Lucky Foods for the New Year: Menu Ideas

We will be having a fun New Year's Eve Dinner based on some old supersitions and traditions.  For appetizer we have grapes, one for each month of the new year to bring luck.  As an entree, I am making black eyed peas, green lentils, pork, and kale stir fry with corn bread.  And carrot cake for dessert.  Can your food really bring you luck in the new year?  If you think it can!  Here are some food ideas for increasing your prosperity and luck in 2010:

1. Legumes: especially green lentils which are shaped like coins and the color green. Also, any peas or beans symbolize the ability to swell and grow.
2. Pork: because pigs root forward in the ground, tradition says eat pork to more forward in the new year.
3. Cooked Green-Leafed Vegetables like Kale and Colloard, again the color green symbolizes money.
4. Fish: has been eaten for new years for a long time because of the realive ease in preserving it (with salt) making it available and safe, as well as the silver appearance of many fish symbolizing money.
5. Golden Foods (like cornbread): Gold reprresentes monetary wealth.
6. Noodles and Grain: symbolize abundance and long life.
6. Cakes: sometimes a coin or tricket is baked into a cake and the person who recieves it will have greater fortune in the coming year.
7. Grapes: comsume one for every month of the year.  Often done right at midnight. 

Visit these great links to learn more about where these traditions come from and what their history is.

http://www.epicurious.com/articlesguides/holidays/newyearsday/luckyfoods
http://recipes.lovetoknow.com/wiki/Traditional_New_Years_Dinner

Do you have any of your own traditions?  Let me know!