(no subject)

[lsanderson]

Hair-of-the-Dog at my house. I had a lot of help from friends. I was just a wee bit hung over and I was trying to get this computer up and running. I started it at 3:00, and had most of the food out by 3:30 or 4:00.

Bought too much cheese. We didn't go through one block. I got off to a slow start. I never did get the taramasalata made. Skipped the chocolate fondue again this year. Laura and David brought me a birthday cake. Several people also ate plum pudding. (I didn't make hard sauce this year, so I served it with brandy and rum. Could not find the cinnamon for the family sauce.)

I didn't expect a very big turnout because New Years was mid-week, but a lot of people came.

I bought a lot of brussel sprouts (5#?), and they ate almost all of them cold. They were steamed briefly, cooled, and tossed with toasted sesame seeds in almond oil, sugar and soy sauce. The liver pate from two pints of chicken livers vanished. Two pieces of smoked salmon, a smoked white fish, one trout. A lot of the herring vanished. I think I had seven types: plain pickled, pickled with dill, dill cream, mustard, spicy, matjes, and sherry. Ingebretsen's is just a great place! They smoke their own salmon and ham. I stopped at Coastal Seafood, but the store was five deep in bodies, and it's a small store to start with. They didn't have much smoked fish, although they did have gravlax that I could buy. The previous two years, I've bought a side of salmon, but I went with the smoked from Ingebretsen's this year.

The white asparagus from Lunds wasn't as good as it looked, and most of it was left along with various veggies. I bought a big bunch of bread from the French Meadow. Two loaves of bread out of six were left. The day before I went over to get some bread for the MNSTF New Year's Eve party, and the only bread they had left was the chocolate. (The two people ahead of me in the line took the last two loaves of their peasant bread!) I've got olives, nuts, chex-mix, some vegies, one bag of pita bread went, and one remained. Most of the fruit was left. I saw a few people eat tangerines. The choco fondue would have moved more of that.  Guac from four avocadoes. There was just a big left over. I forgot to put out the candied ginger. I want to get one bag out to my aunt Sandy...