This week we are asking you how you celebrate New Year's Eve with your children, and surely many of the little ones already take the grapes, a tradition to attract the good luck that is celebrated in Spain and in some Latin American countries. Today is the big night, and a good option for the children take the 12 grapes "on time" is that they are the smallest.
For sale there are many grape varieties, and if it can cost us the elderly to eat them at the rhythm of the bells, let's not tell the children. That is why one option is, if you are going to advance the grapes at the usual dinner time, make a slower "bell ring", so that it gives them time to savor them.
If the grapes are small they will have it easier, and for those who do not eat them with skin or pips, we will need extra preparation time, before they "touch the grapes". If children are expected at midnight to welcome the new year as a family, the choice of mini-grapes is the best.
These can be natural or packaged variety which is marketed in a can, which are usually quite small and are already prepared without skin (they remove it by a mechanical friction procedure) or nuggets (it is a specific variety), and although they can be more comfortable they come out much more expensive.
Natural grapes must be washed well if we eat them with skin, or peel them and reserve them in advance. In any case, the children will enjoy this celebration, and more if we involve them in their preparation, helping us to place the grapes in a small bag or a beautiful container for the Christmas table.
And if they want to eat more than 12, let's not worry, because it is a very healthy fruit and on New Year's Eve you also have to eat the recommended portions! (I hope that the elderly also remember this in these days of excess ...).
In this way, with twelve mini-grapes for children's New Year's Eve, they will also enjoy this custom that, we do not know if it will bring us much luck or not, but it is fun and we will use to hug, kiss and wish us all the best for a new year. Happy New Year's Eve and Happy 2012!
