Symbolic foods

Doing a quick post during my lunch break. The week seems to go by quickly, and I'm glad - I thought my first week back would be painfully slow, and I'm glad that I'm mistaken!

While I covered some resolutions in my previous post, I forgot to mention what actually happened on New Year's Day! Food. Lots of food. That's what happened.

Symbolic Foods

• New Year's Eve: I ate noodles and broth seasoned with mushrooms and pork belly. Long noodles symbolize longevity of life, so you eat it to live a looooooong and healthy life. We were still hungry, so we ate deep-dish pizza afterward.  What does a cheesy deep-dish pizza pie symbolize? That we're Chicagoans through and through, I suppose!
• New Year's Day, part 1: in the morning, I ate 떡국 (pronounced like "duck-gook") which consists of thinly sliced rice cakes, mandu dumplings, and shredded beef that has been marinated in soy sauce all cooked in either beef or chicken broth. (As drawn in the notebook above.) It's then topped with sliced cooked egg, chopped green onions, and pieces of dried seaweed/nori. (My aunt has her own secret recipe, but this one's close!) You eat it to usher in the new year, and symbolically gain a year once you've eaten it. I'm on the precipice of turning 30 so I almost refused to eat it out of sheer denial.  However, the soup itself is very delicious, so I couldn't resist. Oh well!
• New Year's Day, part 2: in the afternoon, I ate お節料理 (pronounced like o-se-chi-ryo-ri), which are traditional Japanese new year foods. My favorite (because it was so shiny) was the kuromame, the black bean (as drawn in the notebook above). You eat them for good health ("mame" = translates to "beans" but also symbolizes "health"), but the New Year's twist is to add shiny edible gold leaf flecks on top so you eat them for prosperity as well.

Do you eat any symbolic foods? If not, what are some of your New Year's Day traditions?