What’s your New Year’s Resolution?
It always seems to take at least 2 months before I stop writing the wrong date. Although I don’t really make New Year’s resolutions, I do like to have fun with New Year traditions, such as eating lucky foods. Lucky foods such as a bowl of Candy Cane Cream:
I don’t like candy canes, but I do like cream… and peppermint.
What’s so lucky about this bowl? It’s not the cream, and it’s not the peppermint. It’s not even the chocolate (although anyone who has chocolate is pretty lucky in my book). No, the lucky food is the pomegranate. According to New Year lore, pomegranate is revered as a symbol of fertility, regeneration, and prosperity. It’s commonly eaten on New Year’s Eve in Greece and Turkey… and now at CCK’s house too.
Candy Cane “Whipped Cream” Pudding
(Makes 1 1/2 cups: one Katie-sized serving!)
- sweetener of choice
- 1/16th tsp salt
- 1 1/2 tbsp water (20g)
- 1/2 serving agar base (linked below)
- 5 drops pure peppermint extract
- optional: cocoa or fruit (for flavored cream)
Instructions: First, make up the agar base. When it’s cooled, put half of it in a blender (or Magic Bullet) with all the other ingredients and blend away. Whip very well. I like to put it in the freezer for a few minutes prior to eating, so it’s super-cold. Optional: add fruit, cacao nibs, cocoa powder, or other add-ins.
Nutritional Info: (for the entire bowl) Calories: 60, Fat: 3g, Protein: 2g, Carbohydrates: 3g
Other Lucky New Year’s Foods:
- In Spain and parts of South America, they eat twelve grapes—one to symbolize each month of the coming year. Sweet grapes stand for good months, and sour grapes foreshadow bad months.
- In Japan, they eat soba. The long noodles symbolize a long life.
- Sauerkraut is eaten in Germany, and in Brazil and Italy, lentils are considered lucky.
- In the southern US, they eat cooked greens (green = money) and black-eyed peas, which stand for coins.
Aside from eating pomegranates on New Year’s, I’m also planning to fill the menu with other lucky foods, such as my southern CCK Collard Greens as well as this black-eyed pea dish:
What’re your New Year’s resolutions?
And are you going to eat any lucky foods?
I’ll probably make a resolution to get back into my blog, I make and photograph all the meals I want to blog about but always forget to type them all up. I’m also thinking about trying something new each week, could be a sport, cycling route, food, genre of book or film etc. Have you ever made a New Years resolution and stuck to it? I came up with a really good one last year when I was half awake one night but didn’t write it down, in the morning I woke up unable to work out what it was but new it was something really appropriate (to this day I have no idea). 😛
Usually, if I make any at all, it’s just for fun… lol I don’t even remember a single one I’ve ever made in the past! But I love your idea to try something new. I did that about a year ago, trying a new food every week. I found some good ones (and I highlighted the challenge on my blog). But I also unfortunately found kumquats and starfruit, neither of which I was very happy to discover hehe. Oh well, not every food can live up to chocolate after all!
We always do a big black eyed pea and collard something or other for the New Year!
My grandmom always served greens and black-eyed peas on new year’s day. I love gumbo! So glad to see a version that I can eat sans-sausage etc
I always put the wrong date on things too….for QUITE some time. And sometimes in say June, I have to catch myself and be like is it really 2010, or is it 2011 or is it 2009. I admit, sometimes I am like what year is it again?! haha!
The vegan whipped cream gets me everytime…i want that!
Later today I am doing a whole post on 2011 goals 🙂
It was so much easier when we were in grade school and had to write the date on all our papers lol.
Peppermint cream sounds LOVELY!
I, like many, never stick to my new years resolutions. : / The cream looks amazing though! I’m not a huge fan of candy canes either, but I love peppermint!
I heard eating lentils on New Year’s Day bring good fortune! 🙂
Whitney
I’ve been known to be a few years behind…my students used to laugh at me when I’d put 2005 on the board in 2008. Oops.
I haven’t had a pom in so long. New Years is a good excuse to get one. I have heard of the noodles and the black eyed pea traditions but not the others, thanks for sharing!
Just picked up a bag of black-eyed peas intended for some lucky Texas Caviar:)
Oh wow, I forgot about Texas caviar. I might have to make some too. Then we can be twins… not like we aren’t already! 😉
What a fantastic-looking gumbo, Katie!
I’m a southern girl from way WAY back and we always had black-eyed peas on New Year’s day, although collards weren’t a must-have in our house. I’ve never heard them referred to as ‘coins’, but rather, you’re supposed to have one day of good luck for every pea you eat. I think I need to start doing that again! My guy is from NY and thinks black-eyed peas are terrible so I stopped making them a few years ago…maybe that’s why things have been so difficult for us! It’s not the economy, it’s the lack of peas!
Haha oh gosh, don’t you wish the world’s problems could be solved simply by eating more black-eyed peas?! 🙂