Hoppin' John Blues

I'm hoping the first entry to this blog won't be my last.

It's not that I'm afraid blogging will go the way of such hobbies as knitting, making my own soap, or making hats out of "found objects" (okay - other people's garbage).

No - I'm worried about being hit by a piano while walking down the street.

For the past few weeks, I've been especially vigilant about falling anvils, choking hazards, and escaped cheetahs from the zoo. You see, for the first time in memory, I failed to eat Hoppin' John on New Year's Day. Growing up, I was led to assume that the fabric of space and time would not only possibly, but probably collapse over neglecting this ritual. More proof there's a fine line between a cultural tradition and a symptom of Asberger's syndrome.... but still.

If you are what's known as a “Yankee,” e.g., you hail from Connecticut, New Jersey, or perhaps Bangladesh, you may be thinking to yourself, "Who is this Hoppin' John? Is that some blues singer? That horse they had to put down after the Derby?"

Neither an animal nor a banjo player on meth, this starchy dish is a rather bland mixture of blackeyed peas, rice, and sundry spices that Southerners of all ilk eat on the first day of the year -- and pretty much only then.

Delicious as it may not be, tradition is tradition, and mild OCD is a powerful thing. So, come January 1, I trek out to the grocery store to get the necessary ingredients. But ….

PLOT TWIST! As it turns out, black-eyed peas are almost impossible to find in Seattle, where I now live. I get the feeling it would be easier to score black-tar heroin in this town. Not that I'm even sure what black-tar heroin is, or if it even exists outside of movies and cautionary tales – which is roughly how the folks in Washington State feel about blackeyed peas.

“You mean, like, the band?” Asked the grocery store clerk, who was apparently stoned. He was 19-ish, with a nametag that red “Tyler.”

“No, like the thing you eat?,” I said. “Little bean? Black... eye?” I attempted a descriptive gesture, which proved futile. Legumes are hard to pantomime.

Clearly, the idea of a food with a band name was blowing young Tyler's mind. He just looked at me, as if I'd asked for something completely crazy, like, say, unicorn steaks – even though everyone knows unicorns are endangered and killing them is just plain wrong.

“If it comes to it, just use canned blackeyed peas,” my mother offered as a solution to the problem of “no blackeyed peas.” A horrified intonation in her South Carolina drawl suggested that cat food might be a cut above using canned, rather than dry, blackeyed peas.

“No canned either. No blackeyed peas of any kind.”

“So just use frozen.”

I gave up.

Growing up, on New Year's Day, we would always have some version of Hoppin' John and greens, usually collards and/or turnip greens.

“Eat your greens,” my grandmother, who lived with us, would say. “The greens are the dollars,and the peas are coins. Eat up, so you'll be healthy, wealthy and wise in the new year!”

Healthy, wealthy, and in need of Rolaids, more like.

Last year, I forced some Seattle friends to experience the Hoppin' John and collard greens tradition on New Year's Day. I insisted to my friends that the Hoppin' John and collards would be the key to all things good in the coming year. Over the next 12 months, the couple in question would loose their jobs, break up, and move back in with their respective parents.

"Shouldn't have used canned," my mom said, when I recounted this story.

But here's the awful truth. My friends – Hoppin' John kind of sucks. It's one of those things that we eat because we have to, because it's a tradition. A gas-inducing, carbo-loading tradition with limited nutritional value. Still, it's one of those foods I find infinitely comforting, if not all that tasty.

The Southerner's love of Hoppin' John is a bit like the Scots' relationship to their bizarre yet beloved national dish, Haggis (Scots Gaelic for “Alpo” ). Of course, who doesn't love ground organ meats served in the lining of a cow's stomach? Yum! Still, it seems that Haggis is more loved as a symbol of national identity and tradition. Every year on Badmitton Day or Bugger The English Day, or whatever it is, Scottish families come together around an Intestine Full of Haggis (if that's not a band name...) to drink whiskey and – with apologies to my distant cousins in Scotland – recite the similarly overrated poetry Robert Burns.

In an increasingly homogenous world, sometimes food – even god-awful food – is last thread of cultural identity that connects us to the increasingly vague idea of cultural identity. We may have forgotten our ancestors' languages and songs; we've forgotten about the famines or predjudices that forced them out of one place and into another. But, dammit, we have their gassy carbohydrates and organ-meat pies. Which is something. Isn't it? Isn't it?