Christmas Eve, Part V
Our meal began with six of the courses already placed on the table. The signature dish for Christmas Eve dinner, and usually eaten only once a year, is kutya, which is boiled grain sweetened with honey and mixed with chopped fruit and nuts. The kutya at our dinner was made of buckwheat, but other grains can also be used, such as rice or barley.Grain is considered the staff of life, and kutya symbolizes prosperity in the coming year. An old superstition holds that if you toss a spoonful of kutya into the air, and it sticks to the ceiling, then the new year will be prosperous. No one at our dinner did this, and we did NOT inform our children of this custom!
An image of kutya can be found at the following website:
http://www.kucharz.pl/img/kutia.jpg
posted by Stahlkes @ 7:25 AM
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