Real Texas New Year traditions

Eat your black eyed peas for good luck

Most Real Texans are creatures of habit and tradition.  Some of us make tamales at Christmas time, we can live on barbecue and beans, we watch the Aggies and the Longhorns at Thanksgiving, and we eat black eyed peas on New Year’s Day.  Well, scratch that one about the Aggies and Longhorns.  I was talking with a friend of mine the other evening and I commented that if Bob Bullock had still been around, that fiasco would have never happened.

It’s a Real Texas tradition at our house to eat black eyed peas on New Year’s Day for good luck.  It’s kinda like making Christmas Tamales.  We do it every year.  It’s a common tradition in southern states for folks to eat black eyed peas as they are supposed to bring good luck as well as financial prosperity to the diner throughout the coming year.  Some common additions to the meal are  cabbage, ham hocks, and collard greens.

I’m not so  sure Texans believe the added greenery is mandatory as is the consumption of black eyed peas on New Year’s Day because the additional items are way more southern than western.  I also subscribe to the tradition of doing a little work on the first day of the year just to set the tone of being productive the year long.  This year I had to struggle some with the work tradition because of too much revelry on New Year’s eve.  We had a great time at the Suez Shrine Temple New Year’s Eve party with a couple of hundred like minded folks who enjoy dancing the night away.  We could have gone anywhere to party on New Year’s Eve, but the crowd at the Shriner’s was about the right age group for us and our good Amigo T. Gozney Thornton and The Old Hat Band were playing the very best in Texas dance music.

I didn’t hurt myself too badly during the party and on New Year’s Day I enjoyed two kinds of black eyed peas.  Ramona fixed one really good batch of peas and another batch was fixed in a black eyed pea casserole.  Oh, and the prime rib and lobster tail wasn’t all that bad either.  Sometimes it is really hard being me.

Even though I have it pretty good, it hasn’t always been that way.  The first time Ramona fixed our Real Texas traditional black  eyed peas is a pretty funny story.  It was probably our first New Year’s together when she decided to invite my parents to New Year’s Day dinner.  She had ordered fresh black eyed peas and they were delivered to us by UPS.  I thought that was strange, but ok, she is after all the internet queen.  I have seen her fly in coconuts from Florida just to make a friend a cake with fresh coconuts.  And then there was the time FedEx showed up with three large boxes of Ruby Jewell corn fresh and still in the shucks straight from California.

But back to the story at hand….Dinner time rolled around and she proudly brought out the black eyed peas.  She had very carefully counted out 365 individual peas and placed them in individual little bowls .

I took a bite and my dad took a bite and our eyes met.  These black eyed peas were hard as rocks and some were burned beyond recognition.  All 365 of them were like eating gritty little rocks.  Nobody said a word.  Finally Ramona took a bite and a horrified look came over her.  I asked if she had cooked the black eyed peas.  She said she thought they were already cooked.  She had taken the time and trouble to count out four individual little bowls of black eyed peas with exactly 365 of the lucky little charms.  That is 1,460 individual black eyed peas thoughtfully counted out and presented to us as crispy little peas.

She got an “A” for effort that New Year’s, but the black eyed peas were just awful.

I ate ’em anyway.  I wasn’t going to suffer a whole year of bad luck over a small bowl of 365 blackened black eyed peas.  No sir.  I ate them one and all smacked my lips and courageously asked for more.  We all laughed.

Just so you understand, she has since come a long way baby!  Those of you with any age on you at all can remember that slogan “You’ve Come a long way baby!” as a cigarette advertisement.  The meals she fixes now are often designed to induce almost immediate heart failure.  No, she doesn’t do the Paula Dean thing with her food, but she does not spare the real butter, heavy cream, spices, and seasonings.  What she fixes now is nothing short of spectacular.  I eat like a king and have the dimensions to prove it.

I attribute this turnaround in culinary skills to an obsessive/compulsive disorder on cooking.  We don’t go into any large city without visiting Whole Foods Market, Central Market, or the largest Asian Market in town.  After we go to bed and I find my place in there amongst two dogs a cat and a wife, I sometimes wake up in the night after getting pawed in the ribs by whatever dog I am about to roll over on.  I sleepily look up and there she is wide eyed and watching  Top Chef Texas, Iron Chef America, Sweet Genius, Hell’s Kitchen, Food Wagon Wars, Chopped, or Cupcake  Wars.

But, I’ve called a halt to the heavy cream, real butter, and all the other weight inducing foods.  I’ve almost demanded that I be fed less or I’ll have to be rolled across the room.  Even after hollering ‘calf rope’ on the eating, it will take a while to start emptying the freezer down to normal levels.  And mind, you, it’s not just one freezer.  The woman has a full size freezer and two side by side refrigerators upstairs.  I also have a large side by side refrigerator/freezer downstairs that she expects me to keep food in.  That all amounts to three refrigerator freezers, a full size freezer, and three refrigerators.  Did I mention the obsessive compulsive syndrome?

Side note to you Real Texans:  Yes, of course I refuse her requests to take food down to my fridge.  It’s too full of beer to fit anything in it anyway.  Unless it is stuffed jalapenos (which I had for breakfast this morning) or remnants of prime rib, then I just don’t have any room for her leftovers.

Oh, I might fit in the black eyed pea casserole.  It was pretty good stuff.

I’m David out in Real Texas

Keeping Texas traditions alive

Tagged as: david werst, Texas Lifestyle, Texas traditions