Lucky foods to help bring in the New Year

Pork
Eating pork on New Year's is a tradition by the German and Pennsylvania Dutch; they believe it will bring good fortune all year if it is eaten for your first meal of the New Year. The meat represents luck. Pennsylvania Dutch superstition says that eating pork brings good luck because a pig roots forward to look for its food, while chickens scratch backward and cows stand still. Moving forward is definitely better, especially these days.

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Black-eyed peas
During the Civil War black-eyed peas were considered animal food. The peas were not worthy of General Sherman's Union troops. When Union soldiers raided the Confederates food supplies, legend says they took everything except the peas and salted pork. The Confederates considered themselves lucky to be left with those meager supplies, and survived the winter. Peas became symbolic of luck.

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Corned beef and cabbageCorned beef and cabbage on New Year's is associated with the fortune you should hope for in the coming year. Beef or pork is the meat of choice because unlike chickens these animals do not scratch in the dirt for their food. It's said that if you eat chicken on New Year's Day you are setting your destiny for the coming year to scratch in the dirt for your survival, which sounds pretty awful if you ask us.

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Ring-shaped foods
Ring-shaped cakes and other baked goods symbolize wholeness and the completion of a full year'’s cycle. In Greece, there'’s vasilopita, a round, anise-flavored cake with a coin hidden inside; in Mexico, they make rosca de reyes, a sweet, ring-shaped bread that'’s studded with dried fruit and baked with a tiny figurine of baby Jesus inside; and a long-held Dutch tradition is to feast on puffy, doughnut-like fritters called oliebollen, which are filled with apples and raisins and dusted with powdered sugar.

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