For NaClH2O, your family put vegetables IN the Hoppin’ John? I mean, not just black-eye peas , but veggies in the rice? Collards as a side dish are traditional, to be sure, but not IN the rice, man. I begin to think that the family history you relate is a legend, as they say in tradecraft. Plainly you are a first generation immigrant from Pakistan or Chicago or someplace like that. Veggies AND black-eye peas! Good God Almighty!
I don’t know where the name came from, but I can tell you why it is considered lucky to eat it on New Years Day, especially with some benne wafers for dessert. In Charleston we add something with benne seeds, anyway. Hoppin’ John and collards originally were slave food, you know. Slaves, at least here in South Carolina, were allowed to keep their own kitchen gardens, and their own pigs and chickens. Now COWPEAS and rice (but NOT black-eye peas and rice) together form a complete protein. Add in smoked pork, collards, and anything containing benne seeds (benne is a West African word for sesame, an excellent source of oils), and you have a very healthy diet. Now if I were a slave, I think I’d consider myself pretty lucky to have a good, healthy diet. Most Southern country food comes from the African-American tradition, sometimes touched with Acadian (Cajun), and I suppose a good many of the folk beliefs shifted over, too.
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