Good Luck Food

I ate my black-eyed peas New Year’s Day, a necessary activity for goodluck. It’s that what if thing we all have going.

I’d never found a way to make a black-eyed pea exciting. A necessary addition to any Texas New Year’s Day brunch, I knew I’d have to eat them. Carol served room-temperature black-eyed peas in a large bowl with a plethora of chopped onion, avocado, lemon juice, celery and peppers and corn. She nested the bowl around corn chips, dip-style. She positioned centrally so we could all stand around and scoop them up–they were the main attraction and believe me, there were more choices that caught my eye.

Never a connoisseur of pea salad, I didn’t expect a run on black-eyed peas  and stood back to watch until I braved the bowl and cautiously picked up a corn chip. I arranged four little black-eyed peas on my chip, a safe number for just enough luck, making sure to include a little pinch of onion and a chunk of avocado to mask them. 

I stuck the whole thing in my mouth and chomped. There was a slight vinegar flavor, maybe some lemon juice. They certainly weren’t anything like the black-eyed peas I grew up with. The combination surprised me. Hm. That was good. I took another chip and plowed in, digging deeper into the bowl. 

My folks came from the north, where they eat sauerkraut on New Year’s Day, for luck. My mom never cooked black-eyed peas until she moved to Texas and found out she had to. I can image that first pot of peas; she thought there was no bad legume until she met the black-eyed pea.

Lucky already–I liked it. What did you have to eat for New Year’s Day good luck?