New Year's Eve

Luke and I had a dozen or so friends over to his house for dinner on New Year's Eve--a last minute decision based on the fact that nobody had invited us anywhere. We planned a menu of food guaranteed to ensure good luck in the coming year: Bobby Flay's hoppin' John risotto with smoked bacon, cabbage salad, pork tenderloin and biscuits, and two kinds of fondue--beer/cheese and chocolate. I'm not sure what's lucky about fondue, but I had salvaged a fondue set from my grandpa's garage sale last summer and was determined to put it to use.

Everything was quite tasty except for the parmesan cheese sticks that I forgot were in the oven until the house filled up with smoke. Our guests were kind enough to help us open all the windows and to ignore the alarms that kept going off at intervals for the rest of the evening.