This sad-looking pile of beans harbors a surprise in taste. The joke is on me, because for over fifty years, I hated these things.
The pile turns into this:
Yep. Those are black-eyed peas.
We did not have them often when I was a kid, but Mom was from the south. Which meant that New Year’s Day required black-eyed peas. For good luck the rest of the year.
My logic for that was that if you had to start the year with this for dinner, the rest of year could only get better.
But then a few years ago, my CSA box featured a batch of freshly harvested black-eyed peas, along with a few recipes for using them. And lo, they tasted GOOD!
Was it because they were fresh, rather than dried? Probably, but I didn’t have a problem with other dried beans. Although, I’ve never had other beans cooked from their fresh, soft state. Maybe the dried versions do taste worse.
Anyway, now I look forward to these lovely beans showing up in the CSA box. Last night I cooked them in chicken broth with bacon, sun-dried tomatoes, onions, garlic, and summer squash. I hope there’s another batch in next week’s box!
Marlene Dotterer 
If you replace the squash with pumpkin, and the bacon with salted pig tail or smoked pork bones, that’s exactly how we eat them here 🙂 Like you, however, I never liked them much. Maybe fresh is best.
Mmmm… pumpkin. Makes anything better.