Lentil Soup Day

It's a tradition or superstition in many countries and regions to eat something round on New Year's day. It's supposed to bring luck and prosperity.

In my family, we have lentil soup on New Year's day. It's a tradition that started with my mom's best friend who was a wonderful Italian lady, back when we were kids, eons ago. I guess Italians eat lentils on New Year's day because lentils look like coins and signify prosperity. So we're on our way over to my sister's for our annual dose of the mysterious money-making elixir. It's supposed to fend off poverty, bring good luck and otherwise enhance the life of those who partake! I'm not sure it ever really did any good, but God only knows how life would have been without eating this wonderful soup on the first day of our brand new year! I know that I'm not taking any chances!

Lentil Soup

1 pkg. brown lentils
2 pork hocks or a meaty ham bone
3-4 diced carrots
1 large onion, diced
salt and pepper to taste
Water to cover the ingredients in a crock pot. Cook until the lentils are tender and done and soup thickens. Remove the pork hocks/ham bone, pull the meat off of the bones and put the meat back in the pot. Serve with oyster crackers.

You can also make a great pot of split pea soup by substituting lentils with split peas. Sis asked me to make a pot of soup, so I chose to make split pea for our gathering today. We can't convince some of our family to actually EAT the lentil soup (not that they'll actually EAT the split pea, but it gives them more of a choice). So we're having 4 kinds of soup today....lentil, split pea, chili and turkey vegetable...and boy, is it ever a good soup day! It's 12° with a -3° wind chill and has been snowing off and on.



Hope you having a great New Year's day and that you will have some soup that warms the cockles of your heart...it's nice to have warm cockles!

Oh, and this is the first day of this Blog365! Yikes, it's a daunting task, but somebody's gotta do it!

Thought for the day...

"Men are probably nearer the central truth in their superstitions than in their science."

Henry David Thoreau