We’re getting ready for our favorite weekend of the year! Tomorrow starts our Year in Review, followed by Year Ahead on Jan 1 and we are ready to go with a year’s worth of pictures, our journal with all our goals and lists, many, many notes from 2011 and of course our food and beverage choices for the celebration…
We’ve got the champagne chilling, crab cakes made, more fresh crab my neighbor caught just yesterday up the Sonoma coast – and I’m going to do a bean stew along with a few other traditional menu items to ensure the upcoming year is filled with good luck and prosperity.
- Did you know that since cornbread is the color of gold, eating it supposedly attracts gold to the diner?
- Greens, whether collard, turnip or mustard, are supposed to represent green folding money.
- Black-eyed peas or field peas are symbolic of pennies or coins, and the fact that they swell when cooked represents your increasing bank account in 2012.
- It is also a tradition to leave a coin under the pot when cooking them or under each bowl as you serve them to reinforce the wish.
- On January 2nd, to continue the good luck, the leftover “Hoppin’ John” dish is called “Skippin’ Jenny,” and further demonstrates frugality, bringing a hope for an even better chance of prosperity in the New Year.
As we move into Year Ahead on Jan 1st, we’ll consider other superstitions of both foods to eat and ones to avoid. Pork is traditionally favored because pigs root forward, but be sure to avoid lobster (known to swim backwards) and chicken (known to scratch backwards).
Year Ahead is so exciting to Mark and I, it’s the day we map out our plans for the upcoming year with steps on how to achieve them. We work on Year Ahead mainly for our personal lives, but we do overlap a bit for our business, Spiritus Financial. (going on an annual company off-site is how we get down to the real nuts and bolts of our business planning)
We’ve been doing Year Ahead/Year in Review together for over 20 years and we can’t think of a better way to spend the New Year’s weekend.
Best wishes to all for the most prosperous, healthy and fun filled 2012!
Happy New Year!
