Florence Secor wrote: > > I vaguely remember (and I don't have Alzheimer's) that Pork was served for a traditional New Year's Dinner. Just looked in an older cook book and saw two New > Does our heritage determine the traditional dinner; that is, Italian, German, Irish, French, English, etc.? I believe that most of our people just enjoy eatin > > I live in a small senior's building and would like to serve a "traditional" dinner in our community room on New Year's Day. > > Had thought of Roast Pork with sweet & sour red cabbage for starters. > > Open minded for your suggestions. > Florence @ Henderson, NY I was brought up here in Jefferson County in the '30s, and I believe roast pork was a New Year's Day tradition. Certainly our heritage determines our traditions. Here in Jefferson County the weather had become cold enough for butchering, and pork was the poor farmer's meat. Beef was for the more affluent, who could spare a cow, a bull, or a calf. Mother served roast pork, with sage and black pepper rubbed on it. Sometimes she also made "stuffing", the same dressing she made for stuffing poultry, of bread cubes, onions, sage, and salt and pepper. The stuffing baked right along with the pork, not for the cholesterol conscious. A crisp browned cube of bread, with its bottom resting in the clear pork fat, was delicious to a child coming in from the cold. The dinner ALWAYS included home made applesauce, either fresh or canned; potatoes, usually boiled, and cabbage salad with a homemade dressing of oil and vinegar with sugar. If we were affluent enough, there might be baked yams (sweets, my mother called them) Dessert would be pie: mince or pumpkin, perhaps apple. No lettuce, because that was out of season, and expensive. The vegetable would be from the root cellar: carrots, perhaps, or turnips, or maybe some home canned tomatoes. Traditional perhaps for our family only. Nan Dixon -- http://www.rootsweb.com/~nyjeffer/