A very pleasant 1/1

[billeyler]

After lazing around during the morning (watched the Tournament of Roses Parade), figured it was time to start the Black-Eyed Peas and Ham in the Crock Pot tradition. Lots of tasty ingredients...but I only had one lackluster can of black-eyed peas for the pot. A trip to the grocer fixed that.

Danny and I took off for a day trip a bit before 2. The intention was to see if we could catch the Rail Runner train and maybe ride it between Bernalillo and Belen (50 miles), but of course it's a holiday and nothing is running.

Getting there was part of the fun though...we took the old Pam Am Highway/Original Route 66 up through town to the 2nd Street station, then further up to Bernalillo...I'd never been that route. We started to go to Coronado State Monument, but that's ALSO closed major holidays and Tuesdays. Took the road past the Santa Ana Casino toward the Jemez Dam, with a minor side trip to see the expensive Hyatt Tamaya resort on the reservation. We hooted when we saw that they spray paint their border grass GREEN, out in the midst of a desert environment...even the golf course was whitish from the freezes, but the GREEN spray painted grass was over the top.

Beautiful drive up to the dam, but...the road was also closed there, too, for no apparent reason.

So back we went through Rio Rancho to head home again.

Whipped up some cornbread, and we had our new year's beans and cornbreak repast before retiring downstairs to watch Shrek the Third...and that's our day!

Comments

[bearfuz.livejournal.com]

Your black-eyed peas dish sounds like what Allan H. calls "Hoppin' John," something traditional I'd never heard of, being a Yankee of such northern origins. :-)

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

Yah, my mom had fixed that dish for us for as long as I can remember...I'm sure she brought it with her from West Virginia, as a "good luck for the new year" dish. We didn't have many traditions in our family, but I like this one. I'll have to ask her about it...

I had never heard it called "Hoppin' Jack" until Allan mentioned it. But it's pretty much the same dish...easy to fix and oh, so yummy!

[pdxchuck.livejournal.com]

I come from a family where black-eyed peas on New Years day is a tradition. While Marty was not raised with that tradition he knows it's important to me. So today he looked up a recipe for this year and, you guessed it, was Hoppin' John. First time I had had that dish and it was excellent. Marty used turkey as the meat and brown rice. I usually have a dish of black-eyed peas with green onion.

Happy New Year and hope its a great 2008!