flavored vinegar.
The traditional meal also features collard, turnip, or mustard greens, and ham. The peas, since they swell when cooked, symbolize prosperity; the greens symbolize money; the pork, because pigs root forward when foraging, represents positive motion.[6] Cornbread also often accompanies this meal.
Another suggested origin of the tradition dates back to the Civil War, when Union troops, especially in areas targeted by General William Tecumseh Sherman, typically stripped the countryside of all stored food, crops, and livestock, and destroyed whatever they could not carry away. At that time, Northerners considered "field peas" and field corn suitable only for animal fodder, and did not steal or destroy these humble foods.[7]"
So I guess I should thank the Babylonians and my Jewish friends for blacked eyed peas.
Happy New Year everybody...no matter what you are eating for dinner.
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