Lucky Foods for the New Year

Traditions and superstitions have long since been associated with the start of anything new. There are superstitions for the first day of the month, the end of the week, what not to do on a Sunday and so forth. The beginning of a new year is full of such superstitions and traditions. Rather than list every known superstition related to New Years' Day I will mention those that are related to food only.

There are foods to avoid eating on New Years' Day so as not to bring bad luck into your new year. Two major types of food to avoid is turkey or chicken. The reason behind avoiding eating poultry on New Years' Day is that chickens and turkeys are thought to scratch backwards when they explore their world and eating them on New Years' Day would cause your future year to "go backwards."

To encourage good luck you should eat:

Pork or ham is the good luck meat because pigs are known to bore forward and eating them would mean that your future would "move forward." Cabbage is associated with money and eating cabbage or brussel sprouts on New Years' Day is thought to bring prosperity in the form of money in the new year.

A traditional German New Year's Day meal would consist of pork or ham with sauerkraut and boiled potatoes. The meal is thought to ensure that the new year would be not only prosperous with money coming your way but also your life would move forward and not fall back onto hard times.

The traditional German New Year's Day meal that my husband ate for many years and in turn encouraged me to continue when we got married only lasted for the first few New Years' Days in our home. He soon found out that I was not particularly fond of pork. After switching from a "good luck" meal to just a regular New Year's Day meal we found that celebrating New Year's Day was more enjoyable for everyone since most of the family was not too fond of the "traditional" German meal after all.

This coming New Year's Day our celebration meal will be ham, brussel sprouts with either mashed or boiled red potatoes. It sure does beat the pork roast that none of us were very keen on but ate because of my husband's traditions. Neither one of us ever go the hang of cooking a pork roast to make it nice and tasty so ham was a good second choice.

Happy New Year and I wish you good luck no matter what your choice of food is.