February 2007 
February 17, Saturday, New Year (Losar) : Tibet.
The last two days of the old year, called Gutor, are spent in preparation for the new year. On the first day, every household hangs colorful new prayer flags, while houses are whitewashed and thoroughly cleaned, especially the kitchen. A special dumpling soup called guthuk, or “ninth soup,” is made from nine different ingredients—sweet potato, rice, radishes, cheese, meat, wheat, peas, green peppers, and noodles. On the second day of Gutor, Tibetans go to monasteries to make offerings. They decorate family altars with candies, fruits, and khabsa, homemade deep-fried dough twists. On New Year’s Eve, the family eats the “ninth soup”—everyone must eat nine bowls. The soup is served with dumplings containing various surprises hidden inside, such as salt, chilies, wool, and coal, each of which has a special meaning and gives one’s fortune for the new year. For example, salt signifies a virtuous year ahead, while chilies indicate that an angry, argumentative year is in store. Then the ceremony of Lu Yugpa is held to banish evil spirits from the old year. At dawn on New Year’s Day, Tibetans make offerings at the family shrine. Family members each receive a pinch of freshly made butter placed on their forehead, a plate of khabsa twists, and a cup of Tibetan butter tea thick enough to float a coin. They visit monasteries to pay homage to the Buddha and to make offerings of food and gifts to the monks and nuns, who burn fragrant juniper and cedar branches as incense offerings to the heavens. Then people celebrate with friends and family by feasting on rich holiday foods, drinking chang, homemade barley beer, and singing and dancing around huge bonfires at night. New Year’s is the major celebration of the Tibetan calendar and revelries may continue for up to two weeks. Some devotees journey to the Johkang Temple in Lhasa to donate yak butter to keep the temple lamps burning. At Barkor Plaza, sculptures of Buddhist deities made by the monks out of yak butter and roasted barley flour are on display, prior to their unveiling at the Butter Sculpture Festival, held on the day of the first full moon of the lunar year. (See entry for Butter Sculpture Festival.)
February 17, Saturday, New Year (Tet Nguyen Dan) : Vietnam.
Like the Chinese, the Vietnamese welcome New Year by wearing new clothes, settling old accounts, watching fireworks and parades, and feasting. Villages often celebrate with some special event, such as a puppet show or a display of dancing or martial arts.
FOOD AND DRINK
The most famous Tet dish is called seven styles of beef. The beef is cut, sliced, cubed, made into meatballs, barbecued, and so on; then all the different preparations are arranged on a large platter and served with salads, rice, noodles, and French-style bread rolls. Goi are also often served at Tet. These are rice wrappers presented on a big plate and surrounded by vegetables, herbs, and bean sprouts. Guests take a wrapper and add a lettuce leaf and whichever of the other items they like, roll it up, and dip it into a sauce made from peanuts and hoisin sauce.
February 18, Sunday, New Year (Gao Nian) : China.
The Chinese New Year is based on the lunar calendar. All Chinese people mark their birthdays on this day too, counting themselves one year older. Solemn observances include praying at the temple and performing rituals in honor of ancestors. Secular festivities are marked by wearing new clothes, watching fireworks, and feasting with family and friends.
FOOD AND DRINK
The most important feast is on New Year's Eve. Cooking for it begins several days in advance because the feast includes a multitude of dishes. Typical things to buy include hams, dried ducks, and other meats because meat, rather than vegetables, is the focus of this luxury meal. Advance preparations are necessary because using knives or cleavers during the first days of the new year might "cut off" the family's luck, so food must be cut up before the holiday. The meal generally begins with snacks such as honeyed pork, lotus seeds, and other treats offered in a tray fitted with small dishes. This symbolizes the unity of many people in one family. The final dish is a soup, often prepared by an older relative. Again the many ingredients in one dish symbolize the family. Bright orange-colored fruits, such as kumquats and tangerines with the green leaves still attached, are arranged in dishes on the table and in front of the household gods. Their golden color symbolizes joy. Celebrations continue for three days, with festive meals centered on meat dishes every day.
The precise dishes chosen vary from region to region, but foods of symbolic significance are always included.
Northern Chinese
People from northern China make large numbers of Jiao Zi for the New Year's celebration. These are dumplings filled with chopped pork, cabbage, ginger, and scallions, which are served throughout the holiday season. (Further south similar dumplings are shaped as gold ingots called huan bao to symbolize wealth and good fortune.) The dumplings are served as a side dish with dipping sauces of vinegar and sesame oil or soy sauce, and small dishes of pickles, roasted peanuts, and hard-boiled eggs with crackled shells cooked for several hours in tea. When the eggs are served, shelled and cold, they are beautifully marbled with the tea. For the New Year's meal, northerners frequently cook one very large dish of fried pork rather than the many smaller dishes found further south. Another special dish northerners choose for this season is a Mongolian barbecue. This is a vessel of broth kept heated by a small charcoal or alcohol burner. Guests can pick up thin slices of beef, veal, pork, or mushrooms and dip them first in the boiling liquid, then in soy sauce.
Although beef dishes are sometimes served in northern China, the favorite meat at New Year is pork. One celebratory way of eating it is to mix it with ginger, scallions, chopped bamboo shoots, and seasonings and form it into large meatballs, each weighing 3–4 ounces, which are then steamed between layers of Napa cabbage. These whoppers of the meatball world are called lion's head meatballs.
