New Year’s Eve is about food. Is anything not about food?
This year, unlike most years, I’m full of resolution. Time to turn this thing around. Exercise! No sugar! Weight Loss! Make my own cleaning products! I have plans, people…
Which means I needed some kind of send-off. I received two cookbooks for Christmas: Simple Food by Alice Waters, which I asked for, and which I received at Thanksgiving when we were with my family. I also received Sauces and Shap
es, which is another great Italian cookbook, and super inspiring. I’m gonna make my own pasta!
Last year on New Year’s Eve was the great cavatelli and pork braciole feast, with the tomato sauce that simmered for hours. This year, I did that on Christmas Eve, when we had all the people on the farm over and I had “kids” to help make the cavatelli. We made a veggie and a meat sauce and did some serious plating and serving.
team cavatelli
I had sauce left, and even some pork, so all I needed for New Year’s was the ravioli. Oh yes, it would be ravioli.
I had a bunch of crazy fillings: crab/ricotta/spinach; prociutto/ricotta (the book said the basis of ravioli is ricotta); pesto. Of course, none of it stood up at all to the sauce and pork. I did love the pesto-filled ravioli, which is great, because I have lots of frozen pesto.
Not that I’m eating pasta anymore…
Today, I made a pot of miso soup. It can be reheated and eaten as needed to curb hunger. We’re going on a cleanse. And what are we cleansing from?
This was a fantastic week of food. In addition to the three daughters and assorted partners, Catherine’s friend Yasu was here from Switzerland, and had his mother send a food care package here from Japan. We had a miso night, a sushi night, and then came back to the Midwest with some farm pork chops, turnip and potato gratin and leftover cranberry-apple-walnut conserve. And day and night there were Christmas cookies.
ramen with three kinds of broth
The fridge is full now, with broccoli and smoothie fixings and kale. But don’t worry. I’m not going to suffer. There’s talk of sushi for dinner again tonight. (There’s no sugar in that, right?)
sushi table
Homer assembling the ramen
Yasu making the ramen