Six tips for a perfect New Year’s Day pork and sauerkraut dinner.

Eating pork and sauerkraut for good luck on New Year’s Day is a Pennsylvania tradition based on a few rather rural observations. First, you have pork because pigs root forward, while chickens and turkeys scratch backwards. Therefore, the folk logic goes, eating pork equals progress in the next year.

Then there’s the sauerkraut, which symbolizes prosperity. This is because sauerkraut apparently swells as it ferments.

Whatever the reasons for eating it, pork and sauerkraut is an excellent, hearty meal for a mid-winter day. Here are six tips to help you make the best pork and sauerkraut possible:

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In memory of PASA board member Jerry Brunetti

Reprinted from an email, sent out by Brian Snyder, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture:

At a time of year already packed with emotional intensity, it can be especially hard to lose a loved one. This year all of us at PASA are greatly saddened to note the passing of our board member, good friend, mentor and inspirational leader, Jerry Brunetti, who succumbed to cancer this past Saturday, just shy of his 64th birthday.

I refuse to assert that “he lost his long battle with cancer,” as we so often hear being said, because Jerry was nothing if not a winner, in this and other life struggles as well. In facing this disease so courageously over many years, he taught us by example about natural systems for healing, and how to live in general. Jerry will be greatly missed, but will forever be our teacher through the many lessons he has left behind.

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A great bran muffin recipe to get back on a healthy track

These bran muffins are dense. They are so good in that healthy sort of way. And after a holiday season with too much candy, we can all use some of these!

Classic Bran Muffins (from The Breakfast Book by Marion Cunningham)

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Head to Boalsburg Farmers Market today for holiday recipe ingredients

For your holiday dinners, it’s always good to try to serve local food. While it’s cold and gloomy and eating local produce is a lot harder to do than when it’s sunny and summery, but the Boalsburg Farmers Market is open today from 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. and has some local produce options.

Melanie Rosenberger of the Boalsburg Farmers Market has shared with us two delicious side recipes to complement whatever holiday main dish you decide to make.

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