I'm not superstitious. Many in the south, however, will tell you that if you don't eat your Peas and Cabbage on New Year's Day you will have no luck in the coming year. The black-eyed peas are for luck, and the cabbage is for money. Like I said, I'm not superstitious...but I love me some cabbage and black-eyed peas.
Nutmeg also loves her some cabbage.
For the black-eyed peas, I started out by sauteing an onion in my pressure cooker along with some diced carrot, celery, green bell pepper, and a couple cloves of garlic. While that was going on I sorted and rinsed the dried peas. I'm always tempted to skip the sorting part, but considering that I found a rock in with the peas this time, I'm glad I didn't. I added some bay leaf, thyme, chili powder, and a touch of allspice. Then the peas and about 6 cups of water. I let these cook under pressure for about 20 minutes. They get soft before that, but I like 'em starting to fall apart. Then all they needed was lots of salt and Tabasco.
I decided to do the cabbage a little differently than I usually would. I sliced it into sections, and set them in some vegetable broth in a covered skillet to steam. Once they were tender I moved them to a baking sheet. I sprinkled on a little dill+salt+some grated soy cheese and put it under the broiler until the cheese was browned. This turned out better than I expected. I highly recommend it.
I wanted cornbread. I didn't have any cornmeal. Walgreens is a block and a half away. No cornmeal, but there was Jiffy. Cool, that will work. WRONG! I didn't think to read the box until I had poured it's contents into my mixing bowl. I now know that Jiffy contains lots of animal shortening. For some reason it just didn't occur to me that this could be the case. So that was wasted. BUT!! ...I made a modified batch of Deborah Madison's Basic Buttermilk Muffins, and they turned out great. So in the end we were happy, and at least I can say everything was homemade.
Luck inducing? Maybe not...but tasty.
