your NYE menu at home

What's cooking? I think we're doing caviar and oysters to start, a beet-arugula-burrata salad, and butter-poached-lobster/chanterelle/chive/fresh linguine, but I'm stuck on dessert.

For us. New Year's Day is always King Crab Day.

Jean-Georges Vongerichten's Thai spicy chicken wings.

Our kids demand cheese fondue.

Treasure Island always has fresh live lobsters on sale pre NYE so I have ordered my two which I will feast upon with lemon and clarified butter, garlic bread and for dessert a homemade brandy alexander made with Homer's chocolate ice cream and fresh ground nutmeg. The rest of the family is on their own.

Kind of all over the place, but should take care of craves or joneses that might arise.

NYE
- avocado stuffed with a shrimp and mango salad
- king crab legs
- asparagus wrapped in ham
- augratin potatoes - might also do mashed
- prime rib
- Yorkshire pudding

New Year's Day, breakfast with waffles, etc, Then a baked ham for supper.

Been a good year.

We had Fat Rice's crazy squid. I picked up an extra order the night before. I also made sweet potato fries with harissa aioli. And we had some Basque cider and some mulled cider. Then spiced rum apples with eggnog ice cream from Jeni's.

I managed the PJ's crowds and the resident wine guy(I'm uncertain if he's sommelier-certified), he's awesome anyway, I asked if they had any VRAC Macon Chardonnay in back and he offered, "good choice," and found one for me. I learned what piddling knowledge I offer whilst in Chicago and the then great wine stores there. I mean find great bottles in the 10-15 range, skip the mid-price, then go whole hog. VRAC chard is a nice find(not to mention the Greenaway...Baby of...), und hardcore graphics. I picked up Periquita(long story involving Indy), and some Freixenet bubbly. Also, vodka. Went next-door and got some (sigh) canned blackeye(and these are the only blackeyes I'll have in 2014...I was in hospital a few weeks back) peas. My mother would make me eat at least one every year once I was old enough to stay up. Happy New Year, y'all! HEEYAH! New Year: tortilla chips and cheese dip, blackeye peas, bacon and kale, rib eyes, strawberries.

breakfast

lunch

dinner

The snowy weather looked as though it would interfere with going out for the evening or getting anything delivered later, so while we were running errands in the afternoon, we picked up a large parbaked deep-dish sausage-and-extra-cheese Malnati's* pizza and heated it up later for our NYE dinner. Turned out great, as good as freshly made and delivered, much better than those frozen Malnati's pizzas.




* I hope the English majors in the crowd will appreciate the care with which all those adjectives were ordered and punctuated.