New Year's and Lentils

[miK.]

It's considered good luck to eat lentil soup on New Year's Day.
Does anyone else do this? It's been a while since I had that.
Italians also eat pork sausage over lentils.

A very good friend of the family who passed this year also used
to give us small sealed bags of lentils to keep in your pocket for
"good luck" too. You were supposed to throw out last year's bag
as that was last year's luck. He was Italian.

It's also a Hungarian custom to eat them, as I've found on the web.
http://hungarystartshere.blogspot.com/20...entil.html

Anyone else partake?

[RevKev]

Here in the south, it's black-eyed peas. http://southernfood.about.com/library/we...123198.htm

[btfc]

This was a favorite of the Italian side of my family:

http://italianfood.about.com/od/legumesa...lr0675.htm

" Everyone knows about pasta e fagioli, pasta and beans. Pasta and Lentils is an equally tasty soup. The recipe is from Lazio, the region governed by Rome.
Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 40 minutes

Ingredients:

Lentils (precise amounts given below)
Pasta
Herbs
Preparation:

Pick over the lentils well to remove stones or other impurities. Soak them for several hours, and then boil them until partially cooked in lightly salted water.

In the meantime, set another pot on the fire and sauté a minced mixture of prosciutto fat, garlic, onion, celery and carrot. Add tomato, and when the mixture begins to dry out, beef bullion.

It will then be time to add the lentils and their broth. A pinch of pepper, and shortly before the lentils are completely done (in other words, before they're soft), add the pasta. Tradition dictates that broken strands of spaghetti are acceptable too. Once the soup is done serve it up into bowls, with a cruet of extravirgin olive oil so your diners can add it to taste. Grated cheese doesn't figure into this.

My Italian source doesn't give quantities. I'd figure a pound (500 g) of dried lentils, and about a pound of pasta, and make my minced mixture with 2 ounces (50 g) prosciutto, 1-2 cloves garlic, a small carrot, 6 inches of celery stick, a half a medium-sized onion, and a couple blanched peeled seeded and hopped plum tomatoes. Boil the lentils in water to cover, and have more handy if they absorb it all as they cook."

[JoeBob]

Blackeyed peas here as well.

[Don C]

Black eyed peas and greens soup will be served at our new year's eve party.

Not sure it provided any particular good luck for 2008, but some traditions you just don't mess with!

[apocketfulofwry]

ozoni

[jepinto]

cabbage boiled with a dime. Who gets the dime gets the best luck.

[Yoyodyne ArtWorks]

Pork and sauerkraut.

[SteveO]

I'm in the Midwest, and my family has always done black-eyed peas. With a dime as jepinto mentioned. This is hilarious reading the fusing of all of these traditions. For the record, I love lentils but hate black-eyed peas. I'll be having some lentils.

[incognegro]

Yoyodyne ArtWorks wrote:
Pork and sauerkraut.

same here - Eastern PA.