We’ll whisper it, Happy 2025, and we suggest maybe lining your tummy with Scottish steak pie or other New Year dishes.
The hearty meaty steak pie has long been the go-to for Scots on New Year’s Day.
To soak up all the booze from the night before.
Its place in the Scots’ culinary calendar is believed to have derived from its ease in preparation.
Basically bought straight from the butcher.
Of course, filling meat pies may sate those for whom the Sun is just a rumour.
But how does the rest of the world refuel on the first day of the year?
Tamales wrapped up
Well in countries where they actually grow bananas they put their leaves to good use to hold in their New Year treats.
For Mexicans it’s tamales, corn dough stuffed with meat, cheese and other delicacies and wrapped in the leaf or a corn husk.
Groups of women gather to make hundreds of the little packets, and doesn’t it always fall on them?
At this time of year in Mexico they are served with menudo.
A tripe and hominy (corn to you and me) soup, supposed to cure hangovers.
Good ole’ Southern soul food
And we’ve been that soldier, eating grits and Southern soul food in the winter (in truth, they eat it all year round).
For New Year though it’s especially Hoppin’ John, a dish of black-eyed peas (a coins symbol).
And rice with collards, like our cabbage, to represent green folding stuff and cornbread (the colour of gold).
The dish is said to bring good luck, and wealth, in the new year and dates back to Charleston, South Carolina of the 1840s.
Sylvester’s Day
Now our more traditional continental friends let us have our Hogmanay.
Although their Saint Sylvester’s Eve and Day in honour of the Pope who converted Constantine boasts its own hog theme.
Austria and Germany celebrated New Year’s Eve Sylvesterabend with suckling pig for dinner.
And a decoration of little pigs made of marzipan, called marzipanschwein.
Good luck pigs, or glücksschwein, which are made of all sorts of things, are also common gifts throughout both Austria and Germany.
Now money makes the world go round as the Cabaret MC and Sally Bowles are quick to remind us.
And that’s true anywhere with Italians adorning their New Year dish with money-looking vegetables too.
Italians celebrate New Year’s Eve alongside La Festa di San Silvestro with cotechino con lenticchi.
It’s a sausage and lentil dish that is said to bring good luck with the lentils representing money and good fortune.
Now whichever food you refuel on today.
Whether Scottish steak pie or other New Year dishes we wish you a prosperous next 12 months.
And we promise to…
THRIVE IN 2025