Charm of the Carolines

Southern Foods to eat for Good Luck in the New Year

For many, New Year’s Day offers an opportunity to forget the past and make a clean start. But instead of leaving everything up to fate, why not enjoy a meal to increase your good fortune?

Epicurious magazine suggests a variety of foods are believed to be lucky and to improve the odds that next year will be a great one, include these in your New Year's Day meals. Traditions vary from culture to culture, but there are striking similarities in what's consumed in different pockets of the world: The six major categories of auspicious foods are grapes, greens, fish, pork, legumes, and cakes.

Whether you want to create a full menu of lucky foods or just supplement your meal, these foods are guaranteed to make for a happy new year, or at the very least a happy belly.

In the south, I only know of three categories of Good Luck Food.

Cooked Greens... Cooked greens, including cabbage, collards, kale, and chard, are consumed at New Year's in different countries for a simple reason — their green leaves look like folded money. In the southern United States, collards are the green of choice. It's widely believed that the more greens one eats the larger one's fortune next year.

Legumes.... Legumes including beans, peas, and lentils are also symbolic of money. Their small, seedlike appearance resembles coins that swell when cooked so they are consumed with financial rewards in mind.

In Italy, it's customary to eat cotechino con lenticchie or sausages and green lentils, just after midnight—a particularly propitious meal because pork has it's own lucky associations. Germans also partner legumes and pork, usually lentil or split pea soup with sausage. This is the meal I made and will share with you below. In the Southern United States, it's traditional to eat black-eyed peas or cowpeas in a dish called hoppin' john. There are even those who believe in eating one pea for every day in the new year.

This all traces back to the legend that during the Civil War, the town of Vicksburg, Virginia, ran out of food while under attack. The residents fortunately discovered black-eyed peas and the legume was thereafter considered lucky.

Pork ...The custom of eating pork on New Year's is based on the idea that pigs symbolize progress. The animal pushes forward, rooting itself in the ground before moving. Pork is also consumed in Italy and the United States, where thanks to its rich fat content, it signifies wealth and prosperity. I had a hambone to use and couldn't decide between green peas or green lentils or both. I opened the bag to the green split peas and decided to cook them.

Then I accidentally melted the green lentil bag and put a hole in it, so guess what? Let's cook both.

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Chicken and Dumplins

Chicken and dumplings define comfort food at my house.

I have always loved dumplings and have fond memories as a child going to Morrison’s Cafeteria after church on Sunday with my parents and my great-aunt Grace and great-uncle Otis and ordering my favorite meal. Or coming home at noon from Berry's Chapel kindergarten and my momma would have opened a can of Sweet Sue dumplings for us to share while watching Marlo Thomas in a comedy called “That Girl.”

Making homemade chicken and dumplings is a labor of love and one I don’t do often. I love to cook, but this recipe takes time. It’s much easier to open a can of Sweet Sue. But if you have the time and plan to feed an army, this is the recipe for you.

The entire lot of delicious, plump heaven-in-a-stew-pot costs about $5 to make. You really only need one whole fryer and one small bag of self-rising flour. Since starting the "A Better Me" Challenge I've learned I still like to cook foods that I choose not to eat.

This meal is earmarked for my cousin's dining table. Keep in mind the key to great dumplings is a great broth. Rinse your chicken and remove bag of giblets from the cavity. Place chicken in your dutch oven and cover with water.

Set on your stove and bring to a boil over medium-high heat, reduce heat to medium and cook until tender, about an hour. You can also enhance the flavor of your broth by adding carrots, celery, onion or dried onion, garlic, salt and pepper. You can also add the giblets, but never the liver. It can make the broth bitter. Personally, I discard them or save them for giblet gravy.

When chicken is tender and falling off the bone, remove it from the broth and set on a plate to cool. Remove the broth from the heat and allow it to cool.

At this point you can refrigerate both chicken and broth overnight and continue with recipe in the morning. If not, allow plenty of time for both to cool.

When chicken is cool enough to handle, remove skin and bone and collect pieces of meat on a separate dish. I also keep a third dish close by to place less desirable meat for my furbabies.

Note: Do not give your dogs the chicken bones. They can splinter and injure your dog. Throw away chicken carcass in a plastic bag that is tied before throwing into the outdoor trash receptacle.

Cooled broth will have a layer of fat floating on the top. With a large spoon, skim off all visible fat and discard. Pour into a mixing bowl enough broth to make your dumplings. Return broth to cleaned dutch oven and bring to rolling boil. Dumpling ratios: 1 cup self-rising flour to ½ cup broth OR 1 cup plain flour, 1 ½ teaspoon baking powder, and ½ teaspoon salt to ½ cup broth. Multiply this by how many dumplings you would like to make. I usually use 3-4 cups flour to 1 ½-2 cups broth.

Work into a dough, but don’t overwork it. The dumplings will be tough.

Generously flour your rolling surface and take half of the dumpling dough to roll to a ¼ inch thickness.

Slice into 1 inch strips and tear strips into dumplings as you drop them in the boiling broth. Continue until all the dough is rolled, cut and dropped into the boiling broth. The excess flour on the dumplings should be enough to thicken the broth into a gravy consistency.

Reduce heat.

Add chicken and stir. Continue to cook over low heat until all the dumplings are thoroughly cooked and the flavors marry. The liquid will reduce, too, and turn the broth into a thick stew.

