Have you had your Ddeok-guk?

On New Year's Day, we make it a priority to eat ddeok-guk, rice cake soup. I let Jack handle the cooking of the soup and he always makes a tasty concoction with rice cakes, eggs, and green onions. It's a food that is traditionally eaten on the first day of the Lunar New Year, but we cover all bases and make sure we have some on the first day of the solar calendar, too. I grew up eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day. My dad is a New Year's baby so he's always had the peas for his birthday dinner. Last year, I created a great big bunch of black-eye peas with ham and turnip greens and 10-day rolls. This year, I failed miserably. I did cook the dang things, but they were never eaten. I was so tired from the night before that I left them on the stove too long and, always paranoid about bacteria, threw them out. I'm hoping that the fact we had ddeok-guk cancels out the need for black-eyed peas. And, hey, the actual cooking of the beans signaled an attempt at aligning with my Southern ancestry.