I know that eating a particular food on a particular day will in no way effect your life, love life and your finances for the remainder of the year. Yet, tradition required me to hit the grocery store today and purchase fresh black eyed peas, a head of cabbage, potatoes and corned beef. When I was growing up, New Year’s Day could not proceed without the above mentioned meal. With great emotion, Mother would say “At least one bite of everything or you won’t have any luck, love or money.” This may be a totally southern thing to do, I have no idea, BUT I am not tempting the tradition.
Lucky for me, my husband and kids all love the traditional New Year’s Day menu. When the kids were a little younger, I could buy one corned beef and we would have plenty of meat left over for Rueben sandwiches the next day. Now, there is never any meat left over for even a midnight snack run. This year I bought two packages of corned beef.
What is corned beef? It is a cut of beef, usually brisket, cured or pickled in a seasoned brine. The “corn” refers to the corns or grains of coarse salts used to cure it. Wow, learning something from the blog . . . cool. I suddenly feel like Alton Brown.
You didn’t ask, but here is my recipes for my New Year’s Day meal. If this menu is totally foreign to you and you attempt it and you love it or hate it, thanks for being adventurous. By the way, I am technologically inept and cannot figure out how to program this blog to make it actually look like a recipe, so you’ll have to read it in paragraph form. Sorry.
Corned Beef - Ingredients are 1 corned beef, 1 bag of crab boil (don’t cut open the netted bag, use it whole otherwise, big mess), 4 tablespoons Homemade Gourmet Grandmother’s Sunday Roast and enough water to cover. You can cook it in your slow cooker on low for 8 hours or in the oven for about 2 1/2 hours. Make sure you have a tight fitting cover on your pot in the oven. Oh, and one more thing . . . Once it is done, let it set on your cutting board for about 10 minutes before you slice and slice diagonally across the grain of the meat, not with the grain.
Black Eyed Peas with a Punch (get the humor, hee hee): I use 24 ounces of fresh black eyed peas from the produce section, but you can use frozen. Heck, you can use canned, it would be much quicker! (If you use dried, you are on your own.) 1 can of tomatoes with green chilies, 2 tablespoons Homemade Gourmet Southwest Seasoning (though I have also used the Kansas City Rub Seasoning and it is good too), about a cup of chopped onions (I use frozen already chopped because I am lazy and it is available) and two slices of bacon (cut up). I put a little oil, the bacon and onion in a large stock pot (soup pot) and saute until the bacon is done and the onions are clear. Then dump everything else in the pot with enough water to cover. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to medium and cover. I cook them about an hour.
Cabbage (This is the money meal): Ingredients- 1 head of cabbage, diced (make sure you cut out the core, it is nasty, and you can either dice the cabbage or cut in larger strips), 1 cup diced or sliced onions, 2 slices of bacon, 2 tablespoons Homemade Gourmet Grandmother’s Sunday Roast Seasoning and about 1-2 cups of water. (This is the tricky recipe because of timing and most people hate cabbage because most people overcook it into this white, slimy mess.) In a large skillet (with a lid nearby), on medium high heat, saute a little oil, bacon and onion until bacon is no longer raw and onions are clear. Now, add the cut up cabbage, the sunday roast seasoning and a cup of water. Don’t worry about stirring just yet because it will look like all the cabbage will not fit in the skillet, Put the lid on the skillet for about five minutes, now give it a good stir and decide if you need a bit more liquid or not (In other words, did you buy the smallest head of cabbage they had or the big mama cabbage??). Cover and cook for another 5-10 minutes. This is the tricky part . . . the cabbage should still have some firmness and some color. Most people boil, instead of steam their cabbage leaving a gloppy mess. If you love gloppy mess cabbage and that is the way your Mother made cabbage, my apologies, please enjoy your gloppy mess cabbage.
The last thing I made is fried potatoes and onions. I am not writing down this recipe, because HELLO you simply fry potaotes and onions.
Happy New Year and Lots of Luck, Love and Money to you All!
Cindy
