8 ways to make black-eyed peas for New Year's Day

Serving up black-eyed peas for the New Year is a cherished Southern tradition believed to bring health and good fortune for the coming year.

5. Spicy black-eyed peas soup

A Palatable Pastime
Give a bowl of black-eyed pea soup a Cajun kick with spicy sausage and Tobasco sauce.

By Sue Lau, A Palatable Pastime

Soak: 6 hours
Cook: 8 hours in the slow cooker
Serves: 8-12

16 ounces dried black-eyed peas
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped carrots or 1 cup chopped bell pepper (may mix)
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 to 2 bay leaves
1 lb. smoked sausage or 1 lb andouille sausages or 1 lb. kielbasa, cut into chunks
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon cajun spices or 1 tablespoon spice essence
49-1/2 ounces chicken broth (large can)
Cayenne pepper sauce or Tabasco sauce, to taste

1. Sort peas and soak in plenty of water overnight. Before cooking, drain and rinse.

2. Place all ingredients into crock pot and cook on low for 8-10 hours or until peas are nicely tender.

3. Remove bay leaves before serving.

4. Serve with additional Tabasco, if desired.

Note: You can always use the 3 minute boil on the peas as a head start if you forget to soak overnight. You can cook legumes without soaking them, it just takes longer.

Read the full post on Stir It Up!

5 of 8

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.