ringing in the new year

 Matt takes his feasting very seriously. Last night we ate a lot of fancy little food and made hats and paper stars and a paper chain and then stayed, dedicatedly, up till midnight. This effort involved first watching Brave (fine but meh, if I'm perfectly honest, not nearly as good as Tin Tin from the night before) and then running in circles while Matt cleaned the kitchen with U2 turned all the way up, and then finally a little bit of Mr. Bean before watching the ball drop and being totally grossed out by all the kissing and by Mr. Bloomberg's happy lipstick embellished face surrounded by Rockettes. The vision of Mr. Bloomberg with his sweater and his rockets seems an ominous picture for tone and tenor of this New Year, but maybe I'm just being phobic. Anyway, the party happened at all kinds of levels. Elphine dressed up and sat around prissily drinking her sparkling cider and averting her eyes when anything turned out to be weird or gross.

 

The baby danced and wore a crown until we'd all had enough and flung her in her bed. She sees a camera (or a phone) and immediately strikes up a terrifyingly false grin and stretches out her hands in love. She also makes funny faces, when given the chance.

Gladys and Marigold ran in circles and joined in the general merriment. The boys drank vats of the sparkling cider and hoped that the bear in Brave would eat everyone (what a disappointment).

I sat in Matt's big chair and drank champagne and enjoyed Mr. Bean most of all. I find the whole specatacle of a lot of people in Time's Square screaming with Nivea hats and waiting to be on TV very strange. And the ball dropping at midnight is so over rated. The first year I heard of it I expected a large glass ball to be hurled off a tall building and smash on the ground. This, like the reality of the Alamo, has been such a disappointment in real life. However, the children were enchanted with the possibility of staying up till midnight, so it can't have been all bad.



So now on to the food, because that's what its really all about, isn't it? Here is the seafood with red and green pepper, onion and garlic, pickled jalapeno, hot chili oil, blue cheese and a dash of sherry from my very own glass.

Matt ate most of it because I'd tasted so much of everything before hand I wasn't hungry at all. Blast it. Elphine arranged the vast array of food artistically and in a good and rightful order.

 And here are the scrambled eggs with full fat cream and cheese.











And here are the cheese and pepperoni, arranged four or five different times because of being eaten off the plate as fast as they were put on. Not really worthy of a photograph in their own right but for the triumph of, for fifteen seconds, having a full plate of cheese and pepperoni before they're being eaten off once again.







And here are the little sausages wrapped in puff pastry which go very nicely with champagne or sparkling apple cider, of which none were left at midnight. I love how quickly they puff up, how easily they are made, how fancy they appear and how salty they taste. Whereas now the children are all relatively young and small, only one packet of little sausages was sufficient. As I laboriously cut and wrapped them, I imagined my future self with six teenagers sitting for several hours cutting and wrapping sausages and having them disappear with an even greater speed than the cheese and pepperoni do now. Sob.
And here is the crowning moment of my entire married existence.......
The Cherry Puff
Matt has resisted every single dessert I have made for the whole course of our marriage. I bake and he smiles and nods and walks by it all, fit, trim, disciplined, holy. Bread, Cinnamon Rolls, Apple Pie, Pumpkin Pie, Chocolate Trifle, Mango Cobbler, Persimmon Pudding, EVERYTHING, invented by me or even just executed very very deliciously. Until Now.
I took 15 seconds to lay down a puff pastry sheet, cover it with sour cherries left from the trifle, mix cream cheese, cherry guts and a teaspoon of sugar, mush it over the cherries and then lay over it all another sheet of pastry and he couldn't resist. Could Not. He ate a piece in the kitchen when he thought I wasn't looking and finished off everything out of the children's bowls and then put the very last piece in the fridge for later. Happy NEW YEAR!!!

And so finally we roused ourselves this morning to eat chocolate chip pancakes (well, the children did, I had a strong tea and hopped for a brighter tomorrow) and then Matt cooked a large turkey, as he is much addicted to doing, and we ate some more. And I waved my glass of Pinot around and held forth about the fact that I  had listened to the entire book of Romans this morning and discovered I was quietly hoarding some bad theology in the back of my mind but am firmly resolved to correct this faulty tendency in the new year, because, as we all know, Theology Matters.

So, A Happy New Year To You All! May God grant you many lovely things right away and may you eat of the fat of the land and sit in many comfortable chairs and be full of the knowledge of the love of God as the waters cover the sea.