New Year's Good Luck Soup

Every year my family celebrates New Year’s Day with a delicious lunch at an old friend’s house. Our friends cook an amazing meal of traditional southern cuisine that’s meant to be eaten when celebrating the new year. We feast on collard greens, black eyed peas, pork, sweet potatoes and corn bread. These foods are meant to bring in good luck and prosperity for the new year. Black eyed peas represent coins, collard greens represent paper money, and corn bread represents gold. Whether or not you believe this will actually bring prosperity, it’s a longstanding cultural tradition, and a really yummy meal.

Being so inspired by this meal, I decided to create my own spin on it. This time of year I love cooking soups. Warm, full of veggies, and great to make in a large batch to have throughout the week. I thought this meal would be great in soup form.

What you’ll need:

1 can black eyed peas
1 sweet potato cubed into bite size pieces.
1/2 large onion chopped
2-3 cloves of garlic chopped
1 bunch of collard greens, chopped or ripped into small pieces
1 carton of vegetable stock
Pork or Chicken for added protein *optional*

Directions:

Sautee chopped sweet potatoes, onion and garlic in a large pot with some olive oil, or another oil of your choice, for about 10 minutes just to soften.
Add vegetable stock, black eyed peas, collard greens, and meat. (I added some water during the simmer process as some of the stock boiled off)
Bring to a boil then let simmer for about 15-30 minutes.
Season with black pepper if desired.

*Note, if you are adding meat to the soup, cook it before adding it in. I used leftover pork from our New Years Day feast. This step is optional, if you don’t prefer to have meat in your soup.

It really couldn’t get much easier than that!

Please enjoy and have a happy and prosperous new year!