Skip to main content

New Year's Eve

During lunch, my family was reminiscing about a fanciful New Year's Eve we experienced a few years ago--we took a Caribbean cruise on a Disney ship, which I thought would be elbow to elbow in sticky, noisy kids but was actually delightful and clean. For the big shindig, we stood on a balcony that overlooked many other balconies, sipping champagne and flinging confetti on the people below. One long strand of confetti landed smack on the lap of a woman in a wheel chair--she had no arms or legs and was attended to by a nurse/companion. I noticed the two of them earlier on the ship and found her delight in her vacation remarkable.

We joked about hitting the woman with just a torso, but she was an inspiration.

This year, we will be spending the evening on a quieter note. We are holed up at the lake house with a stack of movies and checkers and cards, and we will enjoy a three-hour meal one course at a time. Here's the run down (note: I can't claim they will be exquisite, but I'll do my best:

Curried Scallop Cakes
Camembert Walnut Pastries
Spinach, Artichoke, and Bacon Dip with Pita Chips
Spinach, Dried Cherry, and Blue Cheese Salad with Warm Bacon Dressing
Baked Stuffed Lobster Tails
Green Beans with Carmalized Shallots
Tiramisu with Brandy Custard
Champagne

If any of these dishes proves worthy, I will post the recipes tomorrow. Happy New Year to all!

Comments

dive said…
Tarnation! I'm hungry again now!

Robyn, that sounds delicious, and a splendid way to bring in the new year.

Here's wishing you and the family a throroughly excellent and ludicrously enjoyable 2007.
Happy New Year!
3:58 PM
Old Knudsen said…
As usual food dishes mean nothing to me without chips.


fat french fries, not crisps.
4:55 AM
Neponset River Bridge Dig said…
so do have a personal chef to serve up up all those delightful dishes?
12:12 PM
Scout said…
Rich: me, I'm the personal chef.
2:04 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

No More Mr. Nice Guy

It's good to be a nice person--to say nice things, to do nice things, to write nice things--but I declare an end to the use of the word nice. Nice is what you say when you can't think of any other adjective. Someone shows you a picture of their back yard--that's nice. Someone tells you about their afternoon adventure--that's nice. Or someone describes their childhood in great detail and sometimes with painstaking effort--that's nice. It's a lazy word, and it's non-descriptive. Nice is like mashed potatoes with noodles and chicken gravy all in a big pile on one plate with some canned corn for garnish. Everything is the same color and texture and base substance--starch (this is a favorite Amish dish). Nice is like a partly cloudy day in April when outside feels like inside, and you can't tell a difference between the lighting and the temperature of your living room and the lighting and temperature of your front yard. Nice is a glass of lukewarm water. ...
20 comments
Read more

Long Live Anita Bowser

You know I occasionally check my hometown newspaper's website to scan the obituaries (morbid, I know, but I'm at that age). Over this past weekend, I read the obituary of Indiana State Senator Anita Bowser . She was a noted Democrat who championed causes protecting the neediest in the state's population. She was respected on both sides of the aisle for her intelligence and plain and outspoken approach to law making. The picture on her senate page is lovely. I remember none of those things about Anita Bowser . My first year or so in college was spent at a branch of Purdue University, and in the early 80s, Anita was a political science professor. She taught my American Government class my freshman year, and she was a mess. Somewhere in my old text book, I have a sketch of her drawn on a particularly dull day in class--her hose sagged at her ankles, her slip showed at least half an inch all the way around, her hair had been slept on but not brushed, and her bright red lip stic...
18 comments
Read more

Ish People

Tell an Ish person to show up around 9 a.m., and you'll see them somewhere around 9 a.m. Tell them to show up at 9ish, and you'll see them anywhere from 9:05 to 9:20. You have given them license to dilly dally, and who wouldn't take advantage of that? The other night at the big shindig dinner party, one of the drummers said the rehearsal the next morning would begin at 9ish. "I am an ish person," he says. Immediately the clanker goes off in my head--oh, good, I thought. I can deliver my daughter a little late. No Ish person is early, so if you say 9ish, that does not mean give or take 5, 10, 15 minutes. It's exclusively a taking phrase. Take an extra 10 minutes to drink your cup of coffee. We won't mind. We're Ish people. Sunday's rehearsal started at 2:00. Because it was conducted by the same people who conducted the Saturday rehearsal, my understanding was 2-ISH. My daughter is worse than I am about taking liberties with Ish time frames, so she d...
14 comments
Read more