Good Luck

Other than my two children who are a source of joy and light, there isn’t much good that came out of my first marriage. Like that old saying about everybody being good for something, even if it’s an example of what not to do, I have incorporated those nearly ten years of experience into a style guide of edits for my own life, things I have pared away from myself like the hard rind of cheese.

The main influence from my ex-husband was through food. Because he was from the Philippines, he had food preferences that I had never experienced before, things I still enjoy now 25 years after our marriage ended. I just made his version of chicken adobo the other night, and in the summer we enjoy grilled citrus pork the way he made it.

Today, I will be making the recipe for black eyed peas that I learned in those years. Early in our marriage — possibly as a celebration of our wedding, but I forget exactly now — some of his musician friends came over, bringing food and drinks and music and laughter. It was a lovely gathering made up largely of people I had never met, because we very much lived separate lives.

One of his friends brought over a huge pot of black eyed peas, chicken slathered in barbecue sauce, with cornbread on the side. As this older Black man watched me devour bowl after bowl of the peas, he sat next to young me and detailed his simple and healthy recipe.

“I had some heart problems, you see,” he said, stirring the beans in his bowl. “So this is some heart healthy food here. Made the peas without pork or ham hock.”

Never having had anything but canned pork and beans before, I wanted to know more. How does one even begin to make beans that don’t come out of a can? What is a ham hock? Do you mean pork like pork chops? He was from New Orleans, which I knew meant he had the secrets to the best food in the world, and I was a white suburban girl raised on the seven regular dishes my mother had on rotation.

“Soak the beans overnight,” he said. “Then throw them in a pot with garlic and chicken bouillon, eat it with a little boiled chicken with barbecue sauce. It’s good luck food, people eat it on New Year’s.”

And so every year, I have made this dish on New Year’s Eve for good luck. Some years, it has worked. Here’s the recipe as I remember him describing it that summer evening more than 35 years ago.