lucky new year's eve dinner

I love conceptual meals that involve a huge amount of research and this is one of my favorite yet. The pictures aren't so great because I started drinking champagne a leetle tooo early... sorry. Anyway I am ridiculously superstitious and thus have spent years collecting as many lucky foods to eat on nye as possible. It started with just collards and black eyed peas, but this is the third or fourth year and I have expanded to every culture that I could find that has a nye food tradition. I'll post my master list separately as it is rather long. I tried to incorporate things in a very non-traditional way for the most part. We had:

boeuf bourguignon- which I make every year because I always want heavy stew come january and beef, potatoes and red things are lucky.
pan fried catfish with collards, bacon and black eyed peas- fish is lucky as are b-e peas, collards and pork.
indian split pea doughnuts - doughnuts are lucky as are split peas and I thought it would be nice to do a savory fritter instead of a sweet one.
pomegranate and goat cheese blini- buckwheat, pancakes, red things and pomegranates are all lucky and I again wanted a savory take on pancakes. This was a party favorite. The goat cheese is mixed with greek yogurt and there are some pickled red onions as well.
Brioche with charms-big homemade brioche that I studded with enough charms for each person so that everyone was lucky in a different way. I served this with honey butter to work in another lucky food.
Sauerkraut and sausage- Denene's specialty, both the cabbage and the pork are lucky.
Curry rice crispy treats- this is from the 2008 Food and Wine Cocktail book- I thought it was an interesting way to incorporate rice.
Beet deviled eggs- red is lucky and eggs are a common symbol of rebirth and fertility.
Black-eyed pea dip- warm baked bean dip with cheese- easy and different way to get the b-e peas in.
Xmas cookie crusted cheesecake- I make this every year with my stale xmas cookies and it's round which is lucky!

I decorated the table with forced branches on one side and dead branches on the other to keep going with the cyclical theme then added some white pottery and vintage fenton glassware.

We headed down to the ball drop 34th Street at midnight with cans of sofia blanc de blanc and frozen 12 grape spears- saw the ball drop and were accosted by "baby" new year.