For the last few years, I have hosted my immediate neighbours for lunch on New Years Day. We all seem to enjoy ourselves, and it’s fast becoming a tradition. I’ve got the biggest dining room and the most chairs, so it makes sense for me to be the host. Each household brings a course, so that no one person has to do all the cooking, which seems to work well.
Yesterday I dusted off the “good” wineglasses, napkins and cutlery – all wedding presents which don’t get a lot of use, as I don’t in general host many dinner parties. I cooked some really creamy dauphinois potatoes, and Delia’s braised red cabbage & apple, which is pretty much idiot-proof and tastes really good. We had a homemade cream of tomato soup, a baked ham (for the meat eaters) and a nut roast (provided by the vegetarian couple next door), followed by a really yummy lemon cheesecake from my neighbour over the road.
It was a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon. Thank goodness for dishwashers though – otherwise I think I’d still be doing the washing up!
Happy New Year.
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I just wanted to wish you a very happy new year and to say that it is lovely that you seem happy. Your blog with Chris was so very helpful to me at a very horrible time, my father also suffered from the same cancer and the bravery of you both helped me immensely. I hope that you don’t feel that my message is inappropriate in any way, I send you very best wishes. Elly
Happy New Year to you too, Elly. Chris would have been so pleased to know that our blog was helpful to you. That’s why he was determined to talk about what was happening. Best wishes to you too. I’m actually looking forward to 2019, which has to be a good thing.