Alabama Crowder Peas and Butter Beans

In Georgia and Alabama, they’re usually called crowder peas; in Kentucky and Tennessee, cowpeas; in Maryland and Delaware, lady peas; and throughout the South, just black-eyed peas (whether they have the distinctive dark spot or not). No matter the size, shape, or color, they’re all what Southerners term field peas in general, and when they’re simmered together with fresh speckled butter beans, a little seasoning meat, and a hot red pepper (as I’ve observed more than once at the tables of A