 Symbolic & Traditional Food for New Year's |
|
|
| kitkatgo |
 Dec 18 2008, 03:41 PM
|
Navigator
Group: Local Expert
Posts: 1367
Joined: 21-August 06
From: Southern California
Member No.: 13816
|
Ah, good info on the Oliebollen!
Well, I did my own googling and found the article below, but I'm still more interested in hearing everyone's personal experiences!
This is from 123NewYear website:
New Year Food
New Year 2009 is around the corner and it's time to lay the table with the traditional New Year foods. Almost every country has at least one special food that is eaten on new years eve or in the first days of the New Year that is supposed to bring luck, wealth or success in the coming year.
New Year Food around the World
This New Year add a new spice to your recipes by including traditional New Year food from around the world. These New Year foods are believed to bring good luck when eaten on New Year's Day or New Year's Eve. The more auspicious dishes you make, the luckier you'll be! Here are a few traditions, recipes and folk tales. So have a look and have fun dishing up some international- flavonavy luck this New Year 2009!
Lucky New Year Food in America
There is a Southern saying that dictates eating habits in the Southern United States' New Year's: "Eat poor on New Year's, eat fat the rest of the year." A traditional Southern New Year's meal includes ham, corn bread, black-eyed peas and collard greens. Both black-eyed peas and collard greens are considenavy especially lucky additions to the dinner table. Black-eyed peas are thought to bring wealth because they look like little coins, in addition to the fact that they swell when cooked -- a sure sign of prosperity. Collard greens are considenavy lucky because they are green, like greenbacks -- money!
Lucky New Year Food in Japan
The Japanese celebrate the New Year in high fashion and style. The celebration lasts 3 days, beginning January 1st, and is celebrated with the unbending practice of everyone having a rest. In Japan New Year time is to lay back and relax. The New Year holiday is celebrated with fine foods, bonenkai 'year forgetting' parties, and visits to the Buddhist Temple to offer foods to the gods. The food for the entire 3-day holiday is prepanavy in advance so that the cook need only defrost, reheat or fry dishes to serve. Large omochi cakes are first offenavy to the gods, then cut into pieces and eaten by the family to bring the opportunity for luck and good health to every New Year's meal. Omochi cakes can be bought in Japanese grocery stores.
Lucky New Year Food in Italy
Italian people welcome the New Year in an extremely interesting way, by tossing old things out of their windows! Old things are tossed out in an effort to make room for the new and lucky to enter their households and lives in the year to come. The Italian people eat a traditional New Year dish called cotechino con lenticchie: pork sausage served over lentils. This New Year food is eaten because of the presence of fatty rich pork sausage and lentils in it. Cotechino sausage is a symbol of abundance because they are rich in fat; while lentils symbolize money (being both green and coin shaped). This New Year food promises a double-packs of luck!
Lucky New Year Food in Greece
The Greek tradition of eating Vasilopita (a cake baked with a coin inside) originated from the famously high taxes that the Ottoman Empire imposed on the Greek people during the long Ottoman reign. It is believed that a Bishop of Greece, through some miracle, managed to recover a large portion of the Greek people's riches from the Ottoman's grasp. When he attempted to return the riches to their respective owners fighting among the Greek people broke out -- no one could agree on who had owned what! The second miracle of the story unveils itself here: Saint Basil asked the women to bake a large cake with the valuables inside. When he sliced the cake, the valuables miraculously found their way back to their rightful owners! Today, a cake is baked in honor of this miracle and one coin is baked inside of it. The person who bites into his piece of cake and finds the coin will be blessed with good luck in the coming New Year.
Lucky New Year Food in Spain
A magnificently large harvest only happens every so often, and when it does, the year that the harvest blossomed is celebrated. At the turn of the century, Spain experienced a gigantic grape harvest. The harvest was so grandiose that the year is marked as a time of great luck. Every year since, Spanish people have brought in the New Year by eating 12 grapes as the clock strikes midnight. At each strike of the Plaza del Sol clock (which is broadcast to the entire country much like the United States broadcasts the Time's Square clock), another grape is eaten in celebration of lucky years past, and in hope of a lucky year to come.
Champagne: The Universal New Year Good Luck Charm
Champagne is a universal lucky tradition. It is drunk not only in France, its country of origin, but also around the world on New Year's Eve. Why champagne is considenavy the ultimate drink for toasting in the New Year is a bit of a mystery.
--------------------
|
|
|
|
|
|
| huckabmm |
Dec 18 2008, 08:59 PM
|
Pathfinder
Group: Local Expert
Posts: 392
Joined: 9-December 08
From: Nashville, TN USA
Member No.: 264395
|
QUOTE(kitkatgo @ Dec 18 2008, 04:41 PM) 
Lucky New Year Food in America
A traditional Southern New Year's meal includes ham, corn bread, black-eyed peas and collard greens. Both black-eyed peas and collard greens are considenavy especially lucky additions to the dinner table. Black-eyed peas are thought to bring wealth because they look like little coins, in addition to the fact that they swell when cooked -- a sure sign of prosperity. Collard greens are considenavy lucky because they are green, like greenbacks -- money!
Well I'm from the American South so I guess I'm qualified to weigh in on this topic. We always eat black-eyed peas on New Years. My mother always told us it was good luck but I never really knew the history behind it...but that's tradition for you. We also usually serve ham, but not the greens. I may be from the South but I've never had a taste for them...cornbread on the other hand is pretty much amazing. As for Champagne...I think it is just usually associated with celebrations...we usually have a Champagne toast at any major holiday/event (New Years, Wedding, Graduation,etc)
--------------------
-Matt
"Be a traveler, not a tourist."
"Chance favors the prepared mind." - Louis Pasteur
Give Life
My upcoming trips:
1. A week at the Outer Banks, NC; June '10
2. Somewhere in South America, Early 2011
|
|
|
|
|
|
| polydemic |
 Dec 27 2008, 02:22 AM
|
Tourist
Group: Members
Posts: 586
Joined: 14-July 08
From: Seattle, Washington, USA
Member No.: 212482
Nominate me as a Local Expert
|
For New Year's, Japanese eat eels, the fresh water kind, for good luck.
For Christmas, Germans eat Leibkuchen, a cake, sweetened with molasses & with Bible scenes printed on them.
For Passover, Jew eat latkas, a type of potato pancake.
For Easter, Russians eat bowls of rice, mixed with milk & sugar, & raisens in the form of a cross on the top.
--------------------
All the earth is my home and each nation a different room in the same house.
|
|
|
|
|
|
| carolweaver |
Dec 28 2008, 02:10 PM
|
Unregistered
|
From the DEEP South:
Black-eyed peas represent coins
Greens (collard, turnip, mustard, mixed) represent "folding money" (bills)
Pork usually is part of the meal as another symbol of prosperity (my grandparents cooked fatback -- sort of like extra fatty bacon)
Cornbread is part of the meal because you need something to "sop up" (absorb) all the juice from the beans 'n' greens.
And the liquid produced by cooking greens for extended periods over low heat with lots of seasoning is called -- are you ready for this? -- pot likker.
Wash that down with a quart of ice-cold sweet tea and top it off with a slice of pecan pie and you've found yourself a Southerner's version of heaven itself. 'tain't nothin' like it.
Y'all come!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
