Lucky Instant Pot Black Eyed Peas for the New Year
Plus, enjoying the lull between Xmas and New Year's
Season’s Greetings! We’re still in the thick of it - at my house we rolled directly from Christmas into Hanukkah and in a few days it will be New Year’s Eve. The mood has shifted from anticipatory, frantic joy to a quieter and more contemplative feeling that makes me crave long, hot baths and slow, meandering walks.
Ophelia and I took a walk through the fog this morning, enjoying a time of year when Southern California really shows off its beauty.
I love this lull between the 28th and 31st, when the mess of Christmas has been picked up and organized but we’re not quite back to normal life yet. There’s still another holiday to look forward to, one that’s less fraught and exhausting and involves much less shopping and planning.
Our New Year’s Eve menu tends to be fairly simple. This year, we’re thinking of picking up an array of to-go dishes from a Japanese market for New Year’s Eve, and I’ll probably make ground pork and ricotta meatballs with pasta for New Year’s Day.
The recipe below for Instant Pot black eyed peas is also a great one for New Year’s day, served with ham or pulled pork and mac ‘n cheese or something lighter, like roasted fish and greens. Serving black eyed peas is a Southern tradition that’s supposed to bring good luck, health and prosperity in the New Year. I love traditions like this, that give you a ready-made menu for a holiday so you don’t have to make a new decision every year about what to serve.
You can find the recipe for Instant Pot black eyed peas → HERE
Cookbooks
Easy Weeknight Dinners from the New York Times is a good cookbook to have at the start of the year, when you’re looking for new dinner inspiration. The cookbook emphasizes three things that I love: ease of cooking, flavor and variety. I’ve got my eye on recipes for dumpling noodle soup, sheet-pan salmon and tomatoes with pasta, easy spaghetti with meat sauce and pork chops in lemon caper sauce…plus a bunch of others! The recipes in each chapter are listed from shortest cook time to longest and are also organized in the index by topics like “truly 15-minute recipes,” “good for freezing,” and “one-pot minimal dishes.”
That’s it for this year! I’m looking forward to incorporating a few new changes to this newsletter in the New Year and I’ll also be resuming my “Five Dinners in Real Life” section of the newsletter after the holidays, when our family dinners are back to a regular schedule. Until then, enjoy your family and friends and any alone time you’re able to find (ha!)
xo
Jenny