Symbolic New Year's Foods

Picture: black-eyed peas, collards, rutabaga, and pork and rice, a traditional New Year's meal.

I just finished my New Years article for the paper. I think it is my best article yet. It is about a subject close to my heart, traditional family meals. As a southern girl I grew up eating collards, rutabaga, black-eyed peas, and pork backbone and rice on New Year's Day. The collards represent paper money, the rutabaga gold, the black-eyes coins, and the pork and rice represent prosperity and good fortune. In the article I tried to capture some of the history and some of the heart, but I don't read my articles after submission until they are published. That way I don't criticize it to death and get anxious waiting on it to be printed. For the article I took a few pix of Hoppin John and a set plate. I cut corners for the pictures and used canned greens and canned black-eyed peas. Though I felt like a hypocrite putting pictures of canned veggies next to recipes for making it from scratch I had to save some time and money plus I did not want to spoil the real new years meal. Needless to say the canned stuff couldn't touch my grandmother's collards and peas. The Rutabaga I did make from scratch. It is quite an ugly root veg and big but it is delicioso! If you have never tried rutabaga then buy one now while they are in season and peel it, dice it and boil in salted water, (like you would potatoes for mashing.) They are a sweet, mild relative of the turnip. I eat them like that, just boiled, but I plan on mashing the leftovers. I would also like to try them roasted.
Once in college I made a soup with chicken stock, rutabaga, sweet potato, onion and chicken. It was one of those really fun moments where you throw everything together hoping for a creative, tasty dish. I just ended up with a bunch of something really bad.

The article has a couple of recipes similar to what my grandmother makes for New Year's. "Hoppin John" is supposedly traditional in the South on New Year's but I don't know anyone who eats it.
You can go to the article by clicking on the "Symbolic Food Article" link to the right. It has recipes with it.