2008 (and so it begins...)

I woke up early on New Year's day. I decided that, since I am alone in my house for a change, a bacon and egg breakfast sounded pretty good. Along with some buttered rye toast, it made a satisfying start to a new year. I turned on the TV (for a change) and left it on all morning while I worked.

Jake and Carla called to wish me a new year and described their breakfast: potato latkes
topped with taragon cr�me and smoked salmon. That's when it hit me! My father always would eat like, tuna fish or something, on New Year's Day morning. He said it was a German custom that brought you good luck in the coming year. Damn! I forgot! Now Jake and Carla will have good luck and I'll have bumpkiss! Oh, well, good for them, bad for me...

The house is looking a bit shabby, so I got out the vacuum cleaner and sucked up Caley's cat hair from every room, then cleaned the two bathrooms and the kitchen. I did a load of clothes and then folded and/or hung them up.

The ladies returned from their overnight adventure around 12:30 PM. We visited for a while, and there were phone calls to and from Virginia, finalizing Sadie's return and pickup from the airport on Thursday. Lu checked with the hospital and found her mother's next test will be Wednesday morning. She also chatted with her Mom for a while. And so the afternoon passed.

We played Scrabble, with Sadie winning, Luanne second and me a miserable third (well, I think we were all within 20 points or so of each other).

Now its dinner time. Luanne wanted "comfort food" (vegetarian comfort food, of course. Comfort food to me is meatloaf or liver and onions, etc.). Sadie peeled three sweet potatoes and I cut them into cubes (short work with the Shun). I cut up some unpeeled Yukon gold potatoes (for mashed potatoes), while Luanne prepared the two salmon filets I thawed for baking - she sealed them in tinfoil with garlic powder and crushed, dried rosemary.

I had bought the wrong kind of pineapple for the sweet potato mixture Luanne wanted (chunks, not crushed) but I pulsed them in the food processor and made them "crushed" in a minute or so. I heated up some milk and a half stick of butter to add to the mashed potatoes.

Not knowing the right ratio of crushed pineapple to sweet potato, I let Lu mashed and combine them to her liking. While she was mashing, she did the potatoes, too. I cut up a lemon and made my fish sauce (mayonnaise, sour cream and horseradish) for me (they don't use lemons or sauces on fish).

Finally everything was ready, so we ate heartily. It was all very good. I cleaned up and ran the dishwasher after they both had showered. Meanwhile, we all sat in the living room, reading our respective books.

I started yawning about 8:30 PM and gave up and went to bed around 9:00 PM.

Happy New Year, to all my faithful (and even my faithless) readers!