8th Day of Christmas A.K.A. New Year's Day 2012

Here's your heart attack!  Tonight we ate our good luck pork in the form of barbeque ribs.  We had green beans (green to bring money!) and garlic parmesan mashed potatoes (I don't know what they symbolize).

These are my oven-roasted ribs ~ they melt in your mouth!

Sylv's on your fourth rib!  She's decided that, in fact, Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce is better than the Almighty A1.  

Everybody seems to have their New Year's Day traditions, and my German family always always always had pork and sauerkraut, usually slowed cooked in the Crock Pot all day and eaten at the Taneytown Activities Building to celebrate my great-grandparents' anniversary.  George and the girls hate the smell of kraut, so I don't even bother with that anymore although I used to.  My stepdad is Pennsylvanian Dutch, and his mom always made a hog maw for the occasion.  As a kid I couldn't stomach the stuff (yeah, pig's internals stuffed with potatoes, pork, etc.), but now that our friends the Mullers have us down for their wonderful version, I hate to miss it!  Next week we hope to get our hog on again!

Hog Maw

Last night we traveled a whole 3/4 of a mile down to Frog Hollow proper to the Mullers' house for their annual Hog Maw feast and New Year's Day party. We had a great time -- our first time out of the house in a long time! Trish had the house decorated so beautifully, and everyone seemed to enjoy Sarah Grace and Sylvie's scampering among the crowd. The highlight of the evening, of course, was Jeff's presentation of the hog maw, a traditional Pennsylvania Dutch dish. I don't remember anyone but my step-grandmother, Millie Fuhrman, making this when I was young; my family tended to the pork and sauerkraut for New Year's Day. I do remember thinking it was gross -- stuffed pig stomach! Ewwww! But, no, Trish and Jeff have this dish down pat -- even Sylvie liked it! I wish I had taken a picture of theirs (there were at least three), but instead I'm attaching one from Flickr so you can see what it looks like. It's simply cubed potatoes and loose pork sausage stuffed in a cleaned pig stomach lining. PA German tradition is that if you don't even have a bite on New Year's Day, you'll have bad luck for the next year -- well, we ate our fill!