Wonders of the South: Black Eyed Peas and Collards

It's a sight to behold!  Rows and rows of big leafy collard greens on ice, stacked outside the Ponce de Leon Whole Foods.  Inside, cans of cooked black eyed peas and bags of dried peas, right when you walk in.  It's New Year's Day y'all and time to eat collard greens and black eyed peas, two foods that never passed my lips until I moved here.  Now I'm so into collards I can practically eat an entire pre-washed bag of greens. Mind you, they do cook down to something resembling a human-sized rather than a trough-sized portion.  And collards are healthy as hell:

Medicinal Benefits
Medical researchers believe that the whole family of cruciferous vegetables helps to prevent cancer. The cruciferous family includes collards, kale, cabbage, bok choy, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, mustard and mustard greens, turnips and their greens, arugula, watercress, kohlrabi, horseradish, and rutabaga. Studies have shown that eating foods in this vegetable family speeds the liver's ability to detoxify ingested toxins.

Julius Caesar ate a hearty serving of collards as a preventive to indigestion after attending royal banquets, a testimony to their detoxifying abilities.

Eppley Cancer Institute at the University of Nebraska conducted a study to learn the effectiveness of collards as a cancer preventive. After feeding mice cabbage or collard greens, researchers injected breast cancer cells into the rodents and found they developed fewer metastasized cancers. Other experiments revealed that collards exhibited surprising anti-cancer agents that prevented the genetic changes promoting cancer growth.

I have already shared my meat-less recipe for collards back at the beginning of this blog.  It's easy and goooood.  I don't have a recipe for black eyed peas, but I'm going to concoct some kind of grain and bean salad for New Year's day -- probably wheat berries, black eyes peas out of the can, plus feta cheese and chopped celery, dressed with oil and vinegar.  If anybody wants to send me a great black eyed pea recipe I'd be thrilled to have it, just no pork. Liquid smoke or smoked turkey are OK.

So, why the greens and peas on New Years Day?  Here's what Wikipedia says:

The traditional southern New Year's meal also features collard or mustard greens. This is supposed to bring good luck and financial enrichment. The peas stand for coins, the greens symbolize paper money. Corn bread also often accompanies this meal.

These "good luck" traditions date back to the U.S. Civil War. Union troops, especially in areas targeted by General William Tecumseh Sherman, would typically strip the countryside of all stored food, crops, and livestock and destroy whatever they couldn't carry away. At that time, Northerners considered "field peas" and corn suitable only for animal fodder, and as a result didn't steal or destroy these humble foods. Many Southerners survived as a result of this mistake.

I just say peace, good health and good greens to you. Go boil up a mess of greens and start the year off right.