Taiwanese and southern Chinese
Long, thin foods such as noodles are eaten to symbolize long life. To cut them would shorten life, so they are twirled around chopsticks. Seafood, served as a whole fish and often cooked with ginger and scallions, is popular because the Chinese word for fish can also mean "early" and "coming son," predicting the birth of a boy. Other popular foods also derive from puns: candied kumquats, because part of their Chinese ideogram means "gold"; lotus seeds, because the name also means "many children"; dried oyster, which literally means "something good is about to happen."
The dinner dishes are many and are often served banquet style — one after the other — rather than home style — all at once. Expensive items such as shark's fin soup, bird's nest soup, and pickled jellyfish are served as a sign of status. Eight Precious Rice is a similar status dish. It is made from sweet glutinous rice studded with almonds, lotus seeds, dates, bean paste, and other sweet things. There are also New Year puddings made from sweetened rice flour and millet or from water chestnut paste. Slices of these are fried and served with jasmine tea. Rice is not offered with the meal, but is served at the end. In this polite tradition, the host implies that the food is poor; therefore the guests need to fill up with rice. However, to accept it would be an insult, indicating there had not been enough good things to eat. Thus, the rice is always declined.
Whole Fish with Mushroom and Ginger Sauce is also a popular dish.
Pork, Shrimp and Spinach with Noodles is also a popular dish.
February 18, Sunday, New Year (Sol) : South Korea.
This begins the traditional Korean New Year. Like the Chinese, Koreans set off firecrackers during New Year's celebrations to scare away evil spirits. Also like the Chinese, Koreans celebrate the New Year for three days. Family visits are important, especially visits to grandparents. Roasted chestnuts are often given to children as a treat.
FOOD AND DRINK
Koreans do not have ritual feasts at Sol; rather, each family or community celebrates in its own way. The most popular festival dish is Bulgogi, which is strips of lean beef marinated in soy sauce with ginger, garlic, and scallions. Often people cook their own meat on tabletop hotplates, but the dish can also be sautéed on an ordinary kitchen stove. Kimchi, the national dish, is also served, as it is at every meal. This pickle is made from Napa cabbage seasoned with onions, garlic, ginger, and chilies. Small dishes, called collectively na mool, are also served with bulgogi. They include variations on kimchi made with cucumber, beets, vinegar, soy sauce, and garlic, shredded daikon radish mixed with chilies and rice wine vinegar, and spinach or Swiss chard, boiled and tossed with chilies, scallions, sesame oil, and pine nuts or sesame seeds.
February 19, Monday, Beginning of Great Lent : Eastern Orthodox Christian.
The Lenten fast is strict in the Greek Orthodox Church. It is preceded by a festive Meat Sunday featuring lamb and other meat dishes, and then a Cheese Sunday, the last day when dairy products are permitted. Lenten fare is restricted to dried beans, lentils, rice, pasta, and vegetables, with fish on special days. In Greece, a carnival season called apokria precedes the start of Lent. Apokria begins with a feast of roast kid or lamb, followed by two weeks of festivities including parades of masked figures. The third week begins with Tyrini—Cheese Sunday—when cheese, a food forbidden during Lent, is eaten in pies. The following day is called Clean Monday, and is a national holiday at which many children appear in their Carnival costumes. The pastime of the day is flying special hexagonal kites decorated with geometric designs. Traditionally, all animal foods including fish are forbidden in Lent and some people also eschew oil. Vegetables and legumes are therefore the main Lenten foods of Greece with a little shellfish – permitted because, unlike fin fish, it lacks blood. While many people no longer fast for forty days, most people observe the fast strictly for the two weeks preceding Easter.
February 20, Tuesday, Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras) : Christian.
Shrove Tuesday—Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday in French—marks the final midwinter fling before Ash Wednesday, the first day of the Lenten fast. Traditionally, believers confessed and were absolved (shrived) of their sins before the fast, then they consumed the last of luxuries such as dairy foods and meat. In England and France people now use milk and eggs to make the traditional pancakes. In Finland, the Shrove Tuesday specialty is a bun filled with almond paste and whipped cream. In many Roman Catholic countries Shrove Tuesday is the culminating day of Carnival—a word deriving from the Latin words carne vale, "farewell to meat." Carnival parades and balls with masked dancers and costumed figures from popular myth are the annual highlight in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Venice, Italy, and New Orleans in the United States as well as many other Mediterranean, South American and Caribbean cities. english pancakes are also a popular dish.
February 21, Wednesday, Ash Wednesday (beginning of Lent) : Christian.
FOOD AND DRINK
From the Middle Ages salt cod was a winter staple, especially for Lent and fast days, when meat, eggs, and milk products were both hard to get and forbidden by the Church. But cooks in the Catholic countries of Europe turned hardship to blessing by inventing literally hundreds of ways to cook it. In France there are more recipes for salt cod than for any other single fish. Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal and the countries of South America and the Caribbean also have a myriad of salt cod dishes, now often served throughout the year.
Classics include:
Brandade de morue
—salt cod pureed with milk and olive oil (France)
Bacalao a la Vizcaina
—salt cod with dried peppers, tomatoes and cayenne (Basque region of Spain)
Bacalao al Pil
—garlic and pepper-flavored salt cod (Spain)
Salt Fish in Chemise
—salt cod cooked with tomatoes and onions and topped with eggs (Caribbean)
Baccala alla Livornese
—salt cod stewed in tomato sauce (Italy)
Taramasalata
—salted cod roe pureed with lemon juice and olive oil (Greece)
—salt cod with fried potatoes, onions and eggs. (Portugal)
(See recipes for Italian Salted Cod Croquettes and Kwarezimal.)