Saturdate with Southern Plate {chocolate pie}

Have you ever seen the movie Julie and Julia. It’s the story of the woman who cooks through Julia Child’s entire cookbook. Ever since I saw that movie, I wanted to try to cooking through an entire cookbook, but every cookbook just seemed too fancy for me. Recently though, I found The Southern Plate at my local library. It’s a cookbook from Christy Jordan the creator of Southern Plate blog. Surprisingly, I read this cookbook cover to cover, and had to buy a copy for myself. She doesn’t just give recipes, but gives a background to each recipe. She connects food to southern heritage in a way that makes you want to stand up, put your hand over your heart, and sing Dixie. Oh…maybe that was just me.

At the same time I found this cookbook, I made my 30 before 30 list. For #9, I decided to try to cook every recipe in the Southern Plate cookbook. I’ll be posting this project on Saturdays, and of course I had to come up with a catchy name for it.

The first choice for my Saturdate with Southern Plate was obvious. As a good southern girl, I decided to honor the tradition of eating black eyed peas and turnip greens on New Year’s Day by making “pot o’ beans.” (click on the recipe title for the recipe and a great explanation of the tradition) I’m not a fan of turnip greens so I decided just to make black eyed peas. I did not worry about getting the black eyed peas, because I figured not many people would honor this tradition in Maryland. I was wrong, really wrong. I went to four different grocery stores and they were all sold out of black eyed peas!!! This shortage started to make me think everyone up here honored this tradition, but every grocery store employee I asked was clueless of this tradition. They had no idea why the black eyed peas would be sold out. At one store, Shad ran in and asked, "Do you have any black eyed peas?" The worker said, "The singing group?"(I'm not trying to be funny. She really said that.) So who was buying all the black eyed peas? There must be more southern transplants up here than I thought! Where are they? Why haven’t I met them? I know they must be here, the empty black eyed peas shelves prove it. Maybe they have a club I don’t know about.

All was not lost though. I still made a Southern Plate recipe, Lucy's chocolate pie. This recipe is only in the cookbook and not on her blog. This is a fantastic chocolate pie! I loved that I already had every ingredient except for the pie shell in my pantry and fridge.

Here's my finished product with the picture in the book. I should have beat the meringue just a little longer, but it's still pretty. Well, it was a rough start to a new journey, but plan B has never tasted so good!