Can you believe it is 2018?? I remember when we hit 2000 and I swear that feels just like yesterday! I hope you all are enjoying the holidays with the people you love. This post today is about traditions, specifically our New Year’s Dinner tradition. As a kid growing up in the South we always ate our peas and greens on New Year’s Day. I never questioned it, until I got older and my Nana died. Then I wanted to know why she always made the meal she did every year. Turns out, I was one of the few people who wasn’t aware of the tradition, as many people I talked to already knew. But, just in case you don’t here’s what I found out:
Pork: we eat pork because in the South people who owned pigs were more prosperous and because pigs search for food by moving forward with their snouts
Greens: the greens we eat represent paper money, which we want more of in the new year
Black eyed peas: these represent coins, again, taking us back to our prosperity theme. However, I also found out this may have some Civil War roots because apparently when Northern soldiers burned the crops they chose not to burn the peas because they considered them to have no value, so the Southern soldiers were able to survive by eating the peas
Cornbread: this represents gold!!
Now, I don’t know how much of this is true, but it’s what I found out from talking to my family and friends, and even if not, it makes a great story.
So, this was our New Year’s Day menu (with links for recipes)
Grilled steak and jerk pork medallions
Collard Greens with bacon
Spicy black eyed peas
cornbread
Thanks for stopping by! I wish you all a happy and prosperous New Year!
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