Good luck?

My first full day of the year was pretty fun and relaxing. Puppy surprised us by sleeping in until 9 a.m. - a real treat since he usually wakes up at 6:15 a.m.! After that great start, N brought me home a warm reduced-fat blueberry muffin. The day kept getting better, with a fun trip to the theatre to see "How do you know" (super cute) and some quality relaxing time with my boys. Here's to hoping that the rest of the year will be just as nice!

To ensure that the year would be great, I decided to cook a batch of black-eyed peas for good luck. I've disliked black-eyed peas almost my whole life, and even now I find them more tolerable than delicious. The past few years I've been making them with fresh peas (rather than dried or canned), which really makes them much tastier. I used my own simple and quick recipe that is loosely based on Hoppin' John.

Quick & Easy Hoppin' John
1 small container of fresh black-eyed peas
1 liter of chicken stock
1 cup of rice (we used brown basmati rice)
1/2 of a small onion, chopped
Salt and pepper (to taste)

Soften the onion in a small amount of olive oil. Add the black-eyed peas (rinsed), chicken stock, and rice. Cook until the rice is soft (mine took about 40 minutes). It's best if your finished product is pretty moist.

While I chose to cook black-eyed peas for good luck, these peas got me more concerned about my year's luck than excited. You see, when I opened my three-day old black-eyed peas, I found mold. Yuck! What does it mean for me that my good-luck charm was actually rotten? Luckily (hah), I managed to salvage the peas by going through them pea by pea to toss the moldy ones. Hopefully I was able to: (a) keep us from getting sick, and (b) ensure that we still get good luck for the year. I suppose only time will tell...