Cornbread is the first choice to serve with a bowl of peas. A big glass of buttermilk gets some folks to rockin. I personally can't stand buttermilk. After you have the peas and cornbread, you need something like coleslaw to go with it. None of that fancy vinegar slaw mind you, some old fashioned slaw made with mayonnaise and a tad of milk.

Now if you want to do it up in style, open up a can of tomatoes you put up back in the summer. A friend of mine refers to his as "summer in a jar".

And since you mention it, one of my favorite dishes is peas with a few green beans snapped up in the pan.

Fusion

'Round heah we serve 'em New Year's Eve. The peas are for luck, and the greens are for money.

Past few years I've combined 'em in a recipe I have for Black Eyed Peas and Chard. Will post it if anyone's interested.

And I do use Black-Eyed Peas, for tradition's sake.

BTW, Jim, in parts of the Carribean they call peas beans. So you're in good company.

Around here we eat this meal on New Year's Day. We have black-eyed peas cooked with fat-back (that's to kill the dirt taste of the peas, I personnaly call them dirt beans) and turnip greens cooked with a little bacon grease. Of course you cannot have this without good old southern cornbread (thats cornbread that does not contain sugar for you Yankees out there) and slaw, the southern kind of course. :)

Hey Jackier, y'all can put sugar in it, donchaknow. But then it's called it cake.

I'm not a big fan of black eyed peas but as a Southern gal, I can't not eat them on New Year's day. So I put them in a sort of vegetable stew with either cabbage or chard, tomatoes, potatoes, and white beans.

New Years Day!!!

Yes, black eyed peas are traditional, but it dosen't have to be black eyed peas! Purple hulled crowders (are cow peas or field peas as, are blackeyed peas) are just as good and are preferred by me! By all means, boiled, with fatback or bacon! Hopping John with either would do if you prefer.

Cornbread, without sugar, with a very crunchy bottom crust is a must.

Greens can be almost any cooked greens. I personally prefer a mixture of several different turnip greens, several different mustards (including rape) and kale. I suppose if you like it, you could add spinach, collards or cabbage, but as an Alabama raised kid, my family did not! I personally do not like spinach, collards or cabbage!

Good luck, yankee! Once you taste a good southern New Year's days meal, you will convert to southern!

Thanks, everybody. Your help is much appreciated. I'm starting to get the picture.

Who else has some hints?

Jim

Any variety of field peas, blackeye, pink eye, crowder, or whipoorwill and any varity of cooked greens will do,but there's one mistake they all made, Not boiled with fat back or bacon but with bacon-cured Hog Jowl.
One other minor thing,the corn bread, as they said should not contain sugar, but also 1/4 or less of flour.
Green onion and buttermilk add the finishing touches.

For us in the heart of SC it is field peas. Crowders and purple hull most popular slow cooked with jowls ,ham or bacon. The greens are always collards. I have fifty plants in the garden now and there won't be a one left after new years day. Lots of folks simmer the collards in seasoned water and some fat back, jowls, bacon etc.It will perfume the house for a month. I prefer to stir fry the chopped collards in bacon drippings add chopped garlic,crumbled bacon salt and pepper.Also have plenty of fresh pepper suace to season to taste at the table( pepper suace = hot peppers in cider vinigar) to round out the meal besides cornbread with cracklings ( a byproduct from cooking out the lard) chow chow( sweet pickled vegetables)There is a baked ham studded with cloves and basted with apple cider and apples sauteed in a little butter with a little brown sugar and spice for dessert.
Tradition in these parts is peas for some change in your pockets greens for greenbax and the pork for good health in the upcoming year. In days past fall butchering provided fresh and cured pork that typically wasn't availble year around. And it is always on new years day. So to have some pork butchered from a spring pig ,fesh winter greens and dried peas from summer on news year day was a blessing and a hope for a prosperous newyear. Merry Christmas Rodger Winn

This is getting interesting. We are starting to have a sampling from all across the Southland.

I expect everyone understands that there will be some friendly disagreement over what is "correct". Just in case you're inclined to worry about this, don't. We know that these things vary from family to family, if not from county to county. I'm interested in those differences.

Merry Christmas.

Jim

I take sugar with my cornbread as well as my grits. Honey, actualy. Lifetime Floridian with a mother from Tennessee. I know, some southerners don't really consider Florida to be part of the south. But where mom was from, she said her relatives would use their big toe to plug their moonshine jug if the cork eveer went missing.

My mom always made black eyed peas on new years day.

Not looking to start a fight, but Florida is not part of the south. Other than in some parts of the panhandle, it has (had, rather) a distinct culture of its own.

And I don't reckon your Mom ever put suger in her cornbread.

Y'all know, not using sugar in cornbread is strange, when you consider that the south traditionally had only two food groups: sugar and cholesterol.

