Texas Monthly: Black-Eyed Peas

I'm already looking up my black-eyed pea recipes for New Year's.

But even if you have trouble swallowing this Southern belief [eating black-eyed peas is brings luck for the New Year] —which has its roots in a Civil War-era tale in which Union troops wiped out all crops except the plucky cowpea—you might want to put away a few peas on January 1, just in case.