My husband and I are pretty boring people. We find ourselves interesting to each other, but most on the outside would not call us very exciting people. For example, we have never gone out for New Year’s. We love to stay at home. We are homebodies. On New Year’s Eve, we love nothing more than to make a nice dinner, drink some champagne and chill in front of the TV. We don’t even stay up until midnight. I don’t know, I guess the “ball dropping” in Times Square has never impressed us.
A few years ago I decided to “liven things up” a bit and make something totally outrageous for our dinner – all appetizers! I know, right? Totally outrageous. Woo-hoo, Bryan and Dianne are livin’ it up! Anyways……..
Since I am apparently addicted to trying new recipes, I made a couple new ones this year. The Best Sweet and Sour Meatballs and Artichoke Stuffed Mushrooms. The meatballs were a featured recipe last week on AR and I thought they looked really easy, yummy and used ingredients I had on hand. I used ground chicken instead of beef. They turned out wonderful and I think I will be making them for an easy meal some night. Just add some frozen veggies and serve over rice. The stuffed mushrooms I’ve been wanting to make forever, I just needed the right occasion. They were as awesome as I imagined. I love both artichokes and mushrooms and they were just fabulous. And then of course we had to have our shrimp cocktail and champagne. Plain champagne is wonderful, but we really liked a drink I fixed last year called Poinsettias. I added a splash of triple sec last year and this year I added peach schnapps. You can add any sort of schnapps to champagne! Fizzy goodness.
Do you have any New Year’s Eve traditions? Do you go out and party or stay at home?
We usually go out (to a family member's house, big whoop), but we take the kiddos, and only stay out until 9 or 10. For the most part I would rather be home than anywhere else. I am a complete introvert. That is actually one of my goals for this year, among many others, to be more social.
I just stumbled across your Oh My Pie! entry on AR and was so excited to see you're from St. Cloud! I went to school up there and I'm now living and working down in Lakeville 🙂 What a crazy small world. And it looks like you've made two things that are on my To Make list for the year – stuffed mushrooms and caramel apple pie. Thanks for sharing your tips on the pie, can't wait to try it out.
Jessie-I'm an introvert too. It's hard being social, but I feel better when I do make an effort.
Programming Chef-Thanks for stopping by my blog! It is a small world, my sister and her family live in Lakeville too.
Hi, Dianne. AR's Hezzy-tant-Cook here. Our New Year's is pretty low-key as well, and USUALLY we do not stay up for the "ball drop" either. I like your idea of appetizers for a special evening at home. We popped the cork (pried off the cap) of sparkling cider and plopped strawberries into the crystal flutes for our toast to 2011. Dinner was an early one at the "tripped out" salad bar of our local Ruby Tuesdays. You better watch it, our exciting lifestyle may overtake yours, yet!
Hi Hezzy! Thanks for stopping by, nice to "see" you. I'm glad there are others out there who like being low-key too!