Tag: new year

• January 1, 2017

  Happy New Year 2017!

  Happy New Year! I’m making Sicilian-style lentil soup today. Lentils look like little coins, so Italians eat them to attract good fortune for the year ahead.  Bring it on! 

• December 31, 2016

  Chase Away the Dark

  Let the fantastic monsters from Villa Palagonia (replicated on a wall down the street from the villa in Bagheria) chase dark spirits into the ether of history in order to make space for the good spirits of the New Year.  For information about New Year’s traditions in Sicily, visit my 2013 post.   

• January 1, 2015

  For Good Fortune

  There isn’t a long history of celebrating New Year’s Eve or Day in Sicily. Only over the past century has it become a milestone holiday. Therefore, modern Sicilians celebrate New Year’s Italian-style–eating sausage (cotechino), grapes, and lentils (pictured here). Lentils, with their coin-shape, are thought to bring good fortune for the year ahead. I’m eating…