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Do y'all traditionally eat something green for New Year's?


Alpo

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And if you do, what is it?

 

When I was a kid we always had collard greens and dried black-eyed peas. This was, supposedly, to ensure you had money throughout the year. The greens was greenbacks. I guess the peas were supposed to be coins.

 

Probably why I have always been broke, as I despise both collards and dried black eyes.

 

Then one day I'm reading this story, and it's a Cajun making his new year dinner. With his dried black eyes he had cabbage.

 

Same reason - green equals cash. But different green vegetable.

 

 

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We have a tradition of Corned  Beef and Cabbage on NYE. Not because cabbage is green but because we like corned beef and cabbage on NYE. :) It's our tradition.

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In this house, it's Hoppin John on New Years.

Not sure about the green????

And, the black eyes peas are supposed to signal bonus fortuna for the coming year. 

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Hoppin' John. I was raised by black servants during WW II with my Dad in the South Pacific and my Mom running Traveler's Aid.

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I eat "Mess o Greens" all year. That's greens" collards, mustards, turnips and kale, garlic onions diced turnips with ham, bacon, and andouille

sausage. That's pretty d----ed green!  :)

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And if you do, what is it?

 

When I was a kid we always had collard greens and dried black-eyed peas. This was, supposedly, to ensure you had money throughout the year. The greens was greenbacks. I guess the peas were supposed to be coins.

 

Probably why I have always been broke, as I despise both collards and dried black eyes.

 

Then one day I'm reading this story, and it's a Cajun making his new year dinner. With his dried black eyes he had cabbage.

 

Same reason - green equals cash. But different green vegetable.

 

 

Usually collard or turnip greens.  Usually fixed with the bone from the Christmas ham.

 

The collards have tasted pretty good this year for Thanksgiving and Christmas, so it will probably be collards for New Years.

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We follow the old Southern New Years Day tradition of blackeyed peas cooked with hog jowl (pronounced “hog-jaw”) along with collard greens and cornbread.  The peas and hog jowl are to show your humility and the collard greens stand for all the money you are going to make for the rest of the year.

 

To round out the meal, we have a ham, some rice, and an apple pie (since we don’t have a source for guavas to make guava cobbler.)

 

All served with sweet tea of course.

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For us it's black eyed peas and any greens. The type of greens doesn't matter. Most of my family eats collard or mustard greens. I eat spinach because I actually like that. Some in my family throw a penny into the pot of beans. I do not think that's a good idea. Maybe if it was a copper penny it would be OK. To be fair, for all I know they have a copper penny they keep just for this purpose. 

 

This year I'm overseas. I asked the camp boss about it and he said he was trying but having a hard time finding any black eyed peas. He said they'd probably have cabbage for greens and if black eyed peas aren't located, maybe some red beans and rice. But we will definitely have greens and beans of some sort. 

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My wife and I follow our parents  tradition of having blackeyed peas.  All else is optional.   My father, father-in-law, and mother-in-law all grew up in Oklahoma.  My mother, California.  But every New Year's Day, our families had blackeyed peas for good luck.

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As we speak, I'm cooking black eyed peas. It usually takes 3-3 1/2 hours to cook up a mess of peas. Tomorrow, I'll cook some collards and a skillet of cornbread. Both the black eyed peas and collards are seasoned with hog jowl. I use Martha White's Hot Rize for the cornbread.

 

I prefer either mustard or mixed greens, but collards are good too. :)

 

EDIT: It's now 8:55 PM and my BE peas are done. YUM!

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Every year .  

 

Black Eyed  Peas  for  good  luck . 

 

Cabbage  for  money . 

 

We'll  have  cabbage  3 different  ways  tomorrow .  Slaw, boiled  and fried with  bacon . 

 

CS  

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Funny - I'm from SC and never had this tradition growing up.  MIL did.  Love me some turnip greens & black-eyed peas but Petey won't eat them.  My Dad once brought me a little mess of black-eyed peas & watched while I parboiled them for freezing & labeled them 'field peas'.  He asked me why.  I told him 'because petey will eat field peas.'

 

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Oh and I almost forgot. The animals all have to eat a black eyed pea too. My wife claims that all of her cats who failed to eat any part of a bepea on nyd died that year. The current cat will usually lick it once or twice and I guess that's good enough. 

 

We didn't even try to make the fish eat one and it didn't make the year either. But I think that poor sucked was doomed either way. 

 

Funny thing, it's not hard to get the dogs to eat one. 

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