sustanance for the new year

Today, I cooked.

Made something sort of like this, except a tiny little roast and half a bottle of $15 wine, instead of the clearly insane amounts in the linked recipe. (Serves 8? 8 what? Lions? Prides of lions? Dinosaurs?)

Incidentally, I'm drinking a glass right now, and it is my considered opinion that $15 Spanish wine is more than 100% better than $8 American wine. This is delicious.

Note to self: buy this again

soon.

I made the tiny roast for a couple of friends - Eric had a gig, and I had asked a family over for dinner, but this morning the woman was feeling poorly and begged off. I volunteered to bring some dinner over, an offer she could not refuse. So I made the roast and carved it in half, and Ian and I took half over to their house, along with gravy and rice and asparagas and the pie below, plus a bottle of sparkling apple juice for a toast, and party hats left over from Ian's birthday. Yes, we're a party, wherever we go.

I had made this awesome pie, which is delicious and super-easy. (It's tart, though. You'll want to pick up some ice cream. Or whipped cream. That way, you can squirt some into your kids' mouth. Where did he learn that? All I know is, he saw the can of whipped cream as I was putting away the groceries, and followed me around, open mouth upturned like a baby bird, until I obliged him.) Back to the pie - I was so pleased with the way it came out that I stopped at the store on the way home and got another bag of apples and bag of cranberries and refrigerator-case pie dough, and I just made 2 more. Ian rode around the store in a prismatic party hat, saying "Happy New Year. Hey! HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOOOOOU!" to strangers.

It's so strange - he's so TOTALLY IMPOSSIBLE and then so damned exceptionally perfect in the space of a couple of hours. Like everyone else, I guess.

The roast came out quite good - I know, because we ate about half of our remaining half when we got home. Ian, who never likes anything, LOVED the roast and ate a ton of it.

When I got Ian ready for bed, I found that he had hidden a ballpoint pen and a raw cranberry in his diaper at some point during the afternoon. This explained two things - the 5 times he walked up to me this afternoon and said "Tummy hurts. Kiss it!" (because the point was drawing on him) and also the hilarity that resulted when I thought that the store was out of cranberries. Oh, Lord, did he think that was funny. We went through the aisles doing a little "Nooooo cranberries" call and response and giggling...only to find that we had at least one cranberry with us at all times. He's really perfect.

2006 was pretty close to the worst year of my life.

2007 has been pretty much the best.

I said to Ian as I wheeled him through the supermarket: "We're going to have so much fun in the new year!" He, of course, looked at me very seriously and said "No, no fun."

"You've gotta be kidding! Are you kidding me? You only think you know what fun is, buddy. By the end of 2008, I predict that you will say to me "I thought I was having fun before, but I had no idea! I didn't even know what fun was!"

So, hey, Happy New Year to Yoooooouuuu.