Posted on 01/01/2007 10:50:17 AM PST by blam
Why do they call it Hopping John?
On New Years Day east Tennesseans, and people here and there all over the South, eat black eyed peas and rice and call the mixture "Hopping John" (often written "Hoppin' John".) Over the years I have eaten hopping John with good friends in the kitchen, been served it from chafing dishes by well-off San Antonio ladies three sheets to the wind, and walked into a roadside restaurant in Maryland with a can of black eyed peas and asked to be indulged. Somebody at the table always asks "Why do they call it hopping John?" and nobody ever knows why.
Hopping John seems long to have been associated with the meager cuisine of slavery. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the phrase is first attested in 1856 in A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States (page 506), one of a number of American travel books written by Frederick Law Olmsted, later to gain fame as the landscape architect who designed New York's Central Park and the great Biltmore House in Asheville NC. He wrote that "the greatest luxury with which they [presumably the slaves somewhere] are acquainted is a stew of bacon and peas, with red pepper, which they call "Hopping John".
Surfin' the Net, I find one plausible explanation: that "Hoppin' John" is an odd adaptation of the Creole French pois pigeons 'pigeon peas', pronounced pwah peeJON. It's not toofar from that to "hoppin' John" (though why not "poppin' John", I wonder).
The OED offers some support for what I think is an equally likely origin of the word, recording a statement by an otherwise anonymous Hardy (not the novelist, who lived somewhat later) in 1843 that "These feasts, or as they are called elsewhere in Northumberland, hoppings, are held on the festival of the patron saint."
New Years Day follows less than a week after the feast of St. John the Evangelist (the traditional author of the Gospel and Epistles of John and of Revelation) on December 27th. The feast of the other Biblical John, St. John the Baptist, comes at the other end of the year, on June 24th. Thus marking the two solstices, the festivals of the two saints John are thought of in traditional calendar lore as the two supporting points of the year.
Some northern European peoples say that the Sun is seen to dance at the winter solstice, at the time when it is seen at the farthest point to the south, and begins its return northward. Could this dance have occasioned the name of this homely dish?
I think we shall never really know.
For more hopping John lore, with recipes, visit John and Matt Thorne's Outlawcook and read some really fine food writing on the site while you're there, along with a harrowing account of the horrors of slavery.
Cow peas....... distant cousin of the 'black eye' and 'crowder' pea...... Purple hull is the name most commonly associated with them. I've planted and hoed a many row of them during my early years along picking and shelling.
LOL!
I'm a Mississippi gal, and my Mama made Hoppin John and collards every New Year. I always loved the peas and rice, but have never been able to abide collards. WAY too bitter for me!
I love Texas Caviar. I've also seen a recipe called Prairie Caviar that is similar. I made it for a Twelfth Night party several years ago.
I made a beer barbecued Pork Roast in the slow cooker, Corn Bread, and a green bean casserole. Those greens will have to do for the money luck in the New Year since I can't stand collards or any other cooked greens.
I had mine and collard greens too. Happy New Year!
They say it's good luck to eat hoppin John on New Years... We have it every New Years - and sure 'nuff, we always seem blessed.
Candied tomatoes? Share the recipe please! :)
Cow peas You can get fresh ones in season at the NC State Farmers Market. They have many different varieties and fresh taste much better than dried or canned. But hey you can't get fresh in the winter, so you cook what you can get.
Mom said the first frost 'takes out the bitterness' but, I couldn't tell the difference.
My mother told me that black-eyed peas were about the poorest fare.
That starting the New Year with the poorest food, things could only get better.
I cheated this year and made 16 bean soup. There are black-eyed peas in it so I'm ok.
B- eyed peas are one of the few beans I don't care for. Garbanzos and limas are the other ones.
This is pretty much how I cooked them up. I did not use a recipe since my husband did not have one.
CANDIED TOMATOES
1 qt. can tomatoes
1 1/3 c. sugar
1/8 lb. butter
Salt & pepper to taste
Place all ingredients in a pan. Cook on top of stove for 3 hours or until thick. Place in a 1 quart baking dish and top with narrow strips of bread. Bake at 400 degrees until bread is toasted. Serves 6.
You can omit the baking part or substitue ritz cracker crumbs softened in butter for the bread strips.
Sure I know what they are, grew them in the garden when I lived in Mississippi. Very heavy bearing, put up countless quarts of them. Purple Hulls are good too.
I have in the past eaten black-eyed peas on New Year's day but I really do dislike them immensely and didn't have any and didn't want to drive to town so I did the Mexican thing and had posole with my own homegrown and processed chile. Mmmmmmm, good.
Thanks.
Yup. Yesterday, 01-01-2008 (64 years old).
Doesn't this belong on the "fart joke" thread?
We had hoppin john with greens yesterday. Tradition.
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