Purely Whimsical

We just came back from a wonderful New Year’s dinner. On the menu tonight was rib-eyed steaks, black-eyed peas, spinach, and cornbread. Dessert was an apple crisp. It was a good dinner! The cornbread was the recipe in this post, and I just quickly boiled some frozen organic spinach (everyone thought it was fresh though), and I improvised on the black-eyed peas.

Everything was superlative. The steaks were seasoned and cooked to perfection, the spinach cooked just enough so that it was still nice and firm, the cornbread mildly sweet and springy, and the black-eyed peas were creamy and flavorful. The apple crisp wasn’t overly sweet, and went well with milk (some added sugar too). If we had remembered ice cream, it would have been perfect.

What was really nice is that everyone helped, no one person made the meal. Well, I usually do the meal planning for our get togethers, but everyone does help. It keeps everything nice and social as we’re all working on chopping, etc.

We even went high style and had sliced cheese on our salt block with some nice wine before dinner.

Since I improvised the black eyed peas recipe, I’m going to write it down so I can remember it for the future. This makes a lot of beans. Unless you have a large family or gathering, you’ll probably be freezing some.

Black-Eyed Peas

1 lb pkg black-eyed peas
4 cups chicken broth
1 yellow pepper, diced
1 red onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon all-purpose or italian seasoning (or to taste)
1 rib celery
2 cups (real) bacon bits
2 bay leaves
1/4 cup butter
salt and pepper to taste (add salt at the end)

Presoak beans according to directions. Rinse beans, then put in a large pot to cook. Add chicken broth (I used one of those cartons you can get at the store, but water and boullion would work too), 1/2 peppers, the red onion, garlic, celery, seasoning, bay leaves, butter, and 1 cup of bacon bits. Do not add salt until at the end of cooking; salt added during cooking makes beans tough.

Bring beans to a boil on high heat, then turn heat down to low and simmer. Beans will take about 1 1/2 hours to 2 hours to cook, on simmer.

1/2 hour before the beans are done, add the rest of the peppers (the peppers you added in the beginning will have pretty much disintegrated by now, adding flavor but no color).

After taking the beans off the heat, add the last cup of bacon bits and remove the bay leaves.

Notes on the recipe:

• I ended up using the quick soak method for the beans since I’ve read that overnight soaking makes the beans tough… and I slept in so I couldn’t soak them for the recommended 6 hours.
• I was only going to use 2 cups of chicken broth, but it really didn’t look like enough so I added the entire box. It was perfect.
• I also tossed in about 1/4 leftover diced orange pepper, just to use it up.
• I forgot the celery, so I just used celery salt at the end.
• Traditionally you use something like smoked ham hocks for this dish, but I have a humongous bag of (real) bacon bits from Costco. This seemed like a good place to use some of it up.
• I used a disposable tea bag (found at an asian market) to contain the bay leaves, so I would be sure to not miss any pieces.