The Other New Year’s Food Tradition – Hoppin’ John

Eating black-eyed peas on New Year’s is supposed to bring good luck, and as with most traditions there are lots of different reasons given. Some sources attribute this to salt pork and black-eyed peas being considered unfit food to send to Confederate soldiers, and therefore the only remaining staples available to celebrate the Emancipation Proclamation in January of 1863. Others say that the peas, since they increase in size when cooked, represent prosperity (and collard greens, money; pork, positive motion; and cornbread, gold; and hence the traditional preparation). A portion of the Talmud written around 500 A.D. refers to eating black-eyed peas as part of the celebration of Rosh Hashanah, and eating black-eyed peas with rice in a long-simmered pilau is an African tradition.  

Wherever, whenever, and whyever Hoppin’ John became the unofficial dish of New Year’s Day, I’m very happy about it. The first person who ever cooked this for me was my father-in-law, who passed along his recipe; it was followed faithfully until we discovered the Lee Brothers, whose version has a little more kick. During the nightshade-free years we still made this, although it wasn’t nearly the same without tomatoes and peppers and cayenne. I’m happy to report that David has loosened up his dietary restrictions and John will happily endure a little heat for a dish that bears his name. A big pot of Hoppin’ John is the centerpiece of New Year’s Day dinner, and the leftovers make a fine breakfast once I’ve started to reach my limit on Kristi’s awesome cheese dip (or run out, which is far more likely).

Adapted from The Lee Brothers Southern Cookbook, with a shout-out to my father-in-law

Hoppin’ John

1 cup dried black-eyed peas
4 or more slices thick-cut bacon, depending on how much you plan to eat while cooking, diced
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
6 cups water or stock
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1 tsp salt
1 14-oz can diced tomatoes
1 ½ cups long-grain rice

Rinse the peas, place them in a bowl, and soak for at least 4 hours. If you forget, it’s not the end of the world (or dinner) – just adjust the cooking times before you add the rice.

Cook the bacon in a large Dutch oven. When the pieces are cooked, remove them with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. If you lack self-control (ahem) even on the first day of the year, set aside the equivalent of 4 pieces in a small bowl for garnishing the finished dish so you can eat the rest without feeling any sort of remorse.

Cook the onion and celery in the rendered bacon fat until the onions are translucent. Add the water or stock, black pepper, red pepper flakes, and salt and bring to a boil. Add the peas and boil gently until the peas are tender but still a little toothsome, about 25 minutes for soaked peas.

Add the tomatoes and rice to the pot, then cover and reduce the heat to low. Simmer about 20 minutes, until most of the liquid is absorbed and the rice and peas are cooked.

Remove from heat and let stand about 5 minutes. Fluff with a fork, sprinkle with the reserved bacon, and  serve. For optimal luck, serve with collards and cornbread. 

Cookbook Challenge #10: Thirteen Weeks of Meal Prep

Since “blog more often” is always on the high of my New Year’s non-resolutions, I try to start the year off on a positive note by blogging on January 1. The natural subject for this day is Kristi’s cheese dip, but I’ve already written a post about that. I could also write about the drinks we were making last night, but it’s really just off-brand Aldi Wild Cherry Capri Sun poured into off-brand Aldi prosecco, so not much of a recipe. And I could give you the recipe for the chili that I made last night, but it was kind of a pain in the ass – there’s a reason I only make it once a year – and I always think of chili as a food for a lazy night, so it’s not a recipe for the archives. You can find your own complicated stuff, I'm sure. 

It hasn’t been much of a year for blogging, for lots of reasons. Some of them are bummers – wrestling with some mental health issues and related medication screw-ups, some soul-sucking episodes with my teenagers, a months-long aversion to my computer that made a lot of things go sideways – but some of them are happy reasons. The happiest one is a new cookbook I came across at the library and promptly ran out to buy. Shocking, no?

This particular cookbook is a bit of a departure for me. While I love a good gimmicky cookbook – the “Game of Thrones”-inspired one springs to mind – I’m not really one for trendy diets (OK, there was that Whole30 month but I lent it to someone a year ago and have never looked back) or device-specific (sigh. OK. Just the sous vide, but that barely counts because they’ve been around forever) books. The whole gluten-free thing started long before it was a thing and is actually based on a medical diagnosis. So. Buying something titled “Cook Once, Eat All Week” was out of character. The title makes me think of people who hate cooking but realize you can't eat frozen food and/or carryout every night and are martyring themselves at the stove every night. 

I’m not knocking meal planning – there’s a written list posted on our fridge every week and I dislike making multiple trips to the grocery store – but everything I’ve seen that promises to streamline weeknight meals involves hours and hours of work and tons of Ziploc bags and a ruined weekend day. It’s really just shifting the work that would be spread out over a week or a month into one brutal day, and then you basically eat leftovers for weeks and that doesn’t feel like much of a reward to me. Plus you have to remember to pull whatever it is from the freezer that morning, so already it’s more work than I’m capable of early in the day. But now that Thing 2 is in high school and doing two sports at once, streamlining weeknight dinners is a priority.

The premise of this book is that your meals are built around a protein, a starch, and a vegetable. The author gives you a detailed prep list – in the right chronological order, no less, so you make your sauces or chop your veggies while other things cook – and you end up with the components for three meals that you can assemble and have on the table in under 30 minutes, often faster, often relatively hands-free. Technically you're cooking every night, but it goes so fast and is so pain-free I don't think it should count. Meal prep for the week is done in under 2 hours, and for me this usually includes making a few other things (a batch of shakshuka for breakfasts, a pot of soup, fixings for a burger night, whatever). 

If you’re a family of 2, this feeds you for a week; she also includes bonus meals in each week that are dead-easy, so you can get through an entire week on autopilot and incorporate a little variety. Because it doesn’t cover every single day of the week, there’s still room for a nice Sunday dinner or pizza night or whatever your schedule throws your way, and you don’t end up throwing anything out. Honestly, the lack of food waste alone makes this book worth it.

And best of all: IT’S GLUTEN-FREE. I literally don’t have to adapt or skip a single recipe. It’s amazing. There are also dairy-free substitutions, so I Don’t. Have. To. Think. About. It. At all. Ever.

There are a few recipes that we’ve thought, “Hey, that sounds weird/gross/unappetizing.” I’ve been cooking consistently from this book since September, which translates to 13 of the 26 weeks included, and there’s been maybe one recipe that made me think “Won’t do that again.” For the most part, everyone in the family has liked everything we’ve tried. I do have to think about lunches a little more since we don’t end up with leftovers, but the instructions here are streamlined enough that I don’t mind doing an extra something on the side during meal prep.

Yes, it deserves to be a bestseller on Amazon. My cousin who works at a bookstore swears she sells this one all the time on the basis of my fervent recommendations. If weeknight dinners are a giant pain for you, do yourself a favor and buy this one.