Add a big pot of black eyed peas to be served at midnight and you'll be good to go! I make it easy and buy canned "Glory Foods" black-eyed peas, and then add a bit of brown sugar and a ham hock and some water and cook them very slowly for a few hours. Serve with corn bread (you can use Jiffy mix) and honey and butter and lots of freshly ground pepper for the black eyed peas. I doctor up the Jiffy cornbread mix with sour cream and honey - very moist and very tasty.

• 2 boxes Jiffy cornbread mix
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 3 Tablespoons honey
• 2 eggs

Pozole

We do nibbles for New Year's too, but logistics are saying New Year's Day, which is different.

Your pizza assembly line sounds very efficient. How do you account for teen boy appetites?

For new year's day we will be having Alaskan king crab legs and lobster tails, but I think NYE will be more interesting. The crab legs and lobster tails happened to be on sale today.

Plllog, it's pretty much one thin crust pizza per teen boy.

I make them rectangular so they fit in half sheet pans, that way I don't have to own lots of round pizza pans. Stretch the dough to shape, then use a rolling pin to flatten and thin the dough, prick all over with a fork so the dough doesn't balloon when par-cooking (sort of like how you'd perforate matzo).

Goal is a 1/4" crisp crust and to be able to hold each topped slice horizontal at one end, with the slice only drooping a bit. You get to try lots of different pizzas without consuming too much dough.

Toppings are set out and those guests who are so inclined can assemble their own pizza. The kids come up with some weird ones.

Probably will have a large salad or two as well. A bar of Italian soda flavors and lots of fizzy water (sodastream) so the kids can have fun making drinks.

Maybe we'll come up with additional nibbles but I'm pretty much cooked out - and eaten out too. Dim sum this morning was the last straw, I feel pretty ready to eat plain, simple, light food for January.

DD is on a redeye flight to NYC tonight and will spend a week with our "French daughter" who lives there. You may remember her from our Christmas in Carpentras, France a couple years ago. Without DD to hunt through cookbooks and come up with interesting dishes to try, it's time for a diet!

We like a very low key Nye on our own after all the hectic xmas festivities so we'll have some oysters, foie gras, then I brought a ham back from England so we'll have that with Madeira sauce and some veg, cheese and salad and DH will buy a cake from our boulanger.

I'll be working,so nothing special. I will just grab something on the way. I just cooked a monster feast for my mom's Christmas party on saturday,so I'm done with the kitchen for a few days.

We go to friends. They live around the corner, so we walk.

I am taking some bacon brown sugar kielbasa and cupcakes. My cupcakes are expected. Just not sure what kind(s) I'll make today.

Going to a party that goes from 2 pm to 2 am... but I will be leaving well before midnight, as I don't want to be on the road with revelers. (I'm thinking of leaving by 8.) Everyone brings snacks/appetizers (I will be bringing two types of hummus and those scoopable tortilla chips). So, it will be mostly finger food.

The hosts are hosting live chamber music, many of their guests (and the host) play a variety of instruments, and at least two places in their house will be set up for gathering and playing (and listening, in my case)

This is the first year they've hosted this on New Years Eve, usually it has been mid-December.

I plan to be asleep when the ball or apple or whatever drops. I'll see tomorrow, tomorrow.

Tomorrow I am having leftover black eyed pea and collard green soup/stew. Gotta welcome in some luck!

Making another batch of tamales for tomorrow so we'll have a couple tonight and snack on the veg, salads, and cheeses that are keeping our fridge stuffed even after all the holiday cooking. We had some Christmas Day with Peruvian Aji sauce...

I wasn't feeling the black eyed peas and greens this year so I'm making fried rice. Turns out rice is also considered good luck.

NYC for newYears?! That should be festive...the city is pretty this time of year. My commute across mid-town at sunrise. I'll be in TimesSquare Thursday and not looking forward it. : )

Friday will be rather sane (indoors) if they want to visit for a tour an hour or so...

John, I just sent a pm...first for me so hope it connected.

We always have Chinese takeout at my mom's for New Year's Eve, along with all the Christmas cookies & things for sweets. And I make cheese straws so I can make a pig of myself with them.

Can't believe I just spent almost $300 at Costco, plus $3.00 for two hot dogs for lunch.

Actually that's not a lot of food for $300. King crab legs are $23 a lb.

Now I still have to buy wine and cheese and veggies and desserts!

Happy New Year to all.

dcarch

Update: I'm not on the hook for New Year's Day dinner or tonight's nibbles, and I'm hoping to rest up my ankle and do nothing! Most of what I'd been planning is either in the freezer or fridge untouched. Obligation free is a great way to start the year. :)

John, your pizza schematics sound righteous. I can usually manage a couple of teen boys, but when they get together their appetites seem to multiply exponentially. Your formula sounds manageable!

