Why are some foods considered lucky in the new year?

• For some foods it the size, shape or color
  • Greens are symbolize money (cause…green)
• some represent abundance
  • lentils
  • fish (not sure if this is the shiny scales or the story about Jesus and the fishes)
• some are because of other properties
  • Pork is lucky for many reasons:
    • Pigs move forward to root for food – moving forward represents progress..
    • while lobsters are considered unlucky as they move backwards..
    • Long noodles represent long life, but short noodles would be bad luck for similar reasons

These traditions are shaped by our cultures and history. I admit, I didn’t really pay attention to these traditions growing up. We’d visit with neighbors and watch the ball drop on the TV. We always had good food and company, but never really paid attention to luck the next day. It’s been fun to try new foods and new traditions for my little family.

This year we are having Collard Greens Shakshouka and black eyed pea dip. I leaned towards Tex Mex/Mexican flavors with peppers, onions, green taco sauce, corn, and Rotel rounding out the flavors. I’ll round out the feast with some Pork sausage rolls in puff pastry.

And true to form, I used many canned and frozen ingredients to make my meal! Frozen veggies are still a great source of nutrition! Using canned beans (and corn) speeds up meal prep (and lets face it, it takes a long time to cook dry beans and sometimes I just don’t wanna).

Collards are a great source of calcium, folate, vitamin C, Vitamin K, and vitamin A. One cup of collards has almost 4 g fiber, 2 g fiber, >200 mg potassium, and 170 mg calcium.

One half cup of black eyed peas has 4 g fiber, and 6 G protein, along with/folate iron, copper and magnesium.

Everything turned out pretty good! Hope your New Year is filled love, peace and plenty!