I've always used a touch of sugar in my cornbread, as has everyone from my family and we come mostly from Louisiana and Texas. The goal, as my grandmother said, was not to make sweet cornbread, but to make cornbread that tasted like sweet corn. We crumble up the leftovers the next morning, fry it in a skillet with butter, then have it with milk like hot cereal. That's breakfast on the morning of January 2. ;) (And I use almost no wheat flour in my recipe.)

Another variation on the theme, Jim, is cornmeal dumplings made in the pot likker. This is, I believe, found more commonly in the mountains than in the flatlands.

Nothing like a mess of turnip greens with those dumplings. Ummmmm, ummmmmm. Here's how:

Pot Likker Dumplings

Prepare a pot of turnip greens with ham hocks.

Mix 2 tbls. minced spring onions into 1 1/2 cups unsifted cornmeal. Season with 1/2 tsp. salt and 1/4 tsp black pepper. Stir in enough boiling pot likker from the greens to make a dough.

When slightly cooled, mix in 1 egg thoroughly. Take this by spoonfuls and shape into small patties, about 1/2-inch thick. Lay them gently on top of the simmering greens. Cover and simmer 15 minutes until done.

This version comes from Joe Dabney's "Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bread & Scuppernong Wine."

I'll fix black eyed peas with a side of rice and cornbread made without sugar on New Year's Day. We will have ice tea and a little fresh onion. After all those carbs we will need a nap.

Florida not part of the SOUTH... but we talk like it...
My husband is a yankee and he takes his yearly bite (just like a good husband should) but I just realized the in-laws won't be over for their yearly bite!!! Maybe yankee taste buds are just as strange as their accents..

So, Jimster, did you become Southeren on New Year's?

Yep. We (four of us) went Southern on New Year's Eve, since New Year's Day had already been booked up without regard for tradition. Anyway, I learned that some of you have this meal on New Year's Eve, so that's OK.

Besides needing some ingredients which are not in high demand here in Massachusetts, the two super markets in my daughter's town are terrible. But I persisted and got what I needed. Also came across a nice brisket and added that to the menu. Popular demand will make that part of the tradition.

The peas were store bought black eyes, which I understand are not preferred. But the pink eyed purple hulls I tried to grow last summer got decimated by critters. Oh, well. Wait 'til next year.

I managed to get two bunches of turnip greens and they were good, cooked up with some smoked pork neck bones for flavor. Neck bones went into the peas too. They worked well.

The corn bread was an unqualified success, despite being made from Quaker white corn meal, which is coarser than I would like. I follow a recipe from a book called Butter Beans to Blackberries by Ronni Lundy, a Kentucky gal. It's a recipe passed down in her family which calls for buttermilk, no sugar and no wheat flour. The batter is poured into a heavily greased, sizzling hot, iron skillet and baked. Because I was using a course corn meal, I included a very small amount of wheat flour to be sure it would hold together.

I tried for a long time to duplicate the brisket I once had at Tujague's Restaurant in New Orleans. I don't know how Tujague's does it but my success came when I just put the brisket in a crockpot with nothing else (OK, throw in some pepper corns and onion) and cooked it on low all day long.

It wasn't until yesterday that I remembered I didn't make the cole slaw. Dang! But nobody missed it and the meal was a success. I thought I heard some yummy sounds around the table.

As you might surmise, this wasn't my first foray into Southern cooking. I've been interested in it for a while. Not a little of that interest was provoked as I lurked on a GW thread where Southerners were extolling the virtues of various peas and beans. So why did I start the present thread? Because I'm still learning. Thanks to everyone who shared their knowledge. It's the sort of person-to-person stuff you can't find in books (although Ronny Lundy and others are making a good stab at it). I truly appreciate your help.

Jim

Hi, gardenlad
That Pot likker dumpling recipe sounds terrific and I have filed it both under "dumpling" and "Kale" for the time when I am looking for comfort food or when the kale will looking more appealing (at the moment, what the drought hasn't killed is being attacked by aphids and/or grasshopers...).
Rose-Marie

Regarding your garden, Rose-Marie; As we say down here, if you didn't have bad luck you wouldn't have no luck at all.

Things will get better. They always do, sooner or later.

Very little if any sugar in conbread please only if you're going to fry like Johnny cake and serve with syrup. Grits is another matter, the only way to eat grits is with butter and sugar and eat like cream of wheat. My hunting buddy, Cory, says ,"The only thing Yankees do right is eat hash browns for breakfast instead of those damned grits".

Ted, if you combine "the only way" and "grits" you gonna get yerself in deep doodoo. There are all sorts of preferred ways, regional and otherwise, and folks have come to fisticuffs over this issue.

I can't imagine eating grits with sugar, and yet I'm one of those who likes a teaspoon of sugar in her cornbread. Go figger!