The salads sound like a good idea. Past that nice counterpoint, what more could you want? The whole point of pizza is it covers all food groups. :)

Cupcakes are done. Went with a spiced chocolate with eggnog buttercream and a vanilla buttermilk with chopped TJ's Amarena cherries in half and then all are frosted with cherry buttercream.

We aren't headed over until between 7-8, so in about an hour I think I'll put a couple frozen pizza's in the oven for a snack.

Need to make the kielbasa, but am trying to get the cleaning done, so I don't have to do it tomorrow.

dcarch, food sure can be costly!

Slicing, crumbling, pre-cooking the toppings now. Four regular pizzas (8 of my thin ones) worth of store bought dough rising. It feels nice to be ahead. I'm even going to take a nap before people arrive. Party animal, yup.

We were lucky. We had several neighbors who we were best friends with and were all in our 60s, so we walked down to the house, had a light dinner and some wine and went home by bout 7:30!

Now we live across town and, though we are in walking distance of some great fun on the square, it's supposed to be very windy tonight! Brrrrrrrr.

Home to watch the NY fireworks!

Didn't make it to dessert. Am becoming a lightweight......in the eating stakes anyway!

Happy New Year to you all!

And that's a wrap on 2018 holiday cooking. It's thin gruel, healthy veg and one pot meals for the next month!

Sleevendog, I don't know how PMs work on Houzz, don't know how to read /send them on my phone. Want to just email me? My username (johnliu) at "earthlink". That's a dot-net address.

I'll send an e-mail John. Mine is an optonline.net just in case it registers as 'junk'.

Fun tamale party and made a fresh batch of PeruvianGreen. Served on a 'firework' salad.

New Year's Eve party here consisted of two cats, two dogs, three kids and my Mother. Kids had tacos, tortilla chips with salsa and chocolate chip cookies, Mother had broccoli cheese soup. Amanda and Dave drove 2 hours North to Traverse City to watch the ball drop, something Amanda has never done. It was cancelled due to the storm, so they stayed in the hotel by the fireplace and watched the ball drop on TV, just like we did.

At Midnight I gathered everyone in the living room, we counted down and then I told everyone to go to bed, I'd had all the fun I could stand. Bud was still awake at 1:30 am, the dogs both wanted out and Mother needed pain meds for her back. The girls were giggling with friends on Instagram at 3 am. I woke them up this morning at 7 when I got up and made them pancakes and bacon.

I've never made tamales, although I used to buy them from the mother of one of my interns. She was Hispanic and sold them by the dozen to make extra cash, my girls loved them.

Annie

Ooo, will you consider starting a thread with your tamale recipe?

We had some people over. Fewer than expected, which was okay with me. The kids played cards on their own. The adults drank wine and beer, and played games including "Catchphrase", a fun and fastpaced game where two teams take turns guessing a phrase while a timer counts down. We had trouble naming the teams, no-one wanted to be be "team 2" and then a proposal for "red and blue" teams ran afoul of political sensitivities, so we settled on "Sharks" and "Jets". I put on the "West Side Story" soundtrack and brought out my switchblade as a prop. The Sharks killed the Jets, by the way.

The game included a standup comedian (Jet), a guy who owns an improv comedy company (Jet), a woman who does something at the local hospital and is an actress on the side (Jet), a guy who used to produce local music shows and is now a substitute teacher at a high school (Shark), a woman who has a "meditative archery" business (Jet), my friend who works at a bike tool manufacturing company (Shark), etc.

We all shared enough cultural referents that the team guessing worked pretty well. This sort of guessing game really depends on shared referents; someone from another culture or generation would have a hard time. The catchphrases that were music related were easy because you just sang or hummed the tune. "Wild Thing" was harder because that tune is un-hummable, but "Jimi song, you make my heart sing" did it. But no one under forty would get that. Some catch phrases were more arcane and harder. No one got "junk bond" before the buzzer sounded.

At midnight the kids were in the street lighting off fireworks. We played the song I've celebrated New Years with for 30-odd years now - "Auld Lang Syne" by Jimi Hendrix at the Fillmore East. Then the dishwasher ran a few cycles and I was in bed by 1!

I think I did a tamale party thread a couple years ago but it may have not had a proper header. I do have a photo file on my desktop and links who taught me.

(I do not use lard!)...not necessary.

The Peruvian Aji sauce is the new brilliant addition.

Annie, that sounds exhausting but fun. Children love me probably because I never matured enough to have my own. : ) ...I had seven here Christmas Eve. Glued to me. we made baby grilled cheese with different innards, their choice and a couple TandT.

I will crash one of johnliu's parties at some point. BIL and new wife live just around the corner from the 'Portlandia' book store. Similar home with a new built pottery studio out back. (and she teaches yoga). Not so new being ten years since they moved from Olympia. He taught special education for 20yrs and now consults new young teaches. So complicated with new medications and diagnoses.

