Lucky Soup for the New Year

Tom chuet wun sen (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have fallen in love with soup-making, and it’s partly due to its magical ability to extend, revive and reinvent food. It’s an invaluable way to maximize leftovers and the usually neglected tops and ends of vegetables.

In honor of the upcoming New Year, and as part of cleaning out the cabinets, I researched symbolic meanings of certain vegetables and realized that, altogether, they would make a very delicious soup. I've stretched a few associations but it's all in good fun.

Catholic New Year Traditions, Activities, and Recipes

Not surprisingly, many Catholics are asked to attend Mass to celebrate the New Year, but this may depend on the local custom or your country or your bishop.  There are also some other traditions for Catholics in the upcoming days. Recipes for some of the festive food can be found by following the enclosed links.

New Year’s Eve coincides with the celebration of St. Sylvester in Europe on the 31^st. The festivities include merry-making and the ringing of bells throughout the night. Although currently regarded as a liturgical feast day, it is a reinvention of the pre-Christian traditions of scaring away bad spirits to ensure good luck in the New Year. St. Sylvester’s special celebration is the drinking and sharing of the punch bowl, which could be non-alcoholic.

Christmas Surprises

My son is so excited about the day AFTER Christmas. That's because that's when maple syrup will magically be available.

We did a good "soaking" of leftover dinner rolls in a yummy custard of milk, eight eggs, vanilla, cinnamon and a dash of salt. 

Oh, no! 

We only have raspberry syrup in the house ... So the joyous mix of butter, maple syrup and French toast will have to wait until Friday - when the stores will be open. My son is a traditionalist. My daughter, the artist, loves raspberry syrup.

Amazon/Kindle Pre-Order! - Cheap and Easy: Recipes for the Broke and Tired

Beautiful Baby

LAWD - finally! Book is out - Cheap and Easy: Recipes for the Broke and Tired. They say only write about what you know. So I did.