Happy New Year!

My all time favorite way to spend the last evening of a year is with good friends at my or a friends home!

I was lucky enough that some of my friends had time to come round for a nice 4 course dinner everybody had contributed to!


Laurie & Kurt and Frank & Laura, Roxanne behind Lila visiting before dinner.

People regularly seem to be surprised, when they first encounter my domestic side. The other day I threw a few simple things for a card evening together and a friend asked me what was going on and whether I had been overdosing on the food network. (I don't have cable, I need to get recipes the old fashioned way, through the internet...)

I am messy and the number of things I'd rather do than spend time cleaning is infinite. But I really like to cook and I really like to set a nice table. Maybe that's a bit of a European thing too, but for a festive occasion a several course sit down meal is quite the standard. It is fun though to mix it up with the more American way of a buffet style meal and alternate between one and enjoy the variety.

Funny thing: I used to think that having sweet and savory food touching on the plate is just gross. In fact my brother who had vacationed in the US quite a bit used to tell me horror stories about breakfasts with sausages and bacon on the same plate as pancakes and people pouring sweet syrup on top of it all. (99% of Europeans will shudder violently) as they read this. And then I saw Swedish meatballs and fresh fruit salad happily intermingling next to each other on my Iowan friend's plate, joyfully forming more and more complex marble patterns of opaque gray and brilliant reds, as the eater progressed. But I digress...just one more note, while I still, after nearly 6 years in the Midwest, can't see myself having meatballs and fruit salad on the same plate , I wouldn't hesitate a second to ladle big dollops of orange jello salad next to pretty much whatever :-)

Hurray! Scott (on the left) had arrived and the feast could begin!

Just to make sure that everybody knows I am not actually "downloading" a life from the internet I made Laurie take a picture, well actually Laurie made Kurt take a picture with me in it as well, just to prove I was there :-)

Aahh, after our leisurely meal, which lasted until about half past 10 we were all pretty mellow and leaning back to give our stomachs a little more space than they had needed a few hours earlier...

We had toasted the New Year as it reached the North American continent at 9.30 pm CST so those who wanted to beat the drunkards could slip out before midnight.

For the rest of us Garisson Keillor counted in the New Year. I take that as a sign that 2008 is going to be a very amusing year ;-)

It was a lovely evening! (Lila and Scott somehow never made it to either of the two parties they were invited to...)

Happy MMVIII !