Black-eyed Peas!

This New Year's, Mayce invited me over to have dinner with her and Todd so that I could experience a southern New Year's tradition: eating black-eyed peas!

I do not like beans and really am not an avid eater of strange things, so I was apprehensive, but my obsession with all-things-Texas took over and I said yes.

Mayce went all out for the dinner - mashed potatoes, green beans, black-eyed peas, ham, rolls, etc. It was a fantastic dinner!

Here's pregnant Mayce being Martha Stewart in the kitchen!

And here are the famous black-eyed peas in some sort of broth, along with bacon. They were kind of bean-like, so I wasn't crazy about the texture, but they weren't bad! I better have some serious luck this year!

And here's a picture of her cute house in Grapevine:

I guess the traditional southern New Year's Day dinner has a bunch of special meanings. The collard greens (Mayce substituted green beans) signify money/wealth. The black-eyed peas signify prosperity in the coming year. And she got a round cake (bundt cake) and that is supposed to represent continuity from year to year. There may be more things involved, but those are the ones that she specifically told me about.

OK - NOW am I an official southerner?!