01 January 2019

Bonne année 2019




It's almost midnight on the U.S. East Coast — approaching six a.m. in France. So it's 2019 here. 2018 went by in a flash, but it couldn't go fast enough for me. Let's hope for a better year this time around.



And I can't believe my black-eyed peas have been in the slow cooker for nearly nine hours and they aren't done yet! I guess I should have started them in boiling broth. It must have taken hours — I was sleeping — for the cooker to come up to temperature.

I've taken the black-eyes (called haricots cornille here in France) out of the slow cooker and put them in a big pot on higher heat to finish. Of course we won't eat them for another seven or eight hours, so it shouldn't be a problem. The ones we get here come from Portugal, but the package doesn't say where they were grown. Maybe in the U.S. Black-eyed peas are a variety of what are called "cowpeas" and they came originally from Africa.

Yesterday I spread a kilogram of haricots cornille out on a baking sheet in one layer so I could pick through them and eliminate the broken or shriveled ones, not to mention any extraneous matter I might have found (none this time). Then you just cook them in water or broth (a combination of pintade broth and potée broth for me this year).

U.S. Southerners (I'm from North Carolina) eat black-eyed peas on New Year's Day out of superstition. Eating them on January 1 is supposed to bring you good luck for the new year. We'll have ours with Toulouse sausage, smoked pork belly (poitrine de porc fumée), and confit de canard (slow-cooked duck, in this case leg-thigh pieces and gizzards). I guess I'll make another salade de scarole, plain this time, to round out the meal. Or maybe I'll take some garden-grown collard greens out of the freezer.

All the best to you all in 2019.

24 comments:

  1. A very happy New year to you both.
    Only discovered your blogs this last year and read daily, even if I don't comment.
    Love all things French and visit most year. This year we are visiting your neck of the woods. I'm looking forward to it immensely.

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    1. Thanks Christina. Happy New Year to you too.

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  2. Happy New Year......Good cooking and happy travels in 2019.

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  3. Hope your beans soften! An interesting tradition.
    Happy new year to you both. Thanks for another year of great blogging

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    1. The beans softened up very quickly once I put them in a pot on the stove instead of in the slow cooker. We enjoyed them at lunchtime. Happy New Year to you.

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  4. Quite by chance I'm cooking beans today too. Happy New Year. I think you've got a better chance of it than me.

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    1. A better chance with the beans or with 2019? My carte de résident expires in 2019. Wish me luck in getting it renewed.

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  5. Just like Susan, I'm cooking beans today here in Virginia which is considered a southern state. But they are red kidney beans, my favorite, with smoked ham. They will be ready for lunch tomorrow.

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    1. I'm with chm...and much prefer red beans to black eyed peas......happy 2019

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    2. I don't understand why people take pride and joy in telling me that what they like is better than what I like. Enjoy your beans and I'll enjoy mine. I like both.

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  6. Happy New Year. I'm letting Janice cook the beans today. Ginger and I will go to her house for lunch. Hope the year is good.

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    1. Happy New Year to you, Ginger and Janice. Enjoy the beans. I enjoyed mine.

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  7. Happy New Year! We're having black-eyed peas today too.

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    1. Happy New Year to you both and Happy Birthday to T. Enjoy the "peas"...

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  8. Happy New Year to you both and to all the readers of this blog. Thank you for all your great posts.....Best wishes for a very healthy and peaceful 2019!! From Laguna Niguel, CA......

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  9. I'm getting ready to put mine in a pot to cook. I wouldn't dare let a New Year's Day go by without eating black-eyed peas! I need all the luck I can get.

    Happy New Year

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    1. Let's hope the old black-eyed pea superstition works well for us all in 2019.

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  10. Glad there was no "extraneous matter"!
    Happy 2019 to you, Walt, and Tasha!

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    1. Extraneous would be pebbles about the size of a pea that was missed in the cleaning and sorting. Non-bean matter I guess I could have written.

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  11. Oh, I forgot about cooking black-eyed peas. Guess mine will have to be virtual this time around. I, too, hope for a better, saner twelvemonth ahead.
    Thanks for another year of terrific pictures and recipes and visits to corners of your world.

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  12. Belle année à vous et continuez à nous régaler de recettes et de voyages !
    Amicalement, une presque voisine de Sancerre !

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  13. oh dear Ken...didnt mean to offend re the beans or to suggest that you were somehow wrong to like the black eyed peas....my friend down the road actually brought me some collards and black eyed peas/rice the other day...I did try them again just to see.

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