"There are all sorts of preferred ways, regional and otherwise..."

That's right! And we aren't bashful about saying so.

I'm a Yankee who loves grits, with butter to bring out the corn flavor. Hash browns are also a big favorite of mine.

Forget the cream of wheat. Never could stand the stuff.

Jim

Cream of Wheat makes a great buffer when you're loading black-powder revolvers. Other than that......

Other than that......it's not worth the powder to blow it up.

Jim

(It's amazing the things you can learn here.) :-)

Since we are not sure when exactly to eat the traditional peas and greens and cornbread, I'll have some on both New Years Eve and on the 1st. We're having black eyes and cabbage fresh picked from Charlotte, Texas (about 100 miles south of San Antonio). We usually make a seperate cornbread cake (with sugar) on the side.

I love all those things but I don't truly believe that a real southerner puts sugar in cornbread....cause we eat it with buttermilk or ever "sweet" milk and it wouldn't taste right cause "soakie" isn't supposed to be sweet. I cook up a big pan of cornbread and then I let it dry out a bit either in the oven or just on the counter and then I use it like croutons in milk or soup or pot likker...I never heard of the cormmeal dumplings except as I described but I am for sure going to try that...It sounds like something I would love... I was always under the impression that the peas and greens tradition came out of the old south and the black slaves. I could be wrong but somewhere in the back of my mind that stands out...

I watched a cooking show Down Home with the Neely's and they were cooking a big pot of collards and she put a whole bunch of sugar in the pot...never heard of that one either...

I eat peas anything...I cooked some yesterday to have them ready...they are from my garden and the last of them to boot so I just dried them on the vine...they were sitting there staring at me so I decided to cook them for N Years.
Lots of people in the south serve food after midnight on NY's eve when they party and they serve the peas and greens then but most people gotta have them on NY's day...

Here is an interesting story...wonder if it is true?

Here is a link that might be useful: Black Eyed Pea Hoax

I'm cooking up the cowpeas (some MN 157 and some Pink Eye Purple Hull) that I grew over the summer, along with some stewed tomatoes from the garden. This will be served over rice with a hunk of cornbread on the side and butter. I just cut a head of cabbage, too, so I'll cook that, too. Oh and I think a couple of turnips are ready so I'll probably toss them in with the cabbage.

So you all have gotten around to cornmeal dumplings ( Corn dodgers). One myth is that our soldiers threw them at the Yankees at Appommattox where they were out of ammunition. Seem to be popular in that part of Viginia, cooked on top of a pot of greens. Never developed a taste for them myself. In Virginia, the tradition was Blackeyed peas and Cabbage. Down here its crowders, creams and Collards. I now agree, traditional cowpeas are better than those California Blackeyes. Flat corn bread popular in both areas. Altho I love spoon bread, folks here never heard of it.

On New Year's Day, Black eye peas seasoned with hog jowl, I'll probably fry some too cause it's good, cornbread(baked and fried, wife prefers baked, I like fried), cabbage this year but some kind of greens, baked ham, sliced onion and some pickled peaches.
Putting a pinch of sugar in baked cornbread is as Southern as grits. My Grandmother always added maybe a teaspoon to her cornbread as did her mother. Her family has only been in Southeast Alabama for 140 years, before that Southwest Georgia around 1800, before that North Carolina around 1660(I reckon you could say they were from up North). I imagine they went through a lot of cornbread. So to say 'real Southerners' don't use sugar is just plain wrong. I don't use sugar but that's just the way I do it. Unless you put a lot of sugar in it you can't taste it anyway.
Happy New Year Everyone and Good Eatin'!!

Blackeyed peas with bacon and cabbage ,eaten on New Years day, this time. It's quite a dose : )
I've eaten cornmeal dumplings before, but didn't know that's what it was called. To us, it was a way to have cornbread when there was no milk, eggs, or grease to make cornbread. It was made using one cup of cornmeal, one- half teaspoon salt, and about three-fourths cup of boiling liquid. Roll into balls and place around the perimeter of the pot of whatever was simmering, with a lid on, until done.

We found ourselves in New Orleans on January 1st. I know New Orleans is not the south either (it is part of the northern Caribbean for those of you who wonder). We took a drive (the day before) to the southern tip of Louisiana and I found road side cabbage, mustard greens and collards. I did not want to miss out on any of those so I bought all 3 bunches. We had to drive back to southern California on the 1st, so I made cole slaw (without mayo) and we also did find fresh shelled black eye peas! I sauteed them lightly in olive oil, added some scallions and peppers and seasoned them to eat cold as a salad. I would have preferred a hot meal but we were on the road for two days so that was not an option. Having fresh black eye peas as salad and slaw was actually very good. I feel the luck and prosperity coming down already....