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Thread: Looking ahead to New Years

  1. #1
    Join Date
    10-22-01
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    Looking ahead to New Years

    With Christmas just passed, I look forward to the next festive meal.

    Christmas was a close repeat of Thanksgiving, fresh turkey (15 lb), baked sweet potatoes, bread filling with giblet gravy and asparagus. After all these years I am closing in on matching my Mother's bread filling

    Back to New Years: we are going to have a small, specially selected, and equally cautious friends (3) and one son (working from home) over. My traditional New Years meal has been pork and sauerkraut--in keeping with my Pa Dutch roots. I always manage to find homemade sauerkraut for that---and I love it, but alas, I'm afraid my enthusiasm is not shared by all of our traditionally guests

    So---in a spirit of welcoming a new and better year--I am changing the menu--to a degree The Pa Dutch have an honored tradition of eating pork on new years, day. The reason: pigs always root forward for their food and it reminds us to always move forward.

    This year it will be traditional Irish Bacon and Cabbage.

    The cabbage will be Savoy and since I would have to take a trip to northern Jersey for Irish Bacon I will use a boneless smoked pork shoulder that I have in the freezer. With that, I am going to serve a mixture (50/50) of mashed potatoes and turnips with the parsley sauce. The sauce, despite sounding a bit bland brings the entire dish together.

    A word on turnips: when I was a kid we raised and ate a lot of turnips. I never mentioned that to any of my school mates. I'm not sure that I knew why, but turnips were considered to be eaten by poor folk---never by the "well to do". While I never thought we were poor, I wasn't about to open a whispered discussion

    This week at a local farm market I was pulled in by a display of lovely turnips and after getting home I first looked at nutrition (they are a true health food) and then read this:

    Before potatoes were abundant beyond South America, turnips were everyday staples, particularly in Europe during the Middle Ages. Thriving in a cold, damp climate, turnips were the food of Europe’s poor.
    ---imagine, 500 plus years latter, they still held the same prejudicial "cast".
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty” ---Sir Winston Churchill
    "Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all." ---John W. Gardner
    “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” ---C. S. Lewis

  2. #2
    Join Date
    11-14-01
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    Gee and I thought that after New Years looking behind would be 2020 vision.

    But dinner sounds great.
    Fred

    "Everyday I beat my own previous record for number of consecutive days I've
    stayed alive."

    'Take care of yourself, and each other.'

  3. #3
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    I'll be a bachelor for a couple weeks so New Years day will probably be Lasagna and Caesar salad.... Or maybe street tacos in Mexico

  4. #4
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    I can get really funky when alone

    All the stops come out and the unheard of get mixed in new and at times questionable ways
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty” ---Sir Winston Churchill
    "Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all." ---John W. Gardner
    “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” ---C. S. Lewis

  5. #5
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    I really hope you are still talking about food........

  6. #6
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    Not to worry. At my age, that is about the only kind I would publicly talk about and any possible forays into other realms have long been forgotten
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty” ---Sir Winston Churchill
    "Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all." ---John W. Gardner
    “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” ---C. S. Lewis

  7. #7
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    I made my first butcher shop run since late Nov.

    I managed to get another smoked boneless rolled pork shoulder which will work just fine for the Irish Bacon on the new years menu.

    I also got a beautiful 5-1/2 lb rib roast marked down to $11.99/lb. I'm good again until early February
    "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty” ---Sir Winston Churchill
    "Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all." ---John W. Gardner
    “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” ---C. S. Lewis

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