As midnight approaches on Saturday, many New Year's revelers will be breaking out the bubbly, but Thais Flaitt Giannoccaro will be breaking out the lentils.
The Omaha woman and her husband, both natives of Brazil, will enjoy a midnight meal of lentils and roasted pork.
"It brings you luck," said Giannoccaro, who grew up in São Paulo and moved to the United States in 2007. People all over South America and in parts of Europe eat both foods for good fortune in the new year.
Similar to the southern U.S. tradition of eating black-eyed peas to ensure a good new year, many of the world's cultures believe that ringing in another year with certain dishes will bring luck, wealth, prosperity, success and good health.
Depending on their family heritage, people around the world attach a variety of meanings and beliefs to specific foods, said nutritional anthropologist Janet Chrzan, who teaches a food and culture class at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
New Year's food customs abound, especially outside the United States, Chrzan said. For many Americans born and raised abroad, preserving those traditions and passing them on to new generations is important.
"We like our rituals, both on a family and a cultural level," said Chrzan, adding that in this country, there's a greater emphasis on the nutritional aspect of food, whereas in other countries food means more than just nourishment.
For example, many cultures believe that lentils and other types of round legumes symbolize wealth and prosperity for the new year because of their coin-like appearance.
In Brazil, Giannoccaro ate pomegranates or grapes as the clock struck midnight on New Year's Day.
"You save seven seeds to keep in your wallet for the whole new year," she said. "It brings money."
Many New Year's food traditions involve pork or fish. They're thought to signify progress, because pigs push forward with their snout to the ground and fish swim in a forward direction.
Born and raised in Germany, Otto Helbig grew up enjoying a New Year's Eve dinner of pork sausages for good luck and a New Year's Day breakfast of pickled or smoked fish for prosperity. He's continued the tradition since moving to Nebraska 17 years ago.
"It reminds me of family," Helbig said.
For Omahan Shirley Sieng, who is of Chinese descent, food traditions for Jan. 1 (and for Chinese New Year) include nibbling on noodles, devouring dumplings and feasting on fish.
In many Asian countries, Sieng said, noodles symbolize longevity. It's important not to cut the noodles as you eat them because that represents cutting your life short. And you eat dumplings to bring prosperity because their shape resembles ancient Chinese currency, she said.
The daughter of Japanese parents, Jackie Shindo grew up in Omaha and has fond memories of her father, Jack Kaya, making a variety of traditional Japanese fare to ring in the New Year.
Thought to bring good luck and prosperity, the special dishes included ozoni soup made with mochi — a small, round Japanese rice cake made of glutinous rice.
Even after her parents passed away, Shindo continued the New Year's good-luck food tradition. But instead of making mochi from scratch like her father did, she now buys a premade frozen variety.
In addition to putting the mochi into soup, she prepares it kinako style, in which the mochi is roasted or grilled and served with a dipping sauce.
"They don't get close to what my father used to make," she said.
For Dino Sgourakis of Omaha, it wouldn't be New Year's without a slice of vasilopita prepared by his Greek-born mother, Koula.
A sweet, round bread eaten in Greece to celebrate the new year, vasilopita is baked with a silver coin hidden inside. Whoever gets the slice with the coin will have good luck during the year.
"It's always been a part of our family," the 36-year-old Sgourakis said. "It's nice to carry on that tradition today."
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