New Year's Food Traditions & Another Recipe!

Happy New Year, everyone!  I hope this day finds you recovered from last night’s revelries and ready for new beginnings.

What are your resolutions or plans for the New Year?  I have set some goals to meet including improving my diet and health, getting some more exercise in, and completing an educational goal 35 years in the making.

New Year’s Day is met with many food traditions, as I found out in 1982, living in Houston, Texas.  A friend of mine, Sharon Montgomery (http://www.sharonmontgomery.com/) invited me over to her apartment on New Year’s Day for cornbread and black eyed peas – for health, wealth and luck.  I’d never heard of the tradition, nor had ever eaten black eyed peas in my life, and never was much of a corn bread fan, but Sharon was a fabulous cook.  After that meal, this token Yankee and adopted Texan was a fan and decided to adopt the tradition myself.

Somewhere along the way, pork was added to the meal and I’m told it has New Year’s traditions of its own.

To get my black eyed peas in, I usually make Texas Caviar, a scrumptious combination of chopped fresh jalapeno, tomatoes, yellow corn, green and red peppers, onion, garlic with cumin, vinegar and more.  I like to serve this with corn chips – delicious!  I’ll post that recipe another time.

Today, I am posting my slow cooker pork recipe.  I usually start this the night before to serve at a late lunch/early dinner on New Year’s.  It’s cooking now and my house smells heavenly.  I modified the recipe from one I found on the Williams Sonoma website. Note:  It calls for caraway seeds, but I cannot abide the taste of the things, so I left them out.

New Year’s Day Pork Roast

Serves 4-6; cook for 8-10 hours in slow cooker.

1 boneless pork shoulder, 4-5 lbs.

Salt and pepper

2 T unsalted butter

2 T coconut oil (or canola oil)

1 yellow onion, sliced

3 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and sliced

1 T fresh thyme

½ c dry white wine (chardonnay is good), or organic 100% apple juice

2 lbs sauerkraut

¼-1/2 c of brown sugar

Drain and squeeze dry the sauerkraut.  Layer ½ of the sauerkraut on bottom of slow cooker and add the brown sugar on top of that.  Reserve the other half of the sauerkraut until the final hour of cooking.

Trim fat off of pork and season generously with salt and pepper.  Melt butter with oil in iron skillet and brown pork roast on all sides, about 10 minutes.  Transfer roast to slow cooker on top of the sauerkraut and brown sugar.  To the skillet, add the thyme, onion and apple slices and lightly brown.  Add this to the slow cooker.  Over medium heat, add the wine or apple juice to the skillet to deglaze, getting all of the tasty brown bits off of the bottom of the pan and then pour into the slower cooker.  Cook on low for 8-10 hours.  Add remaining sauerkraut to slow cooker at beginning of final hour to heat through.

Serve with cornbread and black eyed peas.  Enjoy!

Love from Glancy.