This year has flown by, and 2015 is so close. I have bittersweet memories of New Years as a child. My mom, dad, and I would go to a family friends' home for dinner and spend the night, staying up until the ball dropped (at 11:00 because of the time zone), then going to sleep at their house, waking up to eat breakfast, watching the Rose Bowl parade, and then trying to amuse myself while everyone else watched football.
All of that was pretty good. What wasn't so good was the fact that I was an only child, and my parents' friends had two boys, one a few years older than me and one a few years younger. And they terrorized me. While I enjoyed playing dolls and dancing, they enjoyed chasing me with toy guns and hitting me with stuff. It wasn't until the oldest boy was in college, and the youngest boy started playing drums that I had a great time hanging out there. Then it was a blast, but a short-lived blast because it wasn't too long before I was grown and had a life of my own and didn't get invited anymore.
But the thing that was always wonderful was the food. Mrs. J. was a wonderful cook, and she could make cornbread so thin and crispy and delicious it would make you want to smack yo' momma. Then there was a mess of black-eyed peas and greens; you know, typical Southern good-luck food because greens look like money, and the Union soldiers left the black-eyed peas because they didn't think they were worth eating, and that's supposed to bring good luck because the South didn't go hungry. At least, that's what I found when I looked it up.
But what topped it all was her dessert. I don't know what to call it, exactly. I never paid attention to the name because I was usually busy staring at it and drooling and calculating how hard it would be to scrape off all the pecans. It had a crust of some sort, with pecans, so I scraped it off the crust, leaving a chocolate pudding and a whipped cream/pecan topping. I'm not doing it justice with my description, so just imagine eating a chocolate-flavored slice of heaven. Angels would sing as you took a bite.
But that was then, and this is Paleo. And I have to work New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, but we have plan. We have a menu, and we're going to have our good luck meal for dinner on New Year's Eve, and it's one of my favorite soup recipes that is full of greens. It's called Moc Broc Soup, and it tastes like the Broccoli Soup that you can get at Outback Steakhouse, but instead of broccoli and cheddar, it's filled with kale and goat cheese.
We're also going to have some Paleo doughnuts because ring-shaped baked goods are traditional New Years fare. That will be an experiment because we've never made them, and Lydia just got a doughnut pan for Christmas. And for breakfast on New Year's Day, we're having Green Eggs and Ham Quiche.
Establishing new and delicious Paleo traditions are pretty important to making this a sustainable lifestyle, and planning ahead of time and making it a family decision takes out a good bit of the stress that could occur. That is why I'm looking forward to this New Year. It will soon be a year since we started eating Paleo, and I've never felt better in my life. We are forging new traditions with every passing holiday, and eating this way just makes that New Year's Resolution to get healthier and/or lose weight a lot easier to obtain, so I welcome 2015 and look forward to posting many more Primal Wishes and Paleo Dreams.
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