Hello 2022. And 2012. And 2010. And 1997. And 1995.
You might say we’re in a rut, as we ushered in 2024 with a menu of greatest hits from multiple past years. We prefer to say we value tradition. Or familiarity breeds happiness. Or if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Plus, this year we had a different excuse for returning to shrimp dip, Steak Diane, spinach pecan salad, Julia Child scalloped potatoes, green beans and breakfast bacon, egg and sausage casserole to bid adieu to 2023/welcome 2024.
After talking about it forever, 2023 was finally the year we put together a book of recipes our families have cooperatively assembled over decades past. When we discussed menu options for 2023/2024 festivities, Linda suggested drawing from the recipes in our cookbook, failing to realize this plan would lead to a wholesale repeat of last year’s feast. And all those other years, too.
So, yeah, we’re in a rut.
But we did bring a few new (mostly unintentional) twists to this year’s New Year’s Eve experience.
We had to carmelize the salad pecans twice, because Linda burned the first batch. Tom gloatingly took over Round 2, admittedly to perfection.
Tom and George nearly set us all on fire, flambeeing the Steak Diane sauce and the entire cooktop environment with an overabundance of brandy.
Vonnie had to visit multiple stores in search of the canned shrimp called for in the shrimp dip recipe. Upon discovering that tuna-size cans of itty bitty shrimp apparently no longer exist, she settled on a small hors d’ouvres tray of shrimp-and-cocktail-sauce to prepare the previously simple dip. This entailed removing the tails, chopping up the shrimp and tossing out the cocktail sauce. Not as simple as it used to be. Although at our ages, not much is any more.
As the clock ticked toward 11 p.m. and our eyelids began drooping, we made a late-breaking decision to mark the turn of the year in New York vs Kansas City time. As a result, Tom camping out on the sofa was the only one who witnessed the televised ball-drop, because the rest of us were still in the kitchen popping the cork on the celebratory pink prosecco.
Oh well.
Maybe next year, we’ll pretend we’re in Fiji, which is in a time zone 12 hours ahead of Kansas City. We can enjoy a lovely brunch and a mimosa toast at noon, then watch a football game or two instead of Ryan Seacrest and celebrities we don’t recognize participating in cringe-worthy antics on New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. We can thus be safely in our beds to slumber through the moment 2024 becomes 2025 in these parts, and spend the first day of the new year somewhat less sleep-deprived.
Or maybe we won’t change anything
(except maybe not try to flambee the house down). It’s warm and comfy here in
our rut, and as long as we’re in it together, it’s a very nice place to be.
