the jackpot question

It's New Year's Eve! What are you doing tonight? I have never been a go-out-on-NYE type of gal, so true to form, this evening I can be found in comfy jammies waiting on my gwumpki to come out of the oven. We usually make a traditional southern New Year's staple, black eyed peas; the frugal bean is supposed to bring riches to your family for the coming year. My favorite way to cook black eyed peas is in Hoppin' John. Mmmmmm.

But this holiday, since we didn't go to Atlanta and sample my family's gwumpki, we decided to make our own. I added some pictures tonight to the recipe I posted a few months ago.

For the remainder of the evening, I plan to cozy up next to the hubster, who is as we speak cursing at the bowl games. I have my spread all laid out before me with [Nerd Alert!] three new cookbooks I'm flipping through:

• For Christmas, Nate got me Jacques Pepin's new book that I talked about a while back,  
• My favorite food & family blogger co-wrote a book, Time for Dinner, that I checked out from the library, and
• I had a gift card to use up, so today I stopped by a book store to buy a book I originally found at the library, called "The Beekman 1802 Heirloom Cookbook." As you can probably tell from the start of this post, I love old family recipes! I feel a separate post coming on about some of the recipes in this book; I'm already excited that it's divided by season.

This has been another amazing year for our family. Thanks as always for stopping by and reading my musings on life. We wish you the merriest, the merriest of new years.

Welcome be ye that are here,
Welcome all, and make good cheer,
Welcome all, another year.