I have no New Year’s traditions, other than watching the ball drop. Maybe I should get some.
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Think of it as a ‘Live-it’, not a ‘die-it’.
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New Year’s Eve is most often horse doovers (*) (frozen premade stuff like PF Changs, TGIF) late afternoon or at least a few hours before dinner, with dinner being lobsters in the monster stockpot that I only get down once or twice a year.
New Year’s Day is usually some kind of pork/cabbage dish. We’ve never really had a particular dedicated recipe and usually make something different each year, although a couple of times it’s been as simple as kielbasa, cabbage, and green beans.
Your thread prompted me to start looking, so I think I’ll make this one, except I’ll likely tinker with it as I can’t seem to simply follow a recipe. For sure I’m going to keep the cabbage pieces larger, more like fettucine or wider, instead of the floss-like shreds she suggests.
(*) Slim Pickens in the movie Never A Dull Moment as a gangster, pretending to be a waiter at a black tie affair.
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Our tradition for New Year’s, as Alan707 mentioned earlier, is Oshogatsu, the Japanese observance. We usually make a variety of celebratory foods, including various types of sushi and sashimi, nishime (a stew of mostly root vegetables), sweetened black beans, gobo (burdock root), kamaboko (fish cake), miscellaneous Japanese pickles, and teriyaki. We would invite friends and family over for an open house that starts mid-day, and peeps could come and go as they please.
I have no plans to do it this year, for several reasons. Brother and Dad have both passed away, kids and many friends have scattered to the four winds and are no longer in the area for a casual drop-in, and the friends who stayed local have mostly died, too. Plus, I’m scheduled to work on both NYE and NYD. To mark the day, I may just make some ozoni (New Year’s mochi soup) for Mrs. ricepad and me and call it done.
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I haven’t read it all, but here’s more Japanese traditions.
Japanese American New Year’s Food Traditions Transcend Time
Should be a gift link
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One that I did every year for 15 years, and miss greatly, is the “Dog of the Year” award. We’d save the Tbone bones , and at midnite I’d have a presentation. My kids absolutely loved this event. We’d all get in the kitchen and I’d ask everyone to quiet down for just a minute aas it was time to name the dog of the year, who would sit at attention until the award was announced. Once I made the proclamation that he indeed was, once again, the dog of the year, he’d calmly get up, meet me in the middle of the kitchen, and gently take his award, and consume it. Lil things mean a lot.
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Koreans eat dduk (can also be spelled tteok) guk for Lunar New Year but we also eat it on 1 Jan. It’s a soothing mild rice cake soup that can be supplemented with mandu (dumplings). I like stirring in some kimchee. Was one of my childhood favorites and still is. We’re away this weekend and I didn’t have a chance to get to the Asian market for the necessary ingredients so we’ll have it sometime this week. We’re also still working through never ending Xmas leftovers (which B loves). Later today, we’re going to attend a NYE celebration in Providence that sounds awesome. It starts at 7 pm, with fireworks at 8:30 pm, which is great because we’ve got a 9-year old and the grownups like going to bed early. We like celebrating every moment we have together. Happy 2024, everyone!
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Urrr-muh-gurrrrddd. A friend I used to play softball with in Germany back in the day just posted the link to the famous Dinner for One sketch. She’s long moved to the US as well, but nobody who grew up with this could ever forget. #IYKYK
