As this garbage year is slowly but Shirley drawing to a close, New Year’s Eve festivities are on my mind.
Our OG plans to visit a good friend in HK after xmas and into the new year had to be nixed due to financial reasons. Wah.
Pre-pandemic we used to host lavish cocktail parties with up to 85 peeps, a rented dance floor, bubbly, and finger foods. Some would stay till 2-3am.
While our friends keep nagging us about hosting another blow-out bash like in the good ole days, we’re less motivated given the prep & costs.
It looks like a few of our friends will be around, so we may just host a small gathering.
Festive to me usually means fancy-ish foods like shrimp cocktail, crab salad, escargots, my homemade gravlax, etc.
How will you be celebrating the end of this year, with hopefully better times for us all on the horizon?
Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot, cooking and eating in northwest England)
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Mrs H and I will cook a nice dinner. Four courses of some sort. And, in due course, we’ll go to bed soon after midnight. Yes, we are boring old people.
We’re pretty low key on New Years, and sheepishly admit we are usually asleep when the new years rolls in. We are up and out early on New Years Day for an important Buddhist ritual called Hatsu Goma. Around New Years we usually go to a friends house for pounding and making mochi… which is a great resin to get together to eat and drink a lil beer.
I havent done anything for NYE in at least 14-15 years. Used to go to a (now former) friend’s house and play sous chef to the person doing the main cooking (a forrmer line cook) for upwards of 6-8 of us.
But now I stay home. Sometimes I stay up until midnight; sometimes I don’t. After Dick Clark passed, I was less inclined to watch New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. Plus, the music now usually isn’t my cuppa, because I’m an Old.
I’ve taken to making various tapas in the past couple of years, as it allows me to graze in the afternoon and evening at my leisure. But I’ve also done a duck breast, and one time, my usual Christmas dinner of beef tenderloin with a cognac cream sauce when I hadn’t made it on Christmas for my Mom.
So I’ll think about what I want to make, but will likely stick with something I’m used to making.
Same for the two of us. Sunshine is originally from New York and likes to watch the ball drop in Times Square. (that will be 10:00 pm our time) We may or may not be awake at 12:00, if we are – a quick New Year’s kiss then we’ll be asleep.
