Black-eyed peas with cabbage and sausage
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
I love a food tradition, so even though I don't believe in magic that will bring me good luck and enormous wealth if I eat black-eyed peas and green on New Year's Day, I certainly do believe that sharing a meal with thousands of households across the country sounds pretty lovely.
So, black-eyed peas and greens on New Year's Day it is.
I've been observing this tradition for a couple of years now, but I have yet to find a recipe that I really love. This year, I decided to go with what I've got and build some strong flavors... out of my BRAIN.
Planning!
I still had a head of cabbage left from the CSA extravaganza a couple of weeks ago. I also had a single link of italian sausage in the freezer (leftover from Thanksgiving's stuffed mushrooms!). It was a pretty easy decision to use those for the greens and pork, though they are admittedly far from the traditional choice. I decided on a few other additions, writing a note to myself that said (though I did decide on a couple of changes as I continued down the road):
Black eyed peas cooked with onion and celery + stock + jalapeño peppers + cabbage + tomatoes + sausage + thyme + rice
Sounds pretty good, right?
Once I had everything in the pot a few hours in, it suddenly appeared to be a HUGE amount of food, so I decided I'd freeze half of it into four individual portions, a gift to future me!
Here's the nutritional breakdown from Fitbit...
Bonus: it's slimming! Unless you combine it with cream puffs. Which I will.
Anyway...
Groceries I had on hand...
- cabbage
- hot italian sausage
- turkey stock (the last of the Thanksgiving batch!)
- onion
- carrots
- white rice
- olive oil
- salt
- pepper
- smoked paprika
- dried thyme
Groceries I had to buy...
- black-eyed peas (2 cans @ $1.39/each = $2.78) **yes, I bought canned; all the dried beans were actually sold out at the grocery store!!
- diced tomatoes (1 can @ $1.49)
- jalapenos (.15lb @ 4.99/lb = $.75)
Total monies spent for the entire recipe: $5.02
Total monies spent for each of these 8 meals....
$0.63 per meal.
Wooooooot!
Cooking!
So here's what I did, recipeless....
I cooked off the sausage, then removed it from the pot. Then I added a little bit of olive oil, and softened the onion in the sausage fat and olive oil with some salt while I chopped the cabbage. I added the cabbage to the pot as I chopped it, stirring in each batch as it went. Then I added a bunch more salt and cooked down the cabbage and onions FOREVER. Like, seriously. Two hours worth of cooking down and caramelizing, checking in on it about once every twenty minutes. When it was almost totally dry and super sweet and soft, I added four small chopped carrots and two jalapenos - sliced, seeds and all. I got those sweating, then added about half a teaspoon of thyme and half a teaspoon of a smoked paprika. In went a can of diced tomatoes and the juices, then five cups of turkey stock - exactly all I had left in the freezer from Thanksgiving. I drained and rinsed the beans and added them to the party, along with the reserved cooked sausage. I bought that up to simmer, then put the lid on the pot to ensure the carrots would cook while I steamed some white rice. By the time the rice was steamed and had sat off the heat to finish cooking, the stew was finally ready!
It's incredibly flavorful, and I'm pretty pumped about how it all turned out, considering it's essentially a pantry batch cook. And look at all of this bounty for stashing in the fridge and the freezer!
this is the good life!