January the past couple years has been veg noodle bowls, Pho, brothy soups, low on meats and cheeses and breads...last year so good it stretched into February.

Same plan this year....

We missed it binge watching the second season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. :) At about half past midnight, it was, oh, look! It's next year. Then we went back in for another episode. Not a lively holiday, but a fun way to couch potato in the new year.

John, your analysis of the game made me laugh because of a very old memory. I had these friends when I was very young who would insist on playing party games, at their house, with dozens of people in one big group. One year it was Pictionary. A lovely young Latin American woman (I can't remember which country she was from) could not get her team to understand what she drew. To her, it was a commonly known title. I was practically quivering because it was so darned obvious, and I did get to steal it in the end. It was a Poe title. It wasn't the a mismatch of common cultural referents, per se, that blocked her team. It was the lack of any cultural referents, either literary or bad Vincent Price/Roger Corman flicks. :)

P.S., the secret to humming Wild Thing is to go for rhythm and intonation rather than melody.

John Liu, that sounds like a lot of fun but I can't even imagine trying to hum "Wild Thing"!

Sleevendog, it WAS fun, but tiring. Mother, Makayla, Kaylynn and I played Wordie Wars. I was best at Thesaurus Rex, Makayla was the "proofer", and Mother was the surprise Word Nerd. Bud just wanted to eat cookies. The kids all like me because I'm just another playmate, and one that can bake cookies.

I think I remember the tamale "tutorial", I'm going to look for it again...

Annie

"I will crash one of johnliu's parties at some point. BIL and new wife live just around the corner from the 'Portlandia' book store."

That would be great! Let me know when you're in town. I forwarded your email to DD. BIL - wait, is he still a BIL given new wife? - must live in the Albina area of Portland. I like that area a lot.

BIL is husbands brother...I never know what to call relations, lol. I used to think the 'D' in a DH was 'designated' as if stuck with it or assigned. haha

DD just sent me a text. Looks like we will met up Friday. Fun. Love our youth. Many young assistants at work and from all nationalities. (I promise not to hire her on the spot to never see her again).

Annie, not sure you will like the texture of a tamale....like polenta, cream-of-wheat, risotto, wet cornbread...

I will post the Peruvian Aji sauce. Great on everything and zero calories!

sleevendog, I already know that I don't like the masa part of the tamales, I never did eat them, other than tearing them apart and eating the filling. But my girls and Elery LOVE them, so maybe, one of these days I'll make some for them. His Mother actually used to make tamales, she and her sisters would get together and make a day of it, then freeze the tamales to eat until the next time they found a day to make tamales.

I'd also love the recipe for the sauce. I'm a heat wuss, but you know Elery loves that kind of stuff, the hotter the better.

Annie

Annie, I have a trick for the sauce that pleases all non-heat and heat-lovers...and the cilantro 'soap'-haters. A parsley/lemon version... so easy to please all the palates.

(and just put the smoked pulled pork filling in a lettuce wrap or a tortilla....or in the corn husks sans masa)....use mashed winter squash.

So use squash in place of the masa? I definitely have squash, LOTS of it!

Annie

I agree! The winter squash sounds great. I've had Salvadoran tamales with winter squash mixed with the masa, but more squash than masa. I can certainly see using just squash. The texture of the tamale can be as firm or soft as you like, but I can't imagine Annie liking masa any way it's made considering it's just rich mush. :)

We finally did some celebrating with friends this year! We cooked, played dominoes, watched a movie, and actually stayed up until midnight, lit sparklers, sang Auld Lang Syne, and popped a cork on some champagne. Dinner was a delicious curried potato and pea dish with home made spinach artichoke dip and corn chips plus salad. But dessert was the best, I had some pears that needed to be used up so made pear upside down cake. A favorite of mine that I rarely make.

That looks great. A happy 2019 to you, lpink!

Yes, that looks great. One of my childhood first baking challenges. up-side down anything I could dream up.

John, your gorgeous talented brilliant daughter will make you tamales. Eventually. The few short hours we spent together was non-stop fun. I miss her already, : )

I could spend a month with her and maybe get around to making tamales.

Tamales do not have to take an entire weekend. I roast or smoke a couple fresh pork shoulder/butts a month or two or a week ahead. And freeze enjoying some fresh shredded seasoned in tacos, etc right away.

I'm pretty zippy prepping ahead all ingredients, then the 'making of' is fast. Tamale parties can be fun but takes forever taking the time to teach. I just want it over with.

5 dozen pre-christmas took about an hour with an hour prep. Two dozen fat ones for NewYears about an hour total. The only annoyance was the ones for the freezer did not seal properly for some reason and had to be FoodSavored all over again.

I'll post my tutorial photos when you need them or Kate could e-mail me. Another good project for the two of you to make together! They freeze fantastic. Just put into a steamer basket from 45-1 hour.