Lucky New Year Day Foods

I wasn't raised with foolish superstitions, so I do not have "lucky" foods for the new year.

Black-eyed peas and cabbage, OP, though no actual coins

Animal crackers

Black eyed peas and collard greens for coins and money. Also pork for good luck because the pig pushes his food forward to eat it and we're moving forward into a new year.

Pineapple with milk

Peasants.

Most traditions are originally based on some foolish notions and should be avoided by the truly intelligent. How’s that? Now off to my blacked eyed peas, rice, collards and cornbread. I need some luck.

Black eyed peas. Serving shortly with chopped tomatoes and onions and a ham steak.

Everyone posting here is Southern. We're the backward ones I guess.

I have only heard of "black eyed peas" which are delicious.

How do the coins taste though? Why no quarters? Too cheap?

Noodles are meant to be eaten for success and prosperity in the New Year, according to some Chinese tradition. (or so I’ve been told)

What's food? - D. Orphan

PA Dutch people have pork and sauerkraut for good luck on New Year's Day, although I don't know why.

As for me, I went to a neighbor's and she served ziti.

[quote]They also ate black eyed peas which resemble coins.

OP, in what universe do black-eyed peas resemble coins?

Corn

Cum.

R14 Pork because pigs root forward (forward into the New Year) as opposed to chickens who scratch backward (last year). Yes, really.

I had my black-eyed peas and collard greens earlier this evening, cooked with ham hocks. I can’t remember a year, at least in the past decade, which I haven’t had them.

As R14 said the pork and kraut is a Pennsylvania Dutch custom.

During lean years we'd do hot dogs and kraut.

I loathe sauerkraut, though, and haven't done it since I left home.

Feces.

Sauerkraut is a form of cabbage. Green in its original state. Collards play the same function.

In the South is cabbage more likely to get eaten by whites and collard greens by Blacks on New Years? Collards are very difficult to cook well btw. It was my experience Black people had the patience and skill to cook them well more than whites.

[quote]OP, in what universe do black-eyed peas resemble coins?

Harlem.

Nothing. My family was poor. No traditions for the New Year. No champagne, no special food. Same with Christmas Eve. Noting special. We were lucky to have food. We had Turkey on Christmas & thanksgiving because it was required. And it was cheap. Never paid for turkey because supermarkets gave away frozen turkeys. You bought your groceries and you’d spend a certain amount and they’d give you a frozen turkey. Potatoes were dirt cheap.

We had to go to church on Christmas and New Year’sDay. Took the fun out of the holiday when you had to get up at 6:30 am to go to children’s 7:30 am mass.

[quote] In the South is cabbage more likely to get eaten by whites and collard greens by Blacks on New Years?

R22, not in the least, at least not in North Carolina. Also, collards aren’t hard to cook and don’t take really any longer than cabbage cooked the traditional Southern way, i.e. cooked to death.

I'm from North Carolina and have never heard of eating cabbage for New Years, much less adding actual coins to the cabbage.

What I've always heard and my family has always eaten for New Years is collard greens for money and black eyed peas for coins, plus some form of pork because the pig pushes its food forward to eat it.

And FYI, I'm a white male.

R26, I always get the impression that people from other areas believe that white people and black people from the South eat different foods. This is not the case at all, with the obvious exception of macaroni and cheese, which is a holiday staple on black families holiday tables and never seen on my family’s holiday tables.

R24 I hope you’re doing much better for yourself now, and that you can afford to eat everything and anything you want!

11 foods to eat for good fuck in the New Year.

R26, southwest Virginia cabbage was eaten on New Years day. German influences in that area perhaps. Down from Pennsylvania.

Cabbage and cabbage-family greens are considered "winter vegetables," so the simple explanation is that those are what was most available at this time of year. In this day and age of easy access to foods from all over the globe we tend to lose sight of that.

Another Southern boy here, from rural NC. Black eyed peas for New Years for luck. We ate collard greens all the time (boiled and sprinkled with vinegar on serving).

Traci Lords made some stuffed cabbage fwiw

Crêpes Suzette!

Thirty-four replies and no one has mentioned Pancakes Barbara?! We should all turn in our cards.

tacos

R35, why would anyone mention Pancakes Barbara? That’s not a lucky food to eat on New Years. Do you even get what the assignment is?

I don't know anyone, anyone at all, who doesn't have Pancakes Barbara during their annual New Year's Day viewing of The Women.

We had a near riot at brunch yesterday when our host ran out of whipped cream during the "Mrs. Prowler" scene.

Mama always threw a slice or two of bacon into the pot to cook with the collards. She wasn't a very good cook but she seemed to understand instinctively that everything is better with bacon.

Stewing collards with bacon or ham hocks is a very old Southern tradition.

Mom always put potato soup on the table at New Year's because that's what her mother did.

Two Big Macs, two Fillet-O-Fish, and a chocolate shake.

Jenny Craig pepperoni pizza!

Yesterday I did my usual, Sausage Jalapeño Cheese Cornbread and Black-Eyed Pea Soup. A couple of squares of the cornbread are placed on a plate (I use Corelle Ware basin plates, which can hold a certain amount of liquid - they're something all fat whores should have handy) and top them with a couple of ladles full of the soup.

This year I put a package of frozen chopped Collard Greens in the soup; it was either that or kale, and I just happened to have the collards on hand.

Black eyed peas with bacon and onion and chicken stock cooked down. Lucky

The only good fortune I've had with eating overcooked beans and greens is being lucky enough to get to the toilet in time!

I never thought of getting frozen collards. I think you have to start from scratch and it's too much work. I'm food shopping tomorrow and looking for frozen collard greens. This is Brooklyn so I'll probably find them.

Dental hygienist.

[quote]I never thought of getting frozen collards. I think you have to start from scratch and it's too much work. I'm food shopping tomorrow and looking for frozen collard greens. This is Brooklyn so I'll probably find them.

Look in the canned food aisle instead. Glory brand collard greens are quite good and get the seasonings just right.

Texas. Black-eyed peas and cornbread. Cabbage...bleh.

Canned collards are the Devil's Playground. We've got trouble right here in River City.

[quote]Canned collards are the Devil's Playground. We've got trouble right here in River City.

That's what I thought until I tried the Glory brand collard greens. I'm amazed that I am recommending canned collard greens, but they get the seasonings just right.

i.e. SALT.

I grew up on Cape Cod, and my Portuguese family always made a rice and beans dish on New Years Day called "jag". It was delicious, and I recently thought of it as this New Year approached, so I tries to find a recipe. Google helped to identify that the full name was "Jagacida". Here's the recipe