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Fortune Telling with Food
I hate surprises. I want to know exactly what’s going to happen, with whom, and how can I keep the cops from finding out? While I don’t have a crystal ball, my kitchen happens to have a few food items traditionally used to predict the future.
Cabbage
Halloween is associated with pumpkins but it used to be the perfect time to kick off a grand old cabbage theft to see if love was in your future. A blindfolded participant enters the cabbage patch at midnight when the barrier between the world of the living and dead thins, yanks up a cabbage, and then analyze the roots for clues. Are the roots thick? A big beefy person was in your future. Weedy or withered? Look out for a pasty-faced wimp. Why anyone would settle for a love interest that resembles cabbage roots is beyond me.
Eggs
Forget scrambled, boiled, fired or an ultrasound. If pregnant, grab an egg like the ancient Roman Empress Livia Drusilla and incubate it between your breasts. The chick’s sex predict the baby’s. In the Ozarks, girls hollowed out a hard-boiled egg, filled it with salt, and ate it. That night, she’d either die of high blood pressure or dream of her true love bringing her a pail of water to drink. People in Colonial times used a Venus glass, egg whites suspended in warm water. The shape of the egg white predicted the occupation of the future spouse. For instance, if the whites kind of looked like a cow, you’re true love would be a farmer (or a cow.) No telling what would show up at the door if the squiggly egg whites only looked like squiggle egg whites.
Nuts
This pretty much describes those who rely on fortune telling. One popular method was to take two chestnuts and roast them side-by-side in the fire; if they stayed in place without rolling away, it was a good omen for a happy marriage. Alternatively, you could take a hazelnut, representing your lover, and throw it into the fire. If it burst into flame, it was a sign of trouble to come.
Apples
Peel in one single peel. Throw over the shoulder and the initial it formed was future husband/wife. Sometimes the apples would be labeled or marked by young men and women before they were put in a tub of water: the person who caught your apple could be your mate. In another version of snap apple, a hoop is suspended from the ceiling, and different treats and tricks, including cake, candies, bread, apples, and peppers, are stationed along its rim. The one a player caught with their teeth would foretell the nature of their love—would it be sweet, spicy, too hot? Would it nourish or burn them?
Onions
Not all food items reflect affairs of the heart. Germans had an onion calendar called a zwiebelkalender. Set out twelve pieces of onion, one for each month. Sprinkle them with salt and the amount of moisture that appears indicates the amount of rainfall in its corresponding month. Unless you selected particularly sweaty onions.
Cheese
Young women in the European countryside would predict future husbands by writing the names of suitors on pieces of cheese. The first to mold was believed to be the ideal mate. Frankly, I think the last man to get moldy is the best of the bunch.
