It’s gonna be a weird year.

In my defense, I was in a deep after-Christmas haze.

I knew it was New Year’s Eve, I knew I had a bag of black eyed peas from last year I didn’t use and I was under the impression I had a kielbasa sort of thing of unknown vintage in the freezer.  Good enough.  I did like a good Southerner does, and put my beans on to soak.

Next day.  New Year’s Day.  I start to actually think about what I’m making for dinner.  I have no onions.  I have no bell pepper, I have no garlic.  I have no celery.  I have no Tony’s.  I have nothing of use but some sad reindeer carrots and one bay leaf.  To make matters worse, I cannot locate the sausage I swore was in the freezer.  Mere mortals would have moved on to greener meals at this point.

But.  Mama needs a new pair of shoes.  I WOULD be eating black eyed peas on New Year’s Day.  

I diced up those carrots and put, you know, like, a dash of everything in the beans.  I also located a tube of turkey sausage.  

And here’s where things might have gone awry.  

I made turkey sausage meatballs for my black eyed peas.  It really sounded like a good idea at the time.  I might have patted myself on the back for the sheer genius of the idea.

That’s right.  I was proud of this concoction for about an hour as I readied to make the cornbread.  AAAAAAND I was out of eggs.  Fine.  I added a couple of tablespoons of ground flaxseed plus 6 tablespoons of water.  Who’s baaaad?  Jessica is.  She knows how to substitute for missing eggs!  Now, I seemed to also be out of milk (you might be gathering that I wore pajamas for then entire week after Christmas, never leaving the house).  I did however, locate some vanilla almond milk.  At this point, even I was willing to forgo the cornbread.  I mean, gross.  But, Randy said “just do it!”, so I made those cornbread muffins.

I actually served this meal to my family.  And they ATE IT. 

That’s love.  Because no one wants to see a turkey meatball in their bowl of beans.  Nor do they savor vanilla-scented corn rocks stained red by their festive wrappers.  I reflected on that as I was left to eat the leftovers, all alone.  For a week.  I had another tupperware-full of beans and two more muffins to go on a Saturday as I was yelling at everyone for not HELPING ME OUT WITH THE DAMNED BEANS!  but I finally accepted defeat and threw it out.  

If you knew how my crazy comes out at the thought of food wastage you would be gasping in horror right now.

I hope New Year’s meals aren’t foretelling.  Otherwise, it’s gonna be a really weird year.