New Year's Feast!

We played it pretty low-key for New Year's Eve this year: we stayed home and had our 2nd annual New Year's Feast!

MK and I aren't ones to make a big fuss about New Year's. When I was a kid it was a lot of fun to get to stay up until MIDNIGHT (!!!!), but other than that, it's not a "holiday" I get into. Personally, I think way too much is made of it, especially around resolutions.
But I digress.

This year we were supposed to head down to the Cape to hang out with our friends and go to First Night in Chatham. However, I was lying on my bed, watching a movie, and MK came in and said, "Have you seen what it's doing outside?", pulled back the curtain, and showed me the snow coming down. So, that was that. Our friend confirmed that the weather was equally, if not more, crappy down in Chatham - it was raining. I could handle walking around in snow, but not in the rain.

So we ended up taking a quick trip to Whole Foods (and may or may not have sneaked in a showing of Sherlock Holmes), and picked up a bunch of delicious food for our New Year's Feast! (This is a slightly obscure reference to those Snickers commercials where the guy dressed up like Henry VIII, and drove around in the car with a bunch of other random characters.)

Last year, we celebrated New Year's with a wine and cheese "party" of two, that also included mushroom turnovers and puff pastry straws. This year, our spread include smoked Italian meats, cheeses, mushroom toasts, and some tasty drinks.



For meat, we had coppa - kind of like prosciutto - and salame toscano, which is probably one of my favorite things to eat right now. A bunch of thin slices in a crusty French roll, and I'm in heaven!



We had four different kinds of cheeses - Parmigiano-Reggiano (authentic), Robusto (no clue what this is - was close to cheddar), Manchego, and some type of goat's cheese. MK actually specifically picked out a garlic-herbed goat's cheese in the hopes that he could get me to try it (it worked).



Lastly, I made a mushroom toasts appetizer, which is sauted mushrooms with butter, sherry, thyme, and sage. We picked up some gorgeous shiitakes and chanterelles for this dish. I'll be posting the recipe for this soon - it's delicious!