edible notables
LUCKY FOODS
Dining your way to an auspicious new year.
WRITTEN BY JEANNE LAUF WALPOLE
PHOTOS BY CANDICE NYANDO
Ensuring good fortune and prosperity for next year can be as easy as eating foods that promise good luck on New Year’s Day, according to traditions practiced in many cultures throughout the world. Recurring themes are foods that symbolize wealth, long life, and forward motion.
While turkeys rule the roost at Thanksgiving, pigs are the stars on New Year’s. Prized because they are rotund, which represents prosperity, pigs also are valued because they root forward with their noses, which symbolizes progress. You can nosh on your lucky pork in a variety of forms, which include ham, sausage, bacon, and pancetta, to name a few.
In the South, no New Year’s holiday is complete without a dinner that includes ham hocks and beans, black-eyed peas, which are supposed to bring good luck, and greens.
“You cook pinto beans from scratch with a big hunk of ham,” says Lois Mikawa of Reno, who lived in the South as an Army wife some years ago.
Southern folklore also delves into the possible historical significance of the greens and black-eyed peas by maintaining that the custom began when Union troops pillaged the land during the Civil War, leaving behind only the peas and greens as animal fodder. Rich in food value, those humble edibles enabled southerners to survive during the most austere of times. Eating them on New Year’s celebrates renewed hope for better times.
Although they aren’t from the South, Herb and Lynda Klemm of Reno hedge their bets for a happy New Year with Herb’s version of the traditional dinner.
“Herb says it’s because he heard in the South that they start the New Year with the cheapest meal, and it can only go up from there,” Lynda says.
According to food gurus at Bon Appétit and Woman’s Day magazines, ringing in the new year around the globe can involve eating 12 grapes as the clock strikes midnight in Spain and Portugal; slurping long buckwheat noodles without breaking them in Japan; downing 13 pieces of any round fruit in the Philippines; feasting on whole fish in China; enjoying pickled herring in Germany, Poland, and Scandinavia; splurging on honey-drenched balls of pasta dough sprinkled with powdered sugar in Italy; and eating lentil soup and rice in Brazil.
Now that you know what foods bring good luck, it’s important to know which ones are believed to be unlucky on New Year’s. Winged fowl, such as chicken or turkey, should be avoided, because they scratch backward and can fly away. Lobsters also are on the no-no list because they swim backward. The Chinese believe that white foods, such as eggs or tofu, shouldn’t be eaten on New Year’s because white is the symbol of death in their culture.
So whichever country’s traditional good luck foods you dine on, bon appétit and Happy New Year!
Jeanne Lauf Walpole is a Reno-based freelance writer who believes it certainly can’t hurt to dine on good luck foods in hopes of a prosperous new year.
Good Luck New Year’s Ham Hocks
(courtesy of Herb Klemm. Serves 6)
“My family lived in the South for many years,” Herb says. “It was tradition to have ham hocks and navy beans New Year’s Day. The theory was that with a humble, inexpensive meal served on the first day of the year, the rest of the new year could only get better. We lived in the San Francisco peninsula for many years, so we added a sourdough baguette to accompany the beans.”
1 pound dried navy beans
1 large onion, cut into large pieces
6 ham hocks
4 cups water
1 sourdough French bread baguette (optional)
Wash the beans and soak in cold water overnight.
Drain and pour into a slow cooker, then add the ham hocks, onion, and water. Cook for 8 hours or until the beans are tender. Remove the ham hocks and cut the meat from the bones. Discard the bones and return the meat to the crockpot. Serve with pieces of a sourdough baguette.
