That's what I'm spending my New Year's Day off doing, also. What a great way to start the year!! Happy Gardening to you, also. Edie

Well, this year the DH and I are celebrating a Canadian Thanksgiving a little late (this coming weekend.) We decided to start celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving, well because we like the way we cook Thanksgiving! His sister always cooks the American Thanksgiving on the third thursday of November. Then, a friend of ours cooks a vagabond Thanksgiving on Black Friday. So by the time the weekend comes, we're tired of turkey! Traditional for my Thanksgiving meal is roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing (or dressing since I don't cook mine in the bird. My stuffing is a mixture of bread & sausage stuffing,) mushroom gravy, and homemade cranberry relish. New this year will be green bean almondine. I'm also going to be making an Autumn Harvest Sweet Potato Spice Flan Cake (from Louisiana Cookin' October magazine.) Usually traditional with the meal, but I'm not doing it this year, is that green bean casserole, a typical salad of greens, tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers and a pumpkin or apple pie. Sorry about your Mom. I'm sure she was smiling down on you when she saw you made the turnip puff!

We have black-eyed peas and collard greens but that wasn't my family's tradition, we just adopted the southern tradition from all the others here because we like it. I don't remember my family ever doing anything traditional for New Year's. They did say that up home they had pork and cabbage with a coin thrown into the pot. I always remember that you should only do things you enjoy doing on New Year's day - whatever you do on New Year's day you will wind up doing for the rest of the year. And we weren't supposed to sweep the floor on New Year's day because it would sweep away all the good luck - then I saw on the news where there are some cultures where the tradition is to sweep the whole house to get rid of the bad luck. I have a single Uncle who has a single female friend who has him come to her house and walk into every room, some kind of superstition that it will bring her luck for the year.

Lisa - I'm sorry to hear about your daughter's illness! It's hard when you get hit with a bug like that over the holidays when all you want to do is have good times with family. Good times with family AND Hawaii isn't something to be missed. Our quirky family New Year's tradition that we've had since my kids were quite young is to make a fire in the fireplace, have an indoor "picnic" on the floor in front of the fireplace and watch movies until everyone conks out or New Year's hits (whichever comes first). The kids have gotten so they look forward to this as much or more than Christmas, since it's a fun family time with no expectations other than quiet enjoyment together. Even at 15 years, they wouldn't dream of taking off with their friends on New Year's Eve which is gratifying as a parent. The contents of the picnic can vary a lot, but it's settled down to be a variety of finger foods - fancy cheeses and crackers, fruit plate, veggie plate, nuts, deviled eggs, and of course pickled asparagus. Why pickled asparagus, you may ask? A local small grocery had some tastings set up when my twins were about 18 months old and I remember wheeling them in their tandem stroller through the aisles doing tastings. When we came to the very hot and spicy pickled asparagus that I tried (and loved), I tried to convince them that they didn't want it, but with typical toddler persistence they were reaching out their hands with insistent "uhh, uhh" sounds. I figured a little tongue burning would teach them better than anything, so I let them try some each. After about 2 seconds of chewing there was a pause then absolutely synchronized frantic doubling of that insistent "uhh, uhh" toward the asparagus. My kids have always been good with fruits and vegetables, but to this day that particular pickled asparagus has held a mythic Holy Grail appeal for all three of us (my husband doesn't care for it, which saves his hands from getting stabbed by three desperate forks). I love that it was created by a local high school student who made this his garage business to support his college education, so I look for this brand even though it's pricey. The kids and I all got pickled asparagus in our stockings this year which was an especially good idea from Santa I must say. My son's was gone within a few hours, mine is still half full, and my daughter has been restraining herself so far. Being a local product this is undoubtedly a local family tradition, but for us that makes it all the more fun. After that we'll probably be joining Marlorena on the post-New Year's going on a diet tradition, particularly given how many Christmas cookies we ended up with over the holidays. Cynthia