{"id":2838,"date":"2018-01-01T17:03:31","date_gmt":"2018-01-01T23:03:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/?p=2838"},"modified":"2018-01-01T18:43:59","modified_gmt":"2018-01-02T00:43:59","slug":"trying-to-have-high-hopes-for-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/2018\/01\/01\/trying-to-have-high-hopes-for-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Ringing in the New Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

We had a pretty quiet New Years Eve. We walked down to our local good Italian restaurant, Lombardino’s<\/a>, for a late dinner – the reservation choices were 5:00 PM or 8:45, so we took the 8:45. Even with the reservation we had to wait almost 20 minutes for our table – they were that busy.<\/p>\n

We split a chopped salad, the “Fraboni” pizza – hot Giardiniera, sausage, and cheese – and Paccheri (fat tubes of pasta that flatten out in the sauce) Carbonara. I had a kir-type cocktail, pomegranate liqueur & prosecco, and a glass of red wine, and Mark had a rootbeer, because they have Sprecher’s. Dinner was nicely paced, but I wanted to get home to watch the ball drop in Times Square, which happens at 11:00 here in Central time, and we missed it. We walked in the door at 11:04, and had to un-bundle from our less than 10 minute walk in -3\u00b0. We turned on the Dick Clark New Year’s Eve<\/a> (now with Ryan Seacrest) and they had a Fleur de Lys drop in New Orleans for us in Central time. It was pretty lame.<\/p>\n

On New Year’s morning, I invited just a few people over for brunch, and we had Hoppin’ John, eggs baked on top of creamed spinach, biscuits, hash browns with leeks (that I almost forgot to make) and leftover cookies. And a salad that Jane brought. I liked the eggs – they were based on a Fine Cooking recipe<\/a> that’s supposed to be curry flavored, but I left out the garam masala and just used the usual seasoning for creamed spinach – nutmeg, shallots, white pepper. I liked that there was no thickening – it was just greens in cream. I used spinach and mustard greens. I divvied up the greens in baking dishes, put them in the oven and got them really hot, then broke in the eggs. I was worrying about the egg spreading too much on top of the spinach, but getting the base really hot seemed to have curtailed that. I thought about poaching or frying the the eggs first, but that seemed like waay too much trouble. I used a Scott Peacock\/Edna Lewis biscuit recipe<\/a>, that’s supposed to be made with lard, but I used vegetable shortening. The 10-pound bag of ground lard<\/a>, that looks like brains, that I got with the pig we bought, is still up in Mark’s freezer waiting for me to render it. I bet these biscuits would be really special with lard – they were OK with shortening, but I think I like Marion Cunningham<\/a>‘s recipe better. One set of friends thought we’d never confirmed so we had 7 instead of 9 – but there would’ve been too much food even if those last two had shown up.<\/p>\n

After brunch I cleaned up for what seemed an inordinate amount of time, put all the furniture back, and packed up all the cookies – except a few small containers of select favorites for us (baby ruggelach<\/a>, apricot jam stars<\/a>, and spoon cookies<\/a>) to take to the food pantry where I’m serving breakfast tomorrow morning. I made small Ziploc bags with 6-12 cookies in each. I figure we can put them put on the rack with the bread for the food pantry customers, and they can just grab a bag. Or two. Or three.<\/p>\n

I’m trying to have high hopes for 2018. I’ve always been a believer in the superstition that as the first day of the year goes, so the rest of your year goes. On the overly personal level, I have not exercised enough today – so don’t want to carry that through the year. It’s so cold and I wasn’t done cleaning until after 4:00 and it was already getting dark, so I did not go out and walk. On the positive side, I had a pleasant meal and conversation with friends, so good deal if I can keep that happening. And maybe I got more exercise than I think, bringing the table leaves and chairs and plates and etc. up from the basement and down again.<\/p>\n

I’ve also been thinking back to last January, of pussyhats and marching, for New Year’s optimism.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Fingers crossed. Happy New Year!<\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We had a pretty quiet New Years Eve. We walked down to our local good Italian restaurant, Lombardino’s, for a late dinner – the reservation choices were 5:00 PM or 8:45, so we took the 8:45. Even with the reservation we had to wait almost 20 minutes for our table – they were that busy. … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1503,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4,132],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-ds83473gmail-com","4":"post-2838","6":"format-standard","7":"has-post-thumbnail","8":"category-blogpost","9":"post_tag-happy-new-year","10":"post_tag-protest-march"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2838"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2846,"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2838\/revisions\/2846"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debslunch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}