Black-eyed Peas

Appropriately for New Year's Eve eve, I'm drinking rising sun tea (soleil levant, from Lupicia, purveyors of my usual Happiness blend).

Black-eyed peas—blackeye beans—from Idaho's Snake River Canyon are soaking for soup with collard greens, for New Year's luck (augmented by charms against the evil eye and the gift of guardian bells, twice as effective if given away).

The beans from Idaho summon the memory of my father, also from Idaho, (and a family friend from Texas with her copper samovars and vista of blue Santa Fe mountains, who taught my mother that they need to be prepared each year again to eat on New Year's day); and I have added smoked Spanish paprika and a pinch of Aleppo pepper to the soup to remind me that Aleppo badly needs our help, needs luck in a desperate way. 

All life is there in the simplest ingredients.  All that I am gives flavor to each repast, and I understand that in repast is past relived, tasted again.

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Bowl