Tag Archives: cucumber

This Week’s Basket from Milk and Honey Organics included Cucumbers, Bibb Lettuce, and Tomatoes from Hurricane Creek Farms, Regional Collard Greens, Carrots with Tops, Green Onions (aka Scallions), Fancy Braeburn Apples, Bananas Tangelos and Tangerines, Russet Potatoes and Crimini Mushrooms! It was a beautiful basket! (I love how this week’s picture turned out too!)

This Week’s Meal Plan (powered by PepperPlate.com) includes all kinds of warm dishes as well as some simple favorites, including a twist on the traditional Southern Collard Greens and Black-Eyed Peas for New Year’s! The tradition stems back to an ancient Jewish custom that included eating symbols of prosperity, including black-eyed peas, leeks, beets or spinach, dates, and bottle gourds (in the squash family) at Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year.

When Jews arrived in the United States in the early 1700′s, they came to the Southern state of Georgia, where non-Jewish farmers adopted the symbols of prosperity around the time of the Civil War. But the Georgian farmers added pork to their greens and beans for flavor. Teri Green wrote an article called “A Tasty Tradition: New Year’s Meal Means Good Luck, Good Eats,” in which she writes, “The peas, since they swell when cooked, symbolize prosperity; the greens symbolize money; the pork, because pigs root forward when foraging, represents positive motion” (Montgomery Advertiser, Jan. 2, 2009). Who knew?!