Food, Fun, Fizz

New Year’s Eve was great fun – Adrian and Marion came over [with a bottle of Moet and a trifle] and our neighbour Alwyn joined us [bearing a sticky toffee pudding] Bob had turned all our leftovers into an amazing Chinese buffet. As usual I forgot to photograph the food before we started eating – but here are the half empty dishes – beef in a chilli sauce, pork in a ginger sauce, plain chicken with soy dipping sauce, egg fried rice, noodles, and a selection of spring rolls/sweet’n’sour parcels from Aldi. And those superb puds…

The food was lovely, we laughed a lot, and played Cranium – which is good fun because it gives everyone a chance to show off their best game-playing skills. The challenges include drawing, sculpting play-doh, charades, humming, general knowledge…

…here is Marion recreating the Millennium Dome…

We wanted to keep the buffet hot –so I had to improvise something, as unlike Victoria Wood’s Freda, I do not possess a Hostess Trolley. I took two roasting pans, put 4 tea lights inside each, and then balanced foil covered oven shelves on top. I stood the pans on table mats, and put the food in pyrex dishes. This worked really well- but people devoured the food like the Assyrians coming down like the wolf upon the fold, so it didn’t need to be kept hot for very long! [I suspect this was due to Bob’s excellent cooking – it all got eaten up!]

We watched the end of Jools Hootenanny, toasted the new year with the Moet, and then enjoyed the London fireworks on TV. The guests left, and we fell into bed around 1pm. I hope that your New Year Celebration was good fun too. And now it is early nights for me, for the next few weeks, I think!!