Fresh

New Year's Eve was cold in Brooklyn despite the warmth most of us felt about the nearing end of the Bush Administration. Freezing temperatures aside, we bundled up and went to a gathering with friends who live on Prospect Park West. Our hostess is from Mexico, where it's a tradition to have the midnight champagne toast served in a flute with twelve green grapes swimming on the bottom. Green symbolizes prosperity and the twelve grapes represent each month of the year. "You're to eat them one by one," she instructs.

None of the kids wanted to leave the coziness of the apartment to walk to the park across the street for watching the fireworks, but to our delight we could see and hear them from their living room window-- bursts of color exploding and popping over the roof of the neighboring building. We ate January, February and so on while the bangs went on outside and a sadly frail Dick Clark welcomed 2009 on TV.

The following day, on the south side of Park Slope, we had some more greens at another friend's annual New Year's Day collard greens and black-eyed peas open house. A Southern tradition dating back to the Civil War, when the Union troops could find very little available food, these morsels were gleaned from nearly barren fields. There's even record of this culinary tradition in the Babylonian Talmud, according to Wikipedia. "...Now that you have established that good-luck symbols avail, you should make a habit to see Qara (bottled gourd), Rubiya (black-eyed peas), Silka (either beets or spinach) and Tamrei (dates) on your table on the New Year."

So, to all cultures that reside in our fair borough, of our fair city, in our fair state and country: Here's to prosperity, health and a fresh start.