dangerously close...

...to the end of the year, here. I've been thinking about what we will eat tomorrow. Have had several conversations with customers at work, discussing what I have always thought somewhat bizarre habits of people born and raised in other places. The other person who lives here was brought up on what I've come to call 'Yankee food'. His idea of traditional New Year's fare is pork roast, sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. I've eaten plenty of that since my association with him began, but you can be assured there will always be a side dish of peas, and cornbread as well.

Having lived in the south all my life, I grew up eating black eye peas over rice. That's just what you do. Along with some form of pork and greens. I've never cooked or fed anyone limp, saturated greens, and have no plans to start now, since I don't care for them myself. And now that I have mostly eliminated meat consumption from my diet, I'm not sure how I will season the peas, but There Will Be Peas. And some of the Award Winning Cornbread muffins I don't think I have produced since the first day of 2015.

I'm thinking I will buy a little pork loin when I go in to work, and since I am being so agreeable with that, I might as well get the 'kraut and potatoes as well. I won't be cooking it, so the man who eats it will be doing the seasoning and prep. for going in the crock pot overnight. Relenting enough to purchase the food and prepare the potatoes is about the extent of my participation in this near-religious tradition. But rest assured: There Will Be Peas. Considering the generational history of literally hundreds of years of born and bred in the south, how could there not Be Peas???

Admission: it has taken me many years to learn you don't have to cook the whole package at one time. When I first cooked black eye peas, I bought the little cellophane or plastic bag of peas, probably weighing a pound. And would soak them overnight, to be ready to put in the pot and simmer for hours. So you can imagine what the dish was like reheated a time or two as I was constantly attempting to tempt family to eat the remaining portion, consume leftover peas that had slowly turned into mush. Several years ago, I realized it is possible to only cook what you know you will consume. What a surprise! So we won't be eating mushy peas for a week, but cannot comment on the pork and 'kraut other than to say after a week or so, I will toss it.