Obligatory New Year's Recap

Hey everyone. I hope 2006 is treating you all well. If it doesn't, I'll kick its ass. Our New Year was perfectly lovely. After the cavalcade of Mexican and Texan cusine (complete with garlic cheese grits), we decided we would have Chinese for New Year's Eve. We ended up going to China Garden in Rosslyn and ordered the lobster with ginger and scallions and the Boss fried rice with scallops and shitake mushrooms. These were perfectly good, but we saw there were some other larger parties that were having the hard core Chinese banquet. I've had those before and they rock. Course after course of seafood, meat, and fowl. Dishes in exotic taro bowls and fried whole fish. I had serious banquet envy and wanted to know what China Garden was holding out on us. One day I am going to China Garden with a gang of twenty and we are going to rock the Chinese banquet hard. I may have to ask my Chinese uncle about what to order. He might just fax me a list of dishes in Chinese and I'll just hand it to the waiter. Ah, my Chinese banquet fantasies.

After dinner, we went to Uncle Tim's and Auntie Em's for a night of games, conversation and nibbles. Foodwise, I brought over crackers and smoked cheddar along with a roasted pepper dip. This is so crazy easy with a food processor. Throw in a jar of roasted peppers (and a few peppadews if you have them) with a chopped clove of garlic, a tablespoon of olive oil, a block of cream cheese and 2 tablespoons of mayonnaise. Add salt and pepper to taste. The Em's provided some hard salami, ham, goat cheese, bread, pickles and olives, and various tapenades. It was a lovely little spread. Drinkwise, I brought over a celebratory bottle of limoncello to go along with the wines at the Ems and the champagne Thank Heaven for Little Girls brought. We drank the limncello in little cordial glasses. Thank god for that because limoncello is meant to be sipped slowly throughout the night. Heaven help those who pound the limoncello. Auntie em introduced us to telephone pictionary where we each came up with a phrase and the next person had to draw the phrase and then the next person had to guess what the phrase was until it finally reached the original writer of the phrase. I was extremely literal in my interpretations of the drawings I received as I came up with such witty phrases as African lip piercing sun god worship. It's the new Babyfishmouth. We rang in the New Year with some champagne and the most delectable chocolate meringes that the em's pick up at pastries by Randolph. The Ems we kind enough to let us sleep over and we talked late into the night.

The next morning the Ems were kinder enough to take us to our places so I could finish making scones for the New Year's Day brunch and Spyrogyra's. The Ems were rewarded with a car trip filled with the aroma of vanilla and cranberries. Spyrogyra was a great host and the food and champagne were plentiful. I myself had a few mimosas and kir royales and vowed never to have unadulterated champagne ever again. While Rootbeer made some incredible key lime cupcakes and capucinno cupcakes, the prize dish went to a friend of Spyrogyra's who made a corn pudding type of dish. It was moist, but solid that was comfort in a bowl. My lack of sleep caught up with me and we went home and went to be at 5:30pm and woke up at 11:30 pm. I will be taking benadryl tonight to get some sleep.

All in all it was exactly the New Year's I wanted to have, complete with great food, great covnersation, and great friends.