Posted on 12/31/2020 11:25:13 AM PST by mylife
As funky fumes of sauerkraut blanketed our house year after year, the younger me resented the letdown of New Year's Day. The excitement of Christmas was officially over, it was time to head back to school, and of course my family's good luck food wasn't something kid-friendly, like cookies or ice cream. My mother cooked up her annual big pork roast, mess of sauerkraut, and a pot of black-eyed peas. I wanted none of it, dining sulkily on a pallid pile of mashed potatoes.
Now I'm the one who's gladly stinking up the house with kraut, pork, and peas; I like these foods and don't just limit them to the turn of a new year. But I've always wondered about our family custom. My mother grew up in Ohio with lots of German and Polish neighbors, while my dad's gaggle of military brat siblings lived on Air Force bases in Florida and Louisiana. Mom brought the pork and kraut to our table's traditions; Dad, the black-eyes. But which cultures started these celebratory superstitions in the first place? And why those foods?
To dig a little deeper, I chose four popular regional American good luck foods of the new year—the pork and sauerkraut of the Midwest, the greens and black-eyed peas of the South, the pickled herring of Scandinavian immigrants, and the lentils of Italian-Americans—on a quest for the facts behind the fortune.
(Excerpt) Read more at seriouseats.com ...
Southern Missouri here.
Cornbread and black-eyed peas in our home.
No fowl of any type for fear of it scratching out your luck for the coming year.
My sense of new year lucky food is fairly simple. By January those living off the land were eating off of stored food. Those that store and cure well are featured as lucky foods: dried beans, grain, cured or pickled meat. If you had them available for feasting at New Year you were lucky/blessed because you weren’t already rationing.
“the pickled herring of Scandinavian immigrants”
Is that some sort of way of politely saying lutefisk?
Indeed.
MMMmmmm fish jello swimming in butter...
These taste like dirt!!
“well, I dropped them in the hallway....”
I always thought red beans and rice with smoked sausage was pretty lucky. (dash of crystal)
Hell, we lived on that as poor sailors
"Calphalon!"
"No good! Follow me!"
I had both LOL and Pampered Chef LOL
Polish Sausage and Kapusta - Have mine ready for New Years Day.
That Pampered Chef stuff served me well.
No Haluski? Perogis? WTF kinda hunky party is this?
Sounds great.
Greens like collards, turnip or mustard is a requirement here along with ham and blackeyed peas.................
I love it except the BEP’s
Perfect post timing as my wife was simultaneously finishing her Black-eyed pea dish for tomorrow.
Lucky ? Lucky for me I remember eating them last New Years keeping my green eyes on the outcome.
Then, 2020 turned out to be less than a 1 Star rated year for us... devoid of luck. Ok maybe I was supposed to get liver cancer and didn’t?
The only measurable outcome was an increase in gas about 2 hours after eating them.
So then I read B-eyed Peas aren’t peas but beans.
I would break her sweet heart if I didn’t eat them tomorrow.
So I’ll smile and break wind onto 2021
I like your attitude and agree with you and the union army about the wretched dry little bean!!
No damn Limas neither!!
Our lucky foods begin on new year eve.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.