I love the idea of eating celebratory foods to usher in all possible good luck for the coming year, but the foothills of Boise, Idaho didn’t imbue me with any specific New Year’s Day traditions. Piggybacking on the Southerners with Hoppin’ John, a dish made with rice, black-eyed peas, and (most typically) chunks of bacon or ham, might have been right up my hog-centric alley. But I’m not a huge fan of black-eyed peas, so for me, that’s just not the right way to get the year started.
I’m turning to Italy, where lentils (whose abundance on a plate are thought to symbolize coins) are the legume du jour. I figure I’m just about as Italian as I am Southern, so why should it matter whose cultural traditions I steal?
I will be publishing a recipe a day for the next 365 days. Here’s a hot, lucky way to get it started.
Happy New Year!
1 Comment
January 13, 2008 at 10:43 pm
[...] that can get the job done. My New Years’ Day 2008 won’t glow with the warm remembrance of lentil soup or hoppin’ john, but I’ll certainly never forget how the ten of us got four small rear-wheel [...]