Happy New Year 2.0

I love January 2nd, the day I turn the page on the year gone by, and finish up the black eyed peas and greens from New Year’s Day, and rebook my financial records with new folders for the monthly bills and such — what? You say it’s January 8th, not January 2nd? Oh. Well, yes, actually you are correct about that.

I’m having a re-do, calendar-wise, because I missed my January 2nd-3rd Good Start the first time around. Due to a major deadline January 5th, I just kept chugging along in an extended December until I got the work done and in. I reconfigured my calendar to be more of a December 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, and so on, until I got to DONE!

Now mind you, I didn’t miss the holiday fun part: We celebrated New Year’s Eve, watching Times Square on tv and eating meatballs and chicken wings and this:

My friend Bill Smith told me that eating 12 grapes at midnight, one for each month of the New Year, was a luck-magnet, and that is what we did. So far, it’s working!

Then we cooked the lucky foods for New Year’s Day and ate ’em up for lunch:

Turnip greens with turnips… and crowder peas with ham hocks,

and there was rice to bring it all together into a Good Luck Plate. But we wanted to make sure we had the luck thing covered, so we locked in a good luck year by meeting my friend Jackie Gordon at @Mama Dip‘s Kitchen for Mrs. Mildred Council’s annual New Year’s Day DInner, which looked like this:

Roast pork, black eyed peas, collard greens, and candied yams, with cornbread or biscuits and we had both. Sweet tea, too. We had the best time, and can’t wait for Jackie’s next visit to NC. She is SO MUCH FUN!

And then it was back to work, with the day after January 1st being, for me, December 32nd. Still on Deadline, still finishing things that started in 2014, and I kept my head down and my gameface/workface on EXCEPT for that one little other time, December 33rd, known to most people as January 3rd, we did go indulge in a holiday celebration family dinner out at a treasure of a restaurant which is just a little ride through the country to the historic and charming next town of Hillsborough NC, to dine at Panciuto, where everything was extraordinarily lovely and delicious and 97% local, they keep track and do it with heart, but this ordered by the youngest member of our party, was stellar and enchanting:

Pumpkin-amaretti ravioli, honey, wilted spinach, pumpkin oil, spiced pumpkin seeds, parmesan

So on we went with Extended December,until I finished it up and sent it in, and then Actual January 6th was Celebration/Got It DONE!/Epiphany/Twelfth Day of Christmas, and we went over to a place we love and visit often, Crook’s Corner  to visit with Crook’s Chef  and all-around Good Soul, Chef Bill Smith (who told me about the 12 grapes, remember?) and we had the best time eating this:

 which is Bill’s famous pate, both the creamy and the chunky, along with perfection purple onion jam at high noon, and Jezebel sauce at 6 o’clock. What is Jezebel sauce, you may ask? And I didn’t even know either,  so I looked it up on the fabulous and essential website:

The Food Timeline.Org

which you should bookmark because this is the place to find out food things in detail and depth, from the brilliant and tenacious Lynne Olver, Culinary Historian, Librarian Extraordinaire, who knows or will find out. 

And now I am Getting Back To Work, making new folders, setting up the files, paying post-Christmas bills, gathering Christmas stockings dish towels and tablecloths and putting them in laundry if needed and boxes if not, and checking calendar and all the things we do on this day, January 2nd.

Tomorrow I plan to rejoin the rest of the world, and jump from Jan. 2 to Jan. 9th, so that I can be on time and task and on board for all that this year has in store for me. This is a wish from me to you for a good new chapter, a sweet start, a door opening and a calendar page beckoning with what you most love to do. Happy 2015, one and all!

This sunrise greeted me the day I finished my project and sent it in. Good sign of a good new year.  Hope yours is too.