Hopping John (Black-Eyed Peas On New Year's Day)

RS Richmond ^

[blam]

I'm presently eating lunch which is Black-Eyed Peas over a bed of rice seasoned with Tabasco pepper sauce, fried okra, corn bread and a large glass of milk.

I've eaten this meal every year on New Year's Day for 63 years and I've never heard of 'Hopping John'.

Your thoughts?

[Lunatic Fringe]

[lysie]

Ping to Mr. Expert on this subject. ;-)

[processing please hold]

What-no ham hocks cooked in your black eyed peas?

I've never heard of 'Hopping John' either.

[Liberty Valance]

Happy New Year!

[Vaquero]

ah! cRAP 'music'.....

cRAP let it all die a painful death.

[Pukin Dog]

My thoughts?

Where are the collard greens and hamhocks?

[Doohickey]

My wife is from South Carolina and it's tradition in her family to have Hoppin' John for dinner New Year's Day.

[woofie]

When I was little we would eat black eyed peas on New Years

my mom would put a dime or a quarter in the pot ...if you got the money in your bowl that meant you would be rich the whole year


rabbit rabbit rabbit

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Foodie Ping!

[AnAmericanMother]

We've always called black-eyed peas and rice "Hoppin' John". Long as I can remember. It is both a black and a white dish around here -- both my grandmother, from central East Alabama, and my parents' housekeeper, a sharecropper's daughter from Troup county GA, called it by that name.

The tradition is that eating Hoppin' John on New Year's Day will bring you "coin money" -- eating collard greens with ham hock will bring you "folding money" in the New Year.

[madprof98]

You don't have collard greens with that???

[manic4organic]

The recipe for Hoppin' John is right on the bag of black-eyed peas here in Texas.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Does anyone have the recipe for what they call 'Texas Caviar?' It's a bean and spice mix that you eat with tortilla chips.

Beans, onion, celery...that's all I remember!

Thanks!

[blam]

"You don't have collard greens with that???"

No, the take-out where I got this meal didn't have any. So...

[alloysteel]

I suspect this is an old custom that probably originated with the Cherokees, and passed on the the early white settlers in the region.

Check back on similar terms that might exist in the Cherokee language, and you may discover the origin of the term.

[Texas_shutterbug]

We eat blackeye peas and cabbage on New Year's Day.

I think the cabbage "thing" comes from the Irish. Anyone know if that's true?

[BIGLOOK]

Glad to hear Black Eyed Peas and rice has a name. I've enjoyed it all my life, black eyed peas with bacon and jalapenos with rice. Love fresh okra but it's hard to come by here and the frozen stuff is mush when fried.

I'm a Yankee who never passes up tasty fare.

Happy New Year, Blam!

[jonsie]

The recipe for hopping john is on the back of most bags of black-eyed peas. I am cooking them now for dinner. We have always had black-eyed peas on New Years Day, they bring luck throughout the year.

[Oorang]

My first thought as well - where are the collards?

From one of my cookbooks:

Hoppin'John ~
Blackeyed peas are actually cowpeas which are not botanical peas at all but a type of bean, a low legume that was fed to cattle and slaves in eighteenth-century American and named for the more valued animal.

Brought to the West Indies from Africa, cowpeas crept north to Georgia in the 1730s and multiplied so rapidly that they became both the common "field pea", as they are often called, and the decorative "black-eyed pea" that Jefferson planted at Monticello. Creoles called the peas "congri," echoing Congo Square. When they mixed the peas with rice and threw in picked pork, they called the dish "jambalaya au congri".

One lexicographer suggests the name Hoppin' John may have been a corruption of pois a pigeon, since pigeon peas were common in the Caribbean. Another suggests that the name originated in a children's game played on New Year's Day, since the dish and the game were thought to bring good luck, beans carring with them the magic of voodoo. The name certainly springs from the same joking matrix that calls red beans and rice "limpin' Susan" and black beans and rice "Moors and Christians".