It has been a tradition in my family, for as long as I can remember to have black eye peas and cabbage for New Years Day dinner. As I understand it this is supposed to bring luck in the coming year. My family is mostly of Welch, Scot and Irish descendants, is the roots of traditional dinner found in any of these cultures?
So that being the tradition in my family I hope each and every one of you has a nice dinner of black eye peas and cabbage.
happy new year to everyone. may this year be great for all. i look forward to some blackeyed peas and cabbage today also. i too am of scottish irish decendants, so the tradition has been around for a long time.
Gator I tried to find some info on this tradition but was unable to do so. I recall asking my grandfather about it and he told me his family did the same thing for "many a year." Wonder just how far back this goes?
i'll look around and see what i can learn. as i eat a big ole helpin of the stuff now with some southern cornbread and lulu's sweet tea. lord have mercy on me later.
Hi, folks! Just registered tonight after a friend sent an email with a link to SHARPE--great group!
RE the tradition of eating beans and greens or cabbage on New Year's Day; googled it and came up with this from Wiki (I know, not always a reliable source of info, but...):
"Eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day is thought to bring prosperity in the Southern United States. 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. Cornbread also often accompanies this meal.
These "good luck" traditions supposedly date back to the American Civil War. 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 couldn't carry away. At that time, Northerners considered "field peas" and corn suitable only for animal fodder, and didn't steal or destroy these humble foods."
Should probably clarify that my family is about 95% English and we never ate beans and greens on NYD, although we sure ate plenty of them at other times--corn bread too!
Just have a feeling that this tradition isn't of British origin but African.
After all, the best food tradition in the US, Southern cooking, owes a tremendous debt to the African ladies who added their own sensibilities to what were essentially British food-ways.
Don't have a thing to prove my thesis, but just have "sneaking suspition" as Granny used to say!
Welcome Virginia and Confederate FL to SHAPE. Glad you found us. We have several projects in the works and we will be having a meeting in the next couple of weeks and we expect to add more projects. If we are doing a project that interests you, please feel free to jump in and help. Right now mark Raines heads the SHAPE tombstone project. We assist people from all over the country in placing Confederate headstones. I am gonna say since the formation Mark as lead the way in acquiring some 200 or so headstones from the VA. We have the Gettysburg project, which has for the most part, became a project of Carolyn, Mark and I. The Morris Island project, I need someone to do some fact finding for that issue. The Camp chase letter project, Val and I are working that. We are always in the need for well researched factual articles article that reflect true Southern History from any period of time.
Thanks Virginia interesting story. Not sure about peas being grown as fodder, I lived on a farm for quite some time and I can't recall that. Oh well that was the 1860s and very possible.
BTW is Virginia your name or is that where you live?
virginia, welcome to SHAPE. i am randy, the membership director. i would like to also welcome you to the group. i have sent you an official welcome to your email address. welcome aboard.
Oh yeah we do the same, we make a hug batch of black eyed peas and ham hocks mixed with hoppin jack to spice things up. We also put a dime in the bottom of the pan and whoever gets it in their serving USING EXTREME CAUTION NOT TO SWALLOW IT...has good luck for the new year.
Thanks for the warm welcome, fellows! Best of luck with the Preservation and Education projects that are planned.
In answer to the question: I live in Virginia and my user-name is Virginia. My actual name is Jill.
I'm on a UK/US cultural exchange forum, so I submitted the question to the members: Is eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day a British food custom?
To a man, they said no, never heard of it, never tasted black-eyed peas, what are they? etc.
Some of the Americans repeated the Sherman story of how The Liberators only left livestock fodder and that was all that people, white or black, had to eat.
But that still doesn't really answer the questions of origins of the custom, why black-eyed peas?, why NYD? and why do they symbolize prosperity?
I'm something of a nerdy foodways historian, so questions like this interest me. (^_^)
If you should find any sort of realistic answer, please write us a small article so that we all may know.
I gather different families fix New Years Dinner different ways, some with cabbage and ham some with roast etc. At my house we only have black eyed peas, cabbage and cornbread. That is how I remember my grandmother serving the first dinner of the year and so I continue to follow her.
What you say about the WBTS and peas does make sense; I had just never heard it before. Thank you for the info.
OK, at this point have determined that eating black-eyed peas with or without greens or rice has nothing to do with Scottish or English food customs.
Got this directly from a Scottish woman and several English posters on the UK/US forum. Haven't heard from Irish or Welsh posters yet. The Sottish poster said in Scotland NYD fare is beef, beef and more beef!
Black-eyed peas are of African orgin, it would make sense that the good luck custom in the South originated with Southern blacks.
This is from the Andalusia Star-News:
"Hoppin’ John originated in Charleston, S.C. Edna Lewis, in her cookbook, “In Pursuit of Flavor,” says in Virginia they never heard of Hoppin’ John."
That also makes sense, as my Virginia family never had any variation of black-eyed peas, with rice or greens or cabbage, for good luck on NYD.
The claim of Hoppin' John's Charleston origins is interesting.
Found this on What's Cooking Amerca:
"Eat poor that day, eat rich the rest of the year. Rice for riches and peas for peace.- Southern saying on eating a dish of Hoppin' John on New Year's Day.
Hoppin' John History
Hoppin' John is found in most states of the South, but it is mainly associated with the Carolinas. Gullah or Low Country cuisine reflects the cooking of the Carolinas, especially the Sea islands (a cluster of islands stretching along the coats of south Carolina and northern Georgia). Black-eyed peas, also called cow peas, are thought to have been introduced to America by African slaves who worked the rice plantations. Hoppin' John is a rich bean dish made of black-eyed peas simmered with spicy sausages, ham hocks, or fat pork, rice, and tomato sauce.
This African-American dish is traditionally a high point of New Year's Day, when a shiny dime is often buried among the black-eyed peas before serving. whoever gets the coin in his or her portion is assured good luck throughout the year. For maximum good luck in the new year, the first thing that should be eaten on New year's Day is Hoppin' John. At the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve, many southern families toast each other with Champagne and a bowl of Hoppin' John. If it is served with collard greens you might, or might not, get rich during the coming year.
There are many variations to traditional Hoppin' John. Some cook the peas and rice in one pot, while others insist on simmering them separately.
Most food historians generally agree that "Hopping John" is an American dish with African/French/Caribbean roots.
There are many tales or legends that explain how Hoppin' John got its name:
It was the custom for children to gather in the dining room as the dish was brought forth and h op around the table before sitting down to eat.
A man named John came "a-hoppin" when his wife took the dish from the stove.
An obscure South Carolina custom was inviting a guest to eat by saying, "Hop in, John"
The dish goes back at least as far as 1841, when, according to tradition, it was hawked in the streets of Charleston, South Carolina by a crippled black man who was know as Hoppin' John."
I'm going with that last explanation for the name!
So it seems that the custom, while not specifically African, was developed in America by the Africans who came here and who brought the black-eyed pea to America with them.
Gosh, all this food talk is making me hungry! (^_^)
Interesting. You can rest assured we didn't eat Hoppin' John. We couldn't afford all the extra ingredients that is found in that dish. Champagne??? Certainly has to be some of the upper crust involved in that!!!
