I think I'm going to try a lucky mojo dish this New Year's eve since I have to be at work anyway. The dish includes black eyed peas but I'll be on the grave yard shift and the building will be empty. So I can vent my good luck all around me without offending anyone. Let's see now, "grave yard" and an "empty building" doesn't sound like a good lucky start does it? Guess I'll have tocompensate by increasing the pork rations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-eyed_pea"Eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day is thought to bring prosperity in the Southern United States.[3] The peas are typically cooked with a pork product for flavoring (such as bacon, ham bones, fatback, or hog jowl), diced onion, and served with a hot chili sauce or a pepper-flavored vinegar.
The traditional meal also features collard, turnip, or mustard greens, and ham. The peas, since they swell when cooked, symbolize prosperity; the greens symbolize money; the pork, because pigs root forward when foraging, represents positive motion.[4] Cornbread also often accompanies this meal.
These "good luck" traditions supposedly date back to the American Civil War. Union troops, especially in areas targeted by General William Tecumseh Sherman, typically stripped the countryside of all stored food, crops, and livestock, and destroy whatever they couldn't carry away. At that time, Northerners considered "field peas" and field corn suitable only for animal fodder, and didn't steal or destroy these humble foods."
