Happy New Year!

I love New Year's Day. It's my favorite holiday out of the year—no obligations, only traditions that you yourself want to honor and even the stingiest of employers [cough] close their offices. I'm not a big New Year's Eve person, so I almost never have to nurse myself back to health on 1/1 and can spend the day doing whatever I like to set the tone for the year.

I like to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge on New Year's (exercise, being outdoors, taking advantage of things I can only do here). It was freakishly warm. The temperature gauge on the Watchtower building read 55* at noon. In New York City. In January. It's been a while since I flipped through Revelations, but I'm pretty sure that's one of the signs of the apocalypse. The drizzly fog made for a beautiful walk though.

I love grey, overcast weather. Possibly even more than snow, which I've given up hope of ever seeing again.

Then I made Hoppin' John for the first time, hoping to cash in on the good luck it is supposed to bestow on the eaters. I'd read up on it before my attempt and found recipes ranging from black-eyed peas that had been cooking with a ham hock in the water served over rice to superfancy Hoppin' John risotto with pancetta. I found at least one recipe with cheese. They were split on whether the rice is mixed in with the rest of it or if the beans should be served over it. The common elements were rice (to symbolize abundance), black-eyed peas (to symbolize coins), pork as a favoring agent (symbolizing the future since hogs can't look backwards—I don't know if that's actually true, but they don't seem to have a huge range of motion in the neck region). Collard greens are commonly served with it, sometimes mixed into it, symbolizing dollar bills. Some people claim that it has to be the first thing you eat in the new year, others that you just need to have it sometime on 1/1 to count.

Here's my version: Chop one large bunch of collard greens and blanch in salted boiling water for 3-4 minutes—collards tend to be leathery and I'm always happier if I blanch them before cooking further. Chop one pound of bacon into 1" pieces and cook until crispy. Drain on paper towels and pour off all but 2 T of grease from the pan. I added a generous shake of red pepper flakes (to ensure a hot and spicy year) and deglazed the pan with white wine (symbolizing, um, more wine in '07?)  and put the chopped greens in. While they cooked, I drained and rinsed a can of black-eyed peas, added them to the pan and let that all cook until the greens were tender. Then I mixed the bacon back in and served over rice. It ended up making two generous servings each for two of us, plus enough leftover for my lunch today: the perfect amount.

I also watched some movies, achieved the knitting trifecta (finished one project, started a new one and did substantial work on one I had abandoned—more when I have pictures), went out for Thai food and spent some time, both in person and on the phone, with some of my favorite people. I think it's going to be a good year.

Comments

[Gina]

I love those photos. Joe and I tend to drive around the countryside on New Year's Day, and this year was overcast, foggy and stellar (to me). It was lovely to be outside!

[carolyn]

what a great day!!! :) love the bridge in fog.

[SpindleRose]

Happy New Year! You're making me miss New York and walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. It was one of our favorite things to do the year D and I were poor newlyweds living in Brooklyn Heights.