Tick Tock Day ~~ Time is Running Out of This Year! ~~ Dec 29

Hello once again people! Only a few days left in this year and this month. Wow, where did the year go? For me it went fast, yet in some ways it was terribly slow. I’ve had better years and I’ve had worse.

For today I could only find a few celebrations, I suppose it’s all leading up to the big one again. New Years! Does anyone have any New Year’s traditions that they try to keep? Something you’ve been doing for years, maybe even something you’ve been doing because your parents did it?

I try to make black-eyed peas for New Years. Something I picked up when I was living in Texas. I also love them, but it’s nice and comforting to have a tradition, even though it’s a small one. When I first moved to Canada I was looking for black-eyed peas at the grocery store my first New Years here. I couldn’t find them, so I asked a clerk and she had no idea what I was talking about! She had never heard of them before! Well I explained to her what they were and we went on a treasure hunt.

I finally found them that day, but in a different (and bigger) grocery store. Here they call them Black Eyed Beans, not peas, which is technically correct, but I was so used to calling them peas that it was strange to me. Now I’m used to it and just about every store carries them.

My parents did two things every New Years day. My father (he was German) used to eat raw hamburger. Yeah, yuck! He would make a hamburger patty out of really top-notch hamburger and place it on a bun with raw onion and eat it. None of us could ever do that without retching. Ha-ha! He is also the one that used to eat his steak while still on the hoof. Joking! Almost. He cooked his own steak always. This is how he did it. Get a cast iron fry pan smoking hot, take the steak and season it well, then toss it in the hot pan, let it cook for 15 seconds and flip it. Another 15- 20 seconds and it was done. I kid you not! I used to joke with him that when he stuck his fork in it, it mooed.

My mother (Native American) liked to eat pickled herring on New Years. I think she got it from my dad, because it’s more of a German thing. We would eat pickled herring on saltine crackers. I loved it when I was young. I haven’t eaten pickled herring in years though. The last time I did was many years ago in Texas. I ate one piece out of the jar and could tell they had spoiled. I threw the rest away and a few hours later came down with the worst case of food poisoning I have ever had. I spent a week on the couch wishing I would die. Haven’t touched pickled herring since.

Well those are my traditions, such as they are. Now on with the celebrations!

 

Pepper Pot Day ~~ Pepper Pot Day celebrates the soup that was served in the Continental Army during the war in 1777-1778. The legend is that George Washington asked the army chef to make a meal that would keep the troops warm and boost their morale. It’s said that a West Indies recipe that was brought to Philadelphia was modified to include tripe and Washington’s Pepper Pot Soup was created and is credited with being “the soup that won the war.”

I don’t like tripe so I don’t use it when I make this soup. Tripe can be substituted for most any other meat. If you would like to see how it’s made or even try to make some yourself, here’s a link to a recipe I found.

 

Tick Tock Day ~~ Time runs out! All those dreams you’ve had, all those fantasies? It’s time, friend. Do it! Annually, Dec 29. (©2006 by Wellcats.com) My guess is that it means you only have a few more days of making those dreams, resolutions, whatever that you made at the start of the year a reality. Go for it!

Now for some miscellaneous information about today:

• 1851 – The first American YMCA opens in Boston, Massachusetts.
• 1890 – Wounded Knee Massacre on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, 300 Lakota killed by the US Army
• 1914 – A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the first novel by James Joyce, is serialized in The Egoist
• 1934 – Japan renounces the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930
• 1937 – The Irish Free State is replaced by a new state called Ireland with the adoption of a new constitution
• 1940 – World War II: In the Second Great Fire of London, the Luftwaffe firebombs London, England, UK, killing almost 200 civilians
• 1949 – KC2XAK of Bridgeport, Connecticut becomes the first Ultra high frequency (UHF) television station to operate a daily schedule
• 1959 – Physicist Richard Feynman gives a speech entitled “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”, which is regarded as the birth of nanotechnology
• 1997 – Hong Kong begins to kill all the nation’s 1.25 million chickens to stop the spread of a potentially deadly influenza strain

 

So that’s it for today people. See you tomorrow! Stay safe!