New Years

Happy 2015!!!    We planned to ring it in at home and did ring it in within our block.   We were surprised with 2 separate invitations from our neighbors to join them in their celebrations, next door was having a few people over and two doors down was having a full-on party.    We happily joined each of the groups - hanging out next door and then our whole group going over to ring in the new new year at the party.   We are so glad to get to know our neighbors a little better, we are much the same age and all in similar places in life so we hope to spend more time with them this year!

Our last dinner of 2014 was delicious, K had the idea to try to replicate a meal we'd had at union kitchen and we did a pretty good job of it -- a steak placed on top of a polenta cake and arugula.   It was our first time to make polenta and arugula and it all turned out great! We already have ideas on how to improve but not a bad first try!

Lessons learned (recipes we used are linked):

Polenta -- next time we want to pan fry it to make it crispy

Arugula - we way underestimated how much we needed, when it wilts it gets small.  I was not sure if the ounces were weight or volume, definitely weight (should've used the whole bag). Silly measurement system using the same unit of measure to mean VERY different things....

I hope you all had a great start to your new year!    Even Smokey had a better start since being in the city limits fireworks are not allowed, our last house would sound like a war zone for days and the poor guy would end up scared out of his mind....