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View Poll Results: Do You Eat/Prepare Black-Eyed Peas on New Years Day?
Native Texan --Yes 21 52.50%
Native Texan -- No 7 17.50%
Non-Native Texan (Southern U.S origin) -- Yes 3 7.50%
Non-Native Texan (Southern U.S. origin) -- No 1 2.50%
Non-Native Texan (NE, Midwest, Far West origin) -- Yes 2 5.00%
Non-Native Texan (NE, Midwest, Far West origin) -- No 3 7.50%
Never heard/care about it one way or another! 3 7.50%
Voters: 40. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 12-29-2009, 01:26 PM
 
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Greetings friends and fellow Texans...

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! And a rare WHITE ONE for many of us!

Anyway, we have a lot of new friends/Texans on the state forum since last year, so I thought (I am always thinking some type trivial something or 'nother) it might be interesting to re-post a poll from last year. After all, the new demographics (however defined) might yield new results...

It involves that honored Texas/Southern tradition of eating black-eyes peas on New Years Day for "good luck."

There are a couple of "theories" as to how it originated (which I will share in a follow-up post), with one of them stating it was actually nothing more than a very clever marketing ploy on the part of an East Texas cannery!

Anyway, more on that in a few...but for now, do you make/eat black-eyed peas on New Years Day?

BTW -- if so, please share your own recipes and/or other associated "traditions" (for instance, many prepare some kind of "greens" -- such as cabbage or turnip, or whatever -- along with them).
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Old 12-29-2009, 01:28 PM
 
Location: Where I live.
9,191 posts, read 21,797,380 times
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I have a container of frozen homemade black-eyed pea soup (with jalapenos and cilantro) that I am going to thaw out and have with buttermilk cornbread.

Yum. I'm not a fan of blackeyed peas, but the soup is good.
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Old 12-29-2009, 01:40 PM
 
10,238 posts, read 19,526,645 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Cathy4017 View Post
I have a container of frozen homemade black-eyed pea soup (with jalapenos and cilantro) that I am going to thaw out and have with buttermilk cornbread.

Yum. I'm not a fan of blackeyed peas, but the soup is good.
Hiya Texas sis! *HUGS*

I think we had this conversation last year, hon. LOL

The buttermilk cornbread (without sugar!!!) sounds great. But remember...NEVER use CANNED black-eyed peas except in an absolute total emergency!

Anyway, gotta find that old link about the whole tradition being a marketing ploy! Interesting, for sure. See ya in a minute or two (or several! LOL).
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Old 12-29-2009, 01:44 PM
 
Location: Pittsburgh
1,142 posts, read 2,806,766 times
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I make Hoppin John each year. I sometimes make greens with it and cornbread, though I have to see how motivated I am this year to do it all that cooking again!
I'm a southerner who is living in the north. Up here in Pittsburgh, they make saurkraut and pork for good luck. Yuck!! No one here has ever heard of the southern traditions, though that is not a big surprise!
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Old 12-29-2009, 01:47 PM
 
Location: Where I live.
9,191 posts, read 21,797,380 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TexasReb View Post
Hiya Texas sis! *HUGS*

I think we had this conversation last year, hon. LOL

The buttermilk cornbread (without sugar!!!) sounds great. But remember...NEVER use CANNED black-eyed peas except in an absolute total emergency!

Anyway, gotta find that old link about the whole tradition being a marketing ploy! Interesting, for sure. See ya in a minute or two (or several! LOL).
LOL! Yep, we did...along with the poll!

http://kalynskitchen.blogspot.com/20...soup-with.html

I would probably actually use canned (which is rare for me) to avoid having to buy and cook dried or semi-fresh! Ranch Style with jals isn't too bad!

Last edited by Cathy4017; 12-29-2009 at 01:53 PM.. Reason: add link
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Old 12-29-2009, 01:49 PM
 
Location: Central Texas
20,958 posts, read 45,217,229 times
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Heck, I spent 3 years of my childhood growing up in Athens, Texas - I could hardly NOT eat black-eyed peas for New Year's! Usually making hoppin' John, but think this year I'm making a black-eyed pea stew with sausage and such.

Also have collards or kale or some other green (folding money, y'know).
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Old 12-29-2009, 01:52 PM
Status: "Springtime!" (set 11 days ago)
 
Location: Jollyville, TX
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Let me be the first to say I was born and raised in the south (Virginia and Florida) before I moved to Texas and never heard about blackeyed peas at New Years before I got here. I usually open a can for hubby, but I don't go out of my way to eat them!
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Old 12-29-2009, 01:59 PM
 
10,238 posts, read 19,526,645 times
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Finally found the link, so to continue here...

