New Year's peas

Did you eat your peas yesterday? No, not green peas. Black-eyed peas. They are called cornilles in French. The ones we find here, either dried or in cans, come from Portugal. Sometimes, however, the label on the bags of dried black-eyes says that they were grown in the United States. Over there, people eat them on New Year's Day because that's supposed to bring you good luck all through the year.

I cooked the peas in turkey broth made with the carcass of our Christmas turkey, adding carrots, celery, shallots, leeks, and dried cayenne peppers. We also had some smoked pork sausages along with some white sausages called boudins blancs, which are made with pork, veal, or poultry and eggs, cream or milk, bread crumbs or flour, and spices. In France people think of boudins blancs as a Christmastime food.