News-Record.com

Last year, we celebrated New Year's at my aunt's house with all the traditional fixins. This year, we're driving down to Florida for the New Year and a belated Christmas. Last night, I talked on the phone to my mother about what we would be fixing for dinner, and of course, it went almost exactly like last year's menu, seen here:

Hoppin' John (or black-eyed peas and rice): There are complicated recipes out there for this, but the easiest way to make it is to simply mix your cooked rice in with black-eyed peas that have been cooked with a ham hock. In my family, the peas are eaten for peace and the rice is for riches. It's never proved to be successful -- I'm still a poor journalist married to a poor teacher. I read somewhere once that you have to eat 365 peas to guarantee that you will have good luck each day of the following year -- too bad I really don't like black-eyed peas much at all!

Greens: This is another traditional food that is supposed to bring prosperity in the coming year. The more greens you eat, the more green dollars you'll find in your pocket. They should be cooked with hog jowls, which are supposed to bring joy.

Ham: I actually don't recall a tradition in my family associated with ham, we just always have it. But according to foodtimeline.org, we're doing it right. "For people of several nationalities, ham or pork is the luckiest thing to eat on New Year's Day. How did the pig become associated with the idea of good luck? In Europe hundreds of years ago, wild boars were caught in the forests and killed on the first day of the year."

Cornbread: Apparently this brings luck and wealth, too; I just always thought it wasn't a Southern meal without the cornbread!

The only addendum to last year's menu is, as I put it to my mom, "vegetables that people will actually eat." Most of my family members aren't exactly the greens and black eyed peas type.