New Year’s Foods for Luck and Money
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After elaborate Christmas or Hannukah meals (see the comments from our previous post for some great descriptions of absurdly time-consuming puddings, potica, buche de Noel and almond macaroons), and after plenty of champagne toasts on New Year's Eve, it's no wonder traditional New Year's Day meals tend to be humble.
Humble in the hope of wealth, that is. In the South, people eat black-eyed peas on New Year's, the logic being that if you eat poor at the beginning of the year, you'll eat rich during the rest of it. Collared greens, another tradition, are supposed to represent money.
The hope for a prosperous year pops up all over the world. In the Philippines, round fruit are supposed to represent money. Lentils serve the same purpose in Hungary and Italy. And in Spain people eat 12 grapes at the strike of midnight, a tradition that supposedly turns 100 years old today.
Happy New Year! And enjoy whatever food or drink are part of your celebration.
Image courtesy of Piano Castelluccio/Wikimedia Commons
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