Ladle into bowls and serve. Yum-O! Pin It

Battle of Stones River

December 2009 marks the 147th anniversary of the Battle of Stones River in Murfreesboro, Tenn. Join rangers and volunteers for a variety of walks, talks, tours and living history demonstrations that will tell the story of one of the most significant battles of the Civil War. The highlight of the programs will be a series of living history presentations and weapons demonstrations on January 2-3, 2010, in the National Battlefield park located off Old Nashville Highway.

Bumper Crop

I know a man from New York who lived briefly in Tennessee and couldn't understand our fascination with guns. I explained to him it was not a fascination, simply a constitutional right.

Tennessee's legislature recently passed a law allowing guns in restaurants and state parks with stipulations of course. The gunholder must possess an active carry permit and under no circumstances will he or she consume alcohol while in possession of the gun. More legislation is under consideration for extending the territory to include bars, as well. Again, as long as the gun owner is not consuming alcohol while in possession.

My yankee friend moved out of state. Abruptly.

One law we never discussed, however, was the Road Kill bill which I find much more interesting than Tennessee's gun laws. Ten years ago, Representative Tommy Head and Senator Tim Burchett sponsored the Road Kill bill in the state house and senate. The bill proposed to make legal the keeping and consuming of wild game, such as deer, killed by motorists. The bill passed unanimously in the house and had only one dissenting vote in the senate. And the bill became law.

The Road Kill bill kinda gives a whole new meaning to the term "bumper crop." Don't ya think?

Sidebar:

I discovered a charming little shop that I have to share with all my southern-loving friends. It's called Dixie Patches. I learned about it through Garden and Gun magazine. They sell beautiful sterling silver charms of all things southern... a slice of okra, oyster on a cracker, boiled peanut, and this beauty... a shotgun shell. To see all the charms they offer, go to www.dixiepatches.com. Now why didn't I think of that?!?!?!

Blessed

Nearing the end of 2009 I can’t help but get a bit retrospective and look back at the past year and the past decade and count the many, many blessings we enjoy. I am very blessed. We are very blessed. “We” being my family, my community, my country, this time in history. Need I go on?

It’s the day after Christmas and I’m overwhelmed with the clutter that consumes my little cottage. Where did all this stuff come from?My home was built in 1927, and it is apparent to me the previous owners of this cottage didn’t have “the stuff” that fills our lives nearing 2010. Where in heavens name am I going to put the gifts I got from Santa?

My little kitchen won’t hold anything else. Did they even have pressure cookers in 1927? I know they didn’t have Televisions. I strongly dislike my TV over the fireplace, but my living room is 20 feet by 7 feet and the TV has to go on one end or the other. Put it on the side and you can’t see it. I’d love to have a Wii Fit, but there is no room in which to use it. The only sport my living room was designed for is bowling (long, very narrow, and wooden floors).

Did families in 1927 prepare Christmas dinner to feed a small army when only a dozen or so people were expected? My family is not culinarily sophisticated. Pinot Grigio and toast points will never be on the Christmas menu. But for what we lack in urbane style we make up for in delicious, abundant, home-cooked country fixins’ and gracious hospitality where every one is welcomed. Christmas dinner at my aunt’s house consisted of a roasted turkey, a fried turkey, a smoked turkey, and a ham. We had sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes and potato salad. There were butter peas, English peas, asparagus casserole. We had yeast rolls and Egg Nog muffins, plus two types of cornbread dressing and gravy. We had a relish tray and deviled eggs, pimento stuffed olives and almond stuffed olives. We had cranberry sauce. There were pecan pies and chess pies, fudge, and a plethora of assorted homemade candies and other goodies.

What we didn’t have this year was ice, either inside the freezer or outside on the lawn. It did snow on us driving to west Tennessee, and Jackson had a light dusting of snow once we arrived, but nothing really to speak of. Still we count it as a “White Christmas."

Our iced tea was served cold, but without ice because my cousin had gone squirrel hunting earlier in the week and, though I didn’t hear the whole story, he ended up shooting a bobcat which was packed in ice in the deep freeze. No one wanted to venture into the deep freeze for ice, nor use the ice even if we could find someone with the nerve to retrieve it. Luckily for us the sweet tea was saved when one of our merry group arrived toting a 10 lb bag of ice from the local Piggly Wiggly.

Dad got a new gun for Christmas this year, and we purchased one of my little cousin Caley. Plans were to target shoot after dinner, like we had done at Thanksgiving, but it was simply too cold. We enjoyed visiting and playing with toys Santa brought our cousins instead. And we nibbled on leftovers much of the day.

Dr. Seuss’s Grinch’s heart grew three sizes when he realized Christmas comes even without ribbons, without tags, without boxes, packages, or bags. Christmas doesn’t come from a store. Christmas means so much more. This year we rejoiced my mother’s nearly clean scan. After battling cancer for soon to be 7 years, she is in remarkable health and her doctor has given her the next 3 months off from chemotherapy. Over our Christmas dinner, everyone agreed it was the best Christmas present ever.

Still I sit at the computer in my little cottage amid torn paper and ribbons and boxes and bags and vow to clean up this beautiful mess. I refuse to allow the next year, next decade to arrive in clutter. I want to welcome 2010 with clear resolutions: 1. To live with less. 2. To make healthier choices. 3. To take the high road. 4. To honor the Muse and embrace my gift of writing. 5. To learn to make homemade cheese. What are your resolutions?  more. The challenge doesn’t begin until January 2, so be thinking about what 2010 has in store for you. Hopefully you’ll join me in creating the best year ever. After all, we are so blessed!