Hoppin John

Yuck

“Here, Eat this” My friend Cammy said.  She had made some pork, collard greens and some crazy looking beans and rice stuff.

I am not going to lie to y’all when I say that I wanted nothing to do with it.  I was like ‘what the hell is this crap?’..I didn’t dare say it out loud. My friend had opened her home to me, I had just been dumped,  and I was in total misery, I hadn’t eaten in 2 days so Cammy was making me eat.

Though I had no Idea what was on my plate, I was grateful, so I ate it.  She told me it was called Hoppin’ John, and that it was supposed to bring me prosperity and good luck etc for the rest of the year. I figured it couldn’t harm my already shitty life, so why not?

Once I decided to stop being a total loser, and do something with myself, I started researching just what the hell Hoppin’ John was.  Apparently this was a dish that some slaves in the Carolina’s came up with, and you are supposed to eat it on New Year’s Eve and again on New Years Day, before, or after…I’m not sure which, you bury a shiny dime, and some dried black eyed peas, in the dirt outside in your yard. I’m not sure, but I think this is supposed to make you rich.  Or less broke than last year.  Or maybe you’ll get a magic friggin beanstalk.  I would be happy with any of those options.

The name has a couple stories behind it. Some nonsense about how a guy named John always came hoppin’ into the kitchen every time his wife made the dish, and some other weird tradition about how children have to hop around the table before they sit down and eat it. Listen, if there were a bunch of kids hopping in my damn dining room, I would tell them all to GTFO and let me eat my crappy rice and beans.

There is some debate in the Low Country as to whether the beans and rice should be cooked together or separately. People have died over this y’all!

Ok, I made up that last part, but it is the South, and I’ve seen people trampled in the Walmart over the last Duck Dynasty welcome mat, so a heated debate ending in death, over a long time recipe isn’t that far fetched.

The end result, It wasn’t so bad.  I put it in my mouth, and I must say, that since that day, my life has gotten nothing but better and better.

Maybe there is something to this old slave tradition, maybe my life just sucked ass last year, but I don’t know shit about anything so we’ll just have to see.

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