For the past several years, we’ve traveled to Europe over the Christmas holiday and returned on New Year’s Eve, in order to collect airline miles for the year about to end. So, New Year’s Eve in our family is often a jet-lagged stagger toward a 9:30 bed time, with a little “Happy New Year!” at midnight in the time zone from which we’ve just come. This year, we stayed home for Christmas, and while we’ve all had our moments of really missing the pace of the quaint European villages we’ve discovered over the years, we’ve discovered that staying home for the holidays has its own quaint and restful pace.
We’ll enter 2013 without jeg lag or any other form of sleep deprivation. That doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll make it past midnight tonight, but we’re OK with that! We’re hosting a little New Year’s Day open house tomorrow with the obligatory combination of games, football and foods for good luck, and that will be festive enough!
Here’s the menu:
cocoa and spice slow roasted pork and onions
black-eyed pea salad
roasted root vegetable hash
fresh-not-fermented sauerkraut with bratwursts
wheat and sesame sandwich rolls
Happy New Year!
