Photo courtesy of - www.southernplate.com

I watched my mother cook black-eyed peas growing up, every new year's.  The rest of my family never particularly cared to indulge in her new years cuisine.  While I can't speak to my sister or father's rationale as to why they were un-enthused - mine was because they smelled funny, looked funny, and seemed like the most unappetizing bean that mother nature (or whomever) could have created.  I just didn't get the appeal.

Fast forward to present.

My boyfriend also has the tradition of cooking black-eyed peas - and urged me to help him make them this year.  Anxious about the opportunity to cook something new, but nervous about what it was we were cooking - I took up the challenge (stating a caveat every 15 minutes that I don't even know what these things are suppose to taste like).

I found a recipe online that I thought would add the zest they needed to be quasi appetizing to my high-maintenance pallette.  The recipe I found, used, and enjoyed was the following:

Ingredients

• 2 cups dried black-eyed peas, rinsed, and soaked
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 6 slices bacon, 1-inch dice (I subsituted a turkey neck in place of the bacon)
• 1 teaspoon dry mustard
• salt
• freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 cup preserved ginger, chopped
• 3/4 cup honey

Preparation

Drain and rinse the beans; cover with fresh water and bring to a boil over high heat. Add in the onion, mustard, and ginger. Reduce heat and simmer for about 45 minutes, or until tender. Add water to keep them from drying out, if necessary.  Once the peas are to your consistency satisfaction, add in the honey and stir one last time.

This same recipe goes on to instruct the black-eyed pea enthusiast to bake the peas for another 75 minutes, but I had nor the time or patience for all of that... so I stopped at the honey, and in the words of the Mister... they were 'phenomenal.'