Texas Caviar Recipe

Best of luck to you and yours for the New Year!!

Since I started writing Splendid Market I have learned so much about technology and photography, which was one of my goals in starting the blog. Over the years I’ve been driven to learn in order to get my posts looking just as I like them. As I learned more I used to look back at some of my early post and say “one day I am going to come back and redo all of these”. But I realize now that I’m eternally resolved to continue to learn and experiment on Splendid Market and that means the blog will continue to evolve and “mature” and so those early posts, as sophomoric as they may look to me today, are just a way of looking back at the beginning infant days, and will pretty much remain as they are.

But, I do go back to certain posts often, because they are loaded with content I continue to use…. travel details, images of flower arrangements I want to recreate, contact information and recipes. If you ever need to find information you’ve read here before you can enter key words in the “search” box to the right or click on one of the categories above “BOTANY”, “CELEBRATIONS”, “CULINARY”, “ROAM”, OBJECTS to explore past notions. So, as I go back and recreate thing, it’s only natural that my trigger finger may get a little itchy and I may shoot a few more images of the latest version of my favorite recipes.

 Every January I go back to this Texas Caviar recipe. I am reposting it today because I took a much better photo of it when I served it for a Sunday game lunch last weekend and because I have more information on this tradition. But, I am still keeping all of the original copy and the original photo at the bottom {along with the new info}.

This is a delicious, nutritious dip to serve with tortilla chips or Frito “scoops” for the big game. By eating extra black-eyed peas a crunch time while watching the Seahawks game, we are convinced we forced the victory! Make it the day before for extra ease and flavor.

Here’s the beginning of the original post….

 For many years, we spent New Years day in Mexico with a fun family from Texas. Every year they would pack a can of Black Eyed Peas in their bags to share with everyone on New Years Day. A taste of Black Eyed Peas, I learned, is supposed to bring you good luck and prosperity for the coming year.

Since then, I started to hear about “Texas Caviar”, featuring Black Eyed Peas. There are bajillions of recipes for this dish out there. I usually whip up a little something along the lines of the recipe below throughout January to serve to friends and family. It’s a tasty “bean dip” and it is delicious served with corn chips.

Texas Caviar

ingredients:

2-15 ounce cans of black eyed peas, drained and rinsed

The juice of one lime

1 ripe roma tomato, chopped

2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped

1/2 cup chopped cilantro

3 tablespoons of good quality salsa verde
a few drops of your favorite hot sauce
(green Tabasco gives nice flavor without heat)

steps:

Mix together all of the ingredients together and allow them to sit in the refrigerator for 5 hours or overnight (if you can). 

It’s best if you take the beans out of the refrigerator about an hour before serving to bring them to room temperature.

original image

Here is some insight into the tradition of serving these beans in the new year from Sheridan Alexander at about Travel, “The practice of eating black-eyed peas for luck is generally believed to date back to the Civil War. At first planted as food for livestock, and later a food staple for slaves in the South, the fields of black-eyed peas were ignored as Sherman’s troops destroyed or stole other crops, thereby giving the humble, but nourishing, black-eyed pea an important role as a major food source for surviving Confederates.” Click on Splendid Tradition for the complete story. 

Have you tried these Cabo Loco chips? I think they are the best out there!