New Year's Eve Menu - Astrid Bear
Scottish New Year's - Jean A.
Kyle Lerfald at Home
Good Luck Foods
Jan Garvin
Linda DeMars
Edmund Burton
Jaap Fabriek
Fred Kiesche
Fred Kiesche, Two
Allan Janus
Bill Nyden
Patti Windisch
Anna Ravano
Ted Garvin
New Year's Eve Menu - Astrid Bear
We're getting ready for a nibbly dinner of Kalbi chicken wings, mushroom turnovers, and crab cakes, served with Roederer Estate Anderson Valley Brut champagne, one of the great yummy bubblies of the world. Wishing all a wonderful New Year!
Scottish New Year's - Jean A.
I really miss my Scottish in-laws at this time of year.
I especially miss my mother-in-law's "Scotch Dumpling", a steamed pudding that is sliced and fried in butter for breakfast the morning after. I also miss her shortbread and Dundee cake.
Nobody has mentioned the "First Foot", the first person to cross the threshold on New Year's Day.
If I remember correctly, a dark-haired man will bring good luck for the year, but beware a red-haired woman!
Kyle Lerfald at Home
Rain this morning, and then snow have decided the evening's course; I'm enjoying the New Year's Eve at home with a fire in the hearth, a bottle of red (good Bordeaux, a St. Emillion), and music of what might be termed "The Rat-Pack Era". Fine by me. Lamb marinated in the simplest of fresh lemon, olive oil, garlic and herbs, and simple roasted root vegetables, corn, and kickshaws. Good crusty bread, and a good book (a history of our neighbor, Canada, that lovely, complex nation).
Good Luck Foods
Jan Garvin
It might be fun to know what the other lissuns consider the proper foods for luck or blessings for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Years.
I have a pot of New Mexico posole cooking--tomorrow is functioning as Christmas day for us, as we have our grandson until 6 on Sunday and then he goes to his mother's--so this is "Christmas Eve" at our house. It's a Christmas Eve tradition borrowed from my New Mexico friends, where one goes to the Midnight Mass, and comes home to break the fast. Lots of housewives do posole because you throw it in a crock pot and it's ready when you get home. Posole is also traditional for good luck on New Years day there.
Here in Oklahoma, the traditional food for good luck is black eyed peas seasoned with hog jowl or side meat and served with corn bread, of course.
Linda DeMars
Traditional New Year's Day Night dinner - which is when I gather all the family and extended family and might-as-well-be family, plus a few friends around - we have sliced fried (sauteed) sausage, black-eyed peas (some with hog jowl, some without - maybe a piece of ham instead), rice, french bread, what I call "simple salad" (iceberg lettuce, fresh oranges with some of their juice, thinly sliced celery, and mayonnaise - tastes better than it may sound, very refreshing). Dessert is usually leftover Christmas goodies and candy and fruit, or, if no goodies are left, maybe I'll make a cake.
This year my eldest is agitating for changes - even though I have told her that many of the guests come salivating for just that menu and that salad (so, no, we aren't doing a great big green salad; no, I am not having lots of shrimp because that much shrimp would be too expensive for such a big crowd; I will be happy to fix a piece of salmon or some fish for your guests - they don't want to be singled out; maybe we'll have champagne, etc). The whole point of this menu is sort of to cleanse the palate of all the rich flavors from the holidays and start over with a basic meal.
Of course, the tradition is also that eating blackeyed peas on the first day of the New Year brings good luck. Some people say you have to eat collard greens, too. And so I will, if someone else brings them, but I have never tried to cook them myself.
Edmund Burton
Here in the Southern U.S. it's Black-eyed peas on New Year's Day.
Jaap Fabriek
For us Dutchies there is just one food without no Old and New Year Party can be complete: oliebollen, filled with raisins, apple, pineapple or even sugared ginger, according to taste.
Have a look at: Dutch Doughnut
These things are incredibly greasy and do not at all combine with the drink of choice: champagne. So many of my compatriots start the new year with a nice indigestion while watching the New Year Concerto in Vienna followed by the ski jumping in Garmisch Partenkirchen.
Fred Kiesche
My wife insists that the only thing to have is pork (ham is, of course, acceptable). Never chicken. Why? You want a food that "roots forward", not "scratches backward" on New Year's Day.
We've done the seven fishes stew a couple of times for Christmas Eve. Christmas day is just about anything from ham to chicken to turkey to even (a few years) lasagna and the like.
New Year's Eve is up in the air this year. I copied down a couple of suggested recipes, might do a chili with beans (from scratch, and use the remaining beans for refried beans, filling tortillas and freezing them for lunches).
Fred Kiesche, Two
Ah, yes, I was just reminded that another New Year's requirement is herring. Pickled or creamed, but we need to have herring.
Allan Janus
I have a skillet of chili with posole simmering even now.
Bill Nyden
Since my sister married into an Italian family, I have enjoyed Christmas Eve meals of cheese ravioli carbonara with meatballs and Italian sausage, salads and breads, with lots of sweets for dessert. ...Except when I'm visiting my brother in Seattle, when I get traditional Danish fare (no lutefisk, thank goodness). Dessert is Rødgrod med Fløde (red berry pudding with a cream sauce) which one is not allowed to sample until one has pronounced it to sister-in-law Helen's satisfaction. (The phrase is considered the Danish shibboleth.)
Patti Windisch
Here in western North Carolina, New Year's day dinner HAD to contain at least these three dishes: Pork (ham usually), collard greens (or cooked cabbage or spinach or some sort of leafy green veggie), and blackeyed peas. I was always told they represented: Ham - good health; collards (or whatever) - good fortune or money; and the blackeyed peas - friends. Yes, we will be having these tomorrow as tradition dictates. Since this menu is quite similar to the one we had on Christmas day, I'm sure I'll be ready to head out for some good Mexican food for the next meal. Olé!
Anna Ravano
In Italy, any food consisting of lots of tiny grains or such, e.g. rice, beans, etc., is supposed to bring good luck especially in the form of money. However, the classic New Year luck-bringing dish in Central and Northern Italy is stewed lentils with cotechino, a large, fresh sausage, typically made with the skin of a pig's foreleg stuffed with minced pork meat seasoned and spiced with cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, etc. Picture of whole cotechino here: Il cotechino and recipe (in English) here Il Forno: Cotechino and Cotechino with Lentils.
Ted Garvin
If Robert Graves is to be believed, beans are good luck.
Which it's the Patrick O'Brian list of the world!