A note on New Year’s Foods…

A note on New Year’s Foods….

There are tons of lucky foods that are supposed to bring luck if eaten at the beginning of each New Year. When I started thinking about posting the recipes for the stuff I grew up with, I realized that I really didn’t know WHY it was supposed to be lucky to eat those particular foods. So I poked around the net, and found all kinds of stuff.

In my research (haphazard admittedly), I learned that the traditional black eyed peas and turnip greens were meant to represent money – the greens for bills and the black eyed peas for coins. So if you eat lots on the first day of the year, supposedly the real thing will follow all the other days of the year to come. Something else I discovered though was that many cultures eat foods that are circular or spiral or round – which I’m guessing shows the circularity of time.

This led me to tinkering with the recipes for the foods I knew, and experimenting a bit with a couple I didn’t. I ended up completely revising the traditional deep mountain Southern meal I knew and loved – and came up with one I think I may love just as much from here on. I took the comfortable (and frankly homely) menu I grew up on, and came up with a quite lovely, elegant menu that fits the celebration of the day. True to form it’s not difficult, doesn’t have to be ‘babysat’ and can be served either to the family or a more extended gathering. As always - it's completely about taste - and it shines. I like this one – try it out!