Happy New Year Pork Cabbage Dumplings

I want to take this moment to wish you and yours a very Happy and Prosperous New Year! May you stick to all your New Year’s Resolutions and may 2016 be better than 2015. I am looking forward to many exciting and wonderful things this year. It’s amazing how time flies. And now pop that champagne! Happy New Year 2016!

I passed the Christmas season with the family in Maryland, which was wonderful. Getting to spend some time with my friends and family members that I haven’t seen in awhile. Sadly it didn’t snow, it rained and the temperatures were in the 50s and 60s the whole week. Though on Christmas day it was white and foggy. So I guess you can say we had a little bit of a white Christmas.

It’s amazing how so much has changed within a year. 2015 I got a new job, traveled a bunch to visit family and friends, started up my own blog, I learned so much working with my website and hope this new year I’ll be able to expand on it further. I’ve seen friends get engaged or have children, watched them travel the world or get a new job, or something special in their life happen that they decided to post it, it’s amazing to see how far we’ve all come along since high school.

Watching all of my friends and family is very inspirational to me. I also want to be able to show them that I too am growing and hope to share my experiences and memories with them so that maybe they can also be inspired by me.

January 1 is our anniversary of 8 years. However, this year we were both sick with a cold. We came into the new year with sore throats and sniffling noses.

It’s a tradition in my family to eat something with pork, cabbage, and black-eyed peas for good luck for the new year. I remember when I was younger, my mom would be cooking up a mess of sauerkraut, a pot of black-eyed peas and something pork. I never really liked any of those things.

Here are all the ingredients that are used

Mixed all together!

Only 1 Tbl. spoon of filling

Make lots of dumplings!

Yum Yum 😉

So instead of going the completely traditional route I decided to make something a little different. Classic Pork and Cabbage Dumplings. These are my favorite dumplings. They’re pretty easy to make and can be frozen for up to six months. Cabbage, is green like money and pork which comes from pigs, an animal that is “rich” with fat. These are some of the connections behind why these are considered good luck foods for the new year, or at least that what my mom always told me. These rituals of eating special foods remind us who we are, where we’ve been, and the ways we hope to thrive for the new year. So I hope you enjoy these as much as I do.