Out with the Demons! In with Good Luck!
While sorting through my files (see previous entry), I came across an article from Cooking Light (1994) about lucky New Year's food. To cover your bases, you might want to try all these culturally lucky foods. If you make it through the day without throwing up, you're lucky for sure!
If it's wealth you're after, try legumes. It's said that eating a Southern dish called "hopping John" (black-eyed peas and rice) will give you as much money as the peas you eat, though the exchange rate is anyone's guess. Often cooks prepare the rice with a piece of money in it. Whoever gets the coin in his or her serving will be rich (and so will his or her dentist). Other cooks substitute collard greens for the rice because they're green like money. The black-eyed peas, being sort of copper-colored, represent coinage.
Eating pork also brings luck because a hog roots forward, unlike a chicken who scratches backward. And forward is obviously where you want to go in life. For that reason, Germans, Austrians and Scandinavians trade marzipan pigs.
A Scottish superstition says that the first person stepping over the threshold in a new year decides the luck for the next 365 days. If it's a man with a lump of coal, a coin and a piece of bread (symbols of warmth, money, and food), he's treated to a glass of whiskey and a slice of brandy-soaked bun cake. (A man without those items will be kicked in the crotch for bringing bad luck for the year. And if it's a woman who first crosses the threshold? We won't even go there...)
Italians serve pasta smothered with coin-shaped lentils or lentils with zampone, which are stuffed pig legs. In Piedmont, rice stands for money, so people serve risotto. On New Year's Eve, some Italians share the first square of lasagna for luck.
In Spanish-speaking countries, 12 grapes -- one for each stroke of the clock at midnight -- are considered lucky. In Peru, it's 13 grapes (12 for the chimes and the 13th for luck).
Greeks serve vasilopita, a traditional New Year's bread, for dinner. They wrap a coin in foil or paper and press it into the dough before it bakes. Whoever finds the coin in his or her slice gets the luck (or the Heimlich maneuver, also lucky). On New Year's Eve, Greeks traditionally take a pomegranate to a friend's house, where they smash it on the floor so the seeds scatter. The wish is that your friend will has as much "agatha" (the good things in life) in the coming year as there are seeds in the fruit. Either that, or it's a distraction so they can get to the good champagne while their friend is sweeping up the smashed fruit). Jews eat apples dipped in honey to ensure the year will be sweet. Middle Eastern Jews eat pomegranate seeds to make the coming year fertile.
Latvians eat a whole fish on New Year's Day, saving a few of the scales to put in their wallets for stinky pants and a prosperous year. Aiming for a full, round year, the Dutch enjoy puffy, fruit-studded doughnuts. Scandinavians eat herring, a fish that swims in large schools, symbolizing abundance. Norwegians hide an almond in rice porridge. Irish, German and Eastern European families eat cabbage for luck (yeah, right).
The Japanese associate red fish with luck, so red snapper is a popular New Year's dish. A Japanese tradition calls for the head of the household to go through all of the rooms at midnight on New Year's Eve carrying a box of roasted beans. As he scatters them, he chants, "Out with the demons! In with good luck!"
The food and luck connections holds true for cultures and religions that observe New Year's on other dates, too. For example, Chinese serve broccoli on their New Year's because it's the color of jade, a gemstone that signifies youth and rebirth. For Tet, the Vietnamese New Year celebration, luck-seekers dine on whole red fish, like the Japanese do, but the person who eats the fish head and eyeballs gets the most luck.
In the Blue Artichoke household, a chocolate protein shake yields big, strong luck, a banana promises a sweet year, a diet soft drink chases out the demons and a green salad brings in the riches.
Here's wishing you a happy, and lucky, 2008!