Happy New Year!

Is it true that whatever you do the first day of the year,

 you'll be doing all year long?

January 1, 2012 

 I got up,

 started the black-eyed peas cooking,

 got breakfast ready to cook, then went back to bed

with a heating pad and a snoring Teddy Bear. 

 We watched church (Jesse Duplantis) on TV,

 (in bed, because we are mostly living in a bedroom) 

and had breakfast at 10. 

 I think this would be a great way to live

 (except for the heating pad)! 

But the bubble burst all too soon and

we had our morning safety meeting

before the demolition began

in the upstairs bedroom suite-to-be. 

Is my memory slipping,

or did someone say to me,

",,,this time, you get to be the

 QUEEN BEE.

All I want you to do is pick out colors and point."

Then a contractor came with a bid

guaranteed to make him rich.

So here I am...

a worker bee...

"I'm hot.  I can't breath. My nose itches. 

I think I'm claustrophobic.

I might be having a panic attack.

I would rather be the QUEEN!"

But we finished

and I got dismissed to the kitchen.

I had read Ree's recipe for Hopping John

on her blog, The Pioneer Woman.

She has beautiful pictures and precise measurements.

I didn't know that I was making Hopping John -

I just thought it was black-eyed peas.

In the south, we eat black-eyed peas for good luck
(my mama always said we had to eat one pea for every day
 of the new year to insure good luck)
I don't know what the folks in North Dakota ate -
maybe Swedish meatballs, lutefisk, lefsa and knoephla soup

My black-eyed pea recipe:

1/4 chopped red bell pepper

1/2 chopped  green bell pepper

1/2 chopped onion,

some chopped celery

(my amounts are just what was in the fridge)

cooked in olive oil (not butter)

then I added one pound of dried peas  (soaked overnight) brought from Texas

and cooked it all in chicken broth for a few hours

(until we were ready to eat)

At the big grocery store in a bigger town,

I found OKRA,
which is not in too many grocery stores here in the North.

This Southern Farm Girl just needs fried (even if it's oven-fried) okra

with her black-eyed peas.

The Teddy Bear says it's okra until it's cooked, then it's

OKRIE!

and he tolerates it any way I cook it.

So if that superstitious old-wives tale folk lore is true,

for the next year I'll be

Sleeping late

Watching TV in bed

Getting a little spiritual nourishment

Working harder than I want to

Whining about it

and

Eating my favorite foods

cooked healthy

I hope you all have a happy, healthy, prosperous

blessed

New Year!

Thanks for listening to me ramble.