Welcome to 2010!

I hope everyone had wonderful New Year's Eve and New Year's Day celebrations with friends and family.  I know we did.  We dined out with our best buds on NYE at Macaroni Grill.  This is a place we used to love and going there was a treat.  However, the last several time we went, we were disappointed in the food.  Things have changed, as they have in many restaurants, and the cutbacks are clearly visible.  The big round loaf of foccacia is not nearly as big as in years past, and not as flavorful.  It seems that herbs are in short supply.  However, we went and ordered things we'd not had before.  I had the mushroom ravioli and it was very good, as was the house chardonnay I chose to go with.  Hubby had the chicken and capellini pomodoro. The chicken was a little over done, but  the pomodoro sauce was fine, just not to his liking.  Our friends had chicken parmigiana and a cannelloni dish.  According to our dining companions, the cannelloni was good, but they seemed to have changed the recipe on the chicken parm, or at least it didn't taste like he remembered it.  All in all, it was a wonderful dinner, and the most important part was sharing the time with good friends.

After dinner, we regrouped and went to our friend's parents' house to participate in the NYE tradition of making lefses.  His Mom is of Swedish/English heritage.  In a nutshell, lefses are made from flour and potatoes, and look like tortillas when cooked.  It was an assembly line process:  Rolling, cooking, buttering and sugaring (brown sugar of course).  I was the sugarer.  This was my first experience both making and eating.  They asked what I thought, and I said they're fine, but I like mine with more butter and less sugar.  The others wanted the sugar piled on.  His Mom said "MORE SUGAR".  OK, I used MORE SUGAR!  The one I got had too much, so I made one my way for me, but after the first one, I could only eat a small part of the second one.  You can read about lefses and how to make them here. Before the lefses were made, however, we "opened" our Christmas Crackers (click to read about the crackers).

We had some fireworks on the deck.  It was cold, the smoke was thick and the bottle rockets were killer on the ears, but that's another family tradition.  Later there was a rousing game of "Round Robin" ping pong downstairs.  Yes, this is a real game with a number of players lined up around the table.  One person serves to the person opposite him, then places his paddle on the table and moves down the line while the other person returns his serve to the next person in line.  I found this video that shows better than I can explain.

Needless to say, this was a New Year's Eve of "firsts" for us, and It was an honor to be part of these traditions.