This is a blog for people to discuss what they are eating. There is a theory that by journaling eating habits, people will eat healthier. I am trying to cook more at home and feed my family a wider variety of foods. People can just read or join as co-authors. Topics don't have to be recipes with nice photos. You can write about eating habits, special diets, culinary cultural differences, etc.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Another Special Menu

Christmas is just one week away! Hooray! Don't you just love this time of year? The decorations, the presents, the parties, the time spent with family and friends... and especially the food. Christmas Day is a day filled with good things to eat. Turkeys, hams, sweet potatoes, casseroles of every variety... broccoli cheese, rice, green bean, corn... home made mac and cheese. And the desserts... oh the deserts... pure heaven.

I can remember back when I was little and all of my immediate family still lived close together. Christmas Day there was always so much food! Even the in-laws came to my Granny's house for this day. Chocolate Pecan 3 layer cake, carrot cake, jam cake, dump cake, hummingbird cake, fruitcake... cream cheese pies, paradise pie, pecan pie, sweet potato pie... it was a wonderful time all the way around. We usually didn't get much in the way of toys at Christmas. We were poor folks. All of us. Christmas was an excuse for our parents to wrap up as gifts the things they had to buy us anyway. Like clothes for the second half of the school year. A new pair of shoes. But we didn't really care cause we knew that there was going to be all that wonderful, heavenly food. And togetherness. And fun. We always had fun together.

But after that most important of Days comes the New Year. And that requires a meal that needs to be planned out nearly as carefully as any meal served during the holidays that precede it. My New Year's Day meal always consists of:
Country Ham
Collard Greens
Black Eyed Peas
Rice
Cornbread

If I have time or feel like it, I may also make an asparagus dish, or green beans with new potatoes, or the broccoli/potato/cheese casserole.

For dessert I usually make a baked cheesecake and/or a Dump Cake.

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The whole point of this blog, I suppose, is to ask if any of you have traditional menus for New Year's Day and if so, what are they? I'd love to know.

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4 Comments:

Blogger tricia said...

No specific meal but always have blackeyed peas. That usually means a comfort food meal....cornbread, fried okra if we can find it, ham or beer butt chicken and another vegetable. We're so sick of sweets by then that fruit with cool whip is usually dessert. We don't eat the meal until later in the day because we normally stay up most of the night playing cards, dominoes or other games and have snacked all night.

December 18, 2008 at 7:49 PM

 
Blogger pamwax said...

We don't have a special meal but it must include black eyed peas and sauerkraut. Sauerkraut for good luck from my Yankee roots and black eyed peas because I have been a southerner for the last 50 years. Need to cover all the bases.

December 19, 2008 at 6:28 AM

 
Blogger Some Kinda Wonderful said...

Wow! Doesn't anyone else have a "special" new year's meal? Or is my family just "funny" that way? Maybe it's just cause we are a "foodie" family. Can't ever have any kind of gathering without going all out on the food. These are the holidays we always have a special meal for:
New Year's Day
St. Patrick's Day
Easter
Mother's Day
4th of July
Thanksgiving
Christmas
plus any and all birthdays at the appropriate times.

December 19, 2008 at 2:45 PM

 
Blogger snowy said...

I have very few food-type traditions. Sauerkraut on Thanksgiving is the only one that comes to mind. No idea why, because more of us don't like it than do. My contribution to most family feasts is bread pudding. I do make the most kickass bread pudding. I'm going to surprise Sister Snowy with cranberry glazed pearl onions this year as an experiment. To tell the truth, I'd just as soon go out to a restaurant on holidays. That way, you don't eat yourself simple, nor do you have to hang around somebody's hot house for hours, and you only have to share in their company for a couple of hours (and nobody gets on anybody else's nerves in two or three hours).

I like to have pizza on New Year's day, but the world doesn't stop if I don't.

I've started a tradition of going to the movies on Christmas night. It's a great feeling of escape after being around people all throughout the season. Just a loner at heart, I guess.

December 21, 2008 at 5:03 PM

 

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