Some years ago I described our New Years Day rituals. Today we followed our typical pattern and watched the Rose Bowl Parade, drinking Ramos fizzes.
A bit later we had a rather rare experience: watching Northwestern play in a post-season game. Then we watched something even rarer: watching Northwestern win a post-season game. It was Northwestern’s first bowl game win since its Rose Bowl victory in 1949.
We had our usual New Years Day brunch—eggs, biscuits, country ham with redeye gravy from the Southern care package I receive from some dear friends every year.
This evening we dined on blackeyed peas, turnip greens, and stuffed pork chop. Not exactly healthfood but at least we just split a single pork chop between us. It’s pretty hard to prepare pork chops that taste like anything these days. They’re so lean that unless you’re careful they’re tough and practically tasteless. I’m up to the challenge.
May all of my readers have a new year filled with happiness, good fortune, good health, and peace!
I went to the gym and then worked. Not very well, but I’ve got a week to crank out a short story and I don’t write short stories. I don’t even read short stories.
I often envy your cyclical touchstones.
“The superior man, studying all learning, and restraining himself under the practice of his rituals, may thus likewise not overstep what is right.”
I was able to share our tradition, to the great satisfaction of one of my guests — smoked ham, black-eyed peas and stewed cabbage, hot-water cornbread.
Well, not that bad if you are doing carb back loading….
It actually isn’t bad from a carbs standpoint. The turnip greens have practically nothing. A half cup of blackeyed peas (which is a large serving) has about 18 grams of carbohydrates of which about 6 grams is fiber. It also contains some protein.
Each of our servings of pork was about the size of a deck of cards. That’s probably about 15 grams each.
The real splurge was the stuffing and we didn’t have a lot of that. Probably less than a quarter cup each.
We don’t have any New Year’s traditions. Yesterday we went to Disney to spend time with some old friends who were in town. Last year we were in the middle of moving. The year before that we were in another state with relatives, etc.