Root Forward, Don’t Scratch Backward
(photo courtesy of Facebook Pennsylvania German)
As someone with Pennsylvania Dutch (German) heritage, there is a custom in my family, that on New Year’s Day we eat pork. Of course, all the holidays seem to have their “meat” of the holiday, whether it be turkey on Thanksgiving, ham on Easter, and though I have never had a Christmas goose, we usually had some sort of fowl. But on New Year’s Day, the menu was pork and something called sauerkraut. Yes, the same condiment you put on hot dogs at a ball park during a baseball game.
If you like cabbage, chances are you will like sauerkraut, because that is all that it is, finely shredded cabbage. It is fermented with salt, and the smell is likely what turned me away from it as a child. My grandmother was notorious for fermenting and pickling (with vinegar) vegetables. The pungent smell in the house lasted for days.
The truth is, sauerkraut is actuall good for you, packed with vitamins and minerals, boosts gut health, the heart, and the immune system. And you would think this would be a convincing argument for me with my health history to make this a part of my daily diet. Nope. I am permanently against sauerkraut. Now to get all nerdy about the fermenting process, it is driven by lactic acid, which squeezes out the juices of the cabbage, then the cabbage sits in that juice and ferments.
Now for the super nerdy… isn’t lactic acid what is the cause of sepsis, a life threatening condition? I only know this because I was septic due to pneumonia back in 2012. So relax, there is no conspiracy against sauerkraut, but there is a difference between the lactic acids in suaerkraut and the lactic acid produced in the body, which I did not know about until I wrote this post. Simply, the lactic acid in the body is considered an L-lactic, while the lactic acid in sauerkraut is D-lactic, and there is a difference. I am not going into that science lesson on this post, just know there is a difference, and you are okay to eat sauerkraut if you can get passed the smell and bitter taste.
So, getting back to the pork on New Year’s Day and why. The Pennsylvania Dutch eat pork on New Year’s Day, because a pig roots forward, and fowl, like a chicken (we never had chicken on New Year’s Day), scratches backwards. So, you go forward into the new year and leave the old year behind. The picture above is exactly what our plates looked like at dinner on New Year’s Day, except mine was missing the sauerkraut.
Oh, one warning, if you were out the night before as many New Year’s Eve revelers do, and drank heavily, and still under the influence just now a hangover, you might want to skip the sauerkraut. Not a part of the custom, and definitely not the way you want to start the new year.
Paul's Heart 