Concerning the tradition of eating black-eyed peas on New Years Day in Texas, here is something I thought was worth passing along. I did it last year, but perhaps a few haven't seen it and find it worth reading.

Anyway, the most common and accepted story behind why black-eyed peas are a custom in the Southern United States on New Years Day traces to the late days of the "Civil War", when the Yankee Army was "marching thru Georgia" and had orders to live off the land. That is, carrying off anything they needed and destroying the rest.

This meant taking their hogs, cattle, chickens, and diggin up plots of land growing vegetables. BUT...one of the things that, according to this tale (which, I might add, I will always be commited to, true or not! ) left alone by the plunder and pillage, was a type of "legume" which grew wild in the South, and thought. previously, to be useless for anything but "cow and hog feed".

Of course, this legume was the black-eyed pea

With little or nothing left to eat otherwise, many Southern women, left with no alternative in feeding their families, tried those black-eyed peas and found them actually quite fit for human consumption! And -- since all this took place around the first of the year -- it was taken as a "divine omen" that good luck for the South was sure to follow.

Well, of course, every one knows how the War ended, so good luck in that sense didn't transpire.

However, many of those in the Deep South unfortunate enough to have enountered the Union hordes never forgot how black-eyed peas had saved them and their families from starvation. This memory spread and eventually evolved into a region-wide custom on New Years Day throughout the states of the Old Confederacy -- as well as certain border states -- as something for Good Luck, during the upcoming year....

Ok. THAT is one theory. And of course the most "nostalgic" one. Can't help but love it!

BUT...this whole legend was challenged not all that long ago by a researcher and writer who says the whole "damn yankee" Old South connection was really just a marketing ploy on the part of one really smart East Texas man.

It is a both interesting and humorous. And well worth the read for anyone who enjoys Texas lore and how legends can became accepted as "fact", over time.

Here is the article and the beginning and ending excerpts:

The Great Blackeyed Pea Hoax, Blackeyed Pea New Year Tradition.

**************
THE GREAT BLACKEYED PEA HOAX
by C. F. Eckhardt

Did you eat blackeyed peas for good luck on New Year's Day? Did you do so because it's a 'great ante-bellum Southern tradition?' If so, congratulations. You have been scammed by one of the most likeable con-artists in Texas history.

Elmore's been gone a good many years now, but his 'tradition' continues. He's where all the good flacks end up, and no doubt he's having a good laugh over all the 'sophisticated' big-city-newspaper food editors he conned with that yarn and those 2-ounce cans of blackeyed peas. And, yep-I'll have blackeyed peas on my table come New Year's Day. Not because I think they'll bring good luck in the New Year, but to honor Elmore Torn, Sr.-the guy who parlayed 2-ounce cans of blackeyed peas and a tale cut from whole cloth into a 'time-honored Southern tradition.' Besides, I like 'em.

*******************

I remember when this "revision" came out via a "Letter to the Editor" in the Dallas Morning News who passed on parts of the article. In a "shoot the messenger" frame of mind, a few pi$$sed off Texans and other Southerners wrote in challenging such heresy!

A few did so indignantly insisting they remembered the custom from wayyyy back before the so-called hoax days. Several others accused the letter-writer of being a "damn yankee" who needed to be hauled off, stood up against a wall, and shot...

What is the truth about that delicious and wonderful little legume and its connection with Texas/Southern history? Personally? I don't really know. Still, I confess to being one of those who will always prefer to believe the legend.

At the same time, if that feller from East Texas stretched the truth a bit? Wellll, he also created, as the article said, a Southern tradition in its own right.

To paraphrase the renowned historian Walter Lord in that realm? Is there any concrete evidence that Travis didn't draw the line in the dust at the Alamo?

If not? Then let us believe it!
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Old 12-29-2009, 02:10 PM
 
10,238 posts, read 19,526,645 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TexasHorseLady View Post
Heck, I spent 3 years of my childhood growing up in Athens, Texas - I could hardly NOT eat black-eyed peas for New Year's! Usually making hoppin' John, but think this year I'm making a black-eyed pea stew with sausage and such.

Also have collards or kale or some other green (folding money, y'know).
THL? Doesn't Athens advertise as the "Black-Eyed Pea Capital of the World.? And don't they have an annual festival there?

Without going back and reading the link completely, I am thinking that that "legend" -- in fact -- DID originate at a cannery in Athens! LOL
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Old 12-29-2009, 02:46 PM
 
Location: OKIE-Ville
5,543 posts, read 9,449,984 times
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As a self-respecting Okie you know I had to chime in, Brother!

Black-Eyed Peas are definitely consumed at my house on New Years. I put Black-Eyed Peas just under okra as the Lord's greatest/tastiest vegetable.

Happy New Year everybody!
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