December 31, 2025 Breakfast - Granola. Snack - Fruit tamales Lunch - Leftover Carne Adovado with beans. Dinner - S’mores at the chimInia and cold crab and lobster salad

December 31, 2025 Breakfast - Granola. Snack - Fruit tamales Lunch - Leftover Carne Adovado with beans. Dinner - S’mores at the chimInia and cold crab and lobster salad

I ate granola with the last of the blueberries in the morning around 9:00. Then at 10:00 I drove to Costco to shop for New Year’s Eve food and other things t replenish our larder.

I bought 18 bottles of wine, 8 Albariño, four Gran Reserva Riojas, a Malbec for Willy, 2 Gruet Rose Champagne, 2 Gruet Blanc de Blanc and a Kirkland Chianti Classico. The Gruet and one of the Gran Reserva were on sale at $9.99 and Albariño is our favorite with the painting of a fish on the label.

For dinner I bought fresh crab sections and three cooked lobsters. I could not resist buying the lobsters because they were 11.99 per pound. I also bought blueberries, mushrooms, a 3 liter bottle of Spanish olive oil, and a 1/2 kilo wheel of Iseny sur Mer brie at the ridiculous price of $4.97.

 Then I drove home and Willy helped unload the wine at 11:30.

I ate two fruit tamales and then around 12:00 drove to El Super where I bought blue corn tortillas, sour cream, requeson, and  grated cojita cheese, plus milk, two large avocados, 5 Bosc pears, celery, carrots, brown, onions, sweet potatoes, and chicken quarters. Most of these items were bought to replenish our mirepoix ingredients and to prepare chicken enchiladas.

I returned home at 1:15 just in time to watch the Citrus Bowl from Orlando between Michigan and Texas.  I ate the leftover carne adovado and beans wrapped in corn tortillas and drank a Negra Modelo as the two teams struggled in the first half. Finally in the second half Texas started rushing the Michigan quarterback and Michigan’s passing attack faltered and Texas won after several interceptions.

So I was thrilled that both of my Alma maters had won their bowl games and I had walked over 4000 steps.

Suzette arrived around 3:00 with a bag of marshmallows and wanted to build a fire in the chiminia to make s’mores. I asked to wait until the Game ended. Suzette went out and built the fire and gathered chocolate bars and graham crackers.

By the end of the game it was almost dark at 5:30 when we went lit the fire and pulled up chairs to the chiminia. Suzette had brought the wrought iron steak flipper we bought at Routs Market when we were last in Pennsylvania in August. Its two 2 inch prongs were the perfect utensil to roast two marshmallows. Suzette commented that we had a rather complete battery of utensils for cooking and we all agreed. No more twisted coat hangers for our s’more cooking sessions.

After about an hour of sitting and watching the fire burn down to coals and eating a few s’mores we went back inside for our New Year’s Eve dinner. 

Before dinner and during dinner prep, we cored, peeled and sliced the five pears and Suzette mixed them with thawed cooked quince slices we prepared last September and added a glass or two of French Pineau and made a pastry dough and rolled it out and folded it at the edges and filled the cavity with pear and quince slices and baked it in the oven and reduced sugar, butter, and pineau to a thick caramel which she used to decorate the tart that we will serve for dessert at the lunch tomorrow.

Dinner - Suzette fetched the largest steel Chinese platter and I began cutting romaine lettuce, a tomato, a cucumber, dill pickles, pickled sweet red peppers, and an avocado to fill half the platter while Suzette snapped and steamed a handful of asparagus and hard boiled five eggs. I also rejuvenated the tartare sauce by adding another dill pickle minced, some mayonnaise, some sour cream, some lemon juice, some capers, and some minced shallot. After Suzette sliced an egg and added the asparagus to the platter we added the crab sections and three lobsters I had bought at Costco for a magnificent platter of cold seafood salad for our dinner. 

Then when we added the rejuvenated tartare sauce to the platter we took it to the table in the TV room and opened the bottle of Gruet 2014 Gilbert Grand Reserve we had chilled in the freezer for several hours. The Gilbert was a magnificent bottle of champagne with tiny persistent bubbles and a rich nutty aged chardonnay flavor. It was a joy to drink it from our special blown glass glasses we bought at Murano many years ago. 

We then began to pick the meat out of the crabs and lobsters and to make lettuce wraps of tomato, avocado, sauce, egg slices, and cucumber. We filled bowls with the meat that we did not eat. As we ate we watched CNN’s Times Square programming with Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen and a cast of reporters and singers from across the nation from California to New Orleans. Andy’s humor was a little raunchy for me at times that I dismissed as gay drunk talk.

Finally at 10:00 when all the seafood had been picked we toasted each other and the New Year at the stroke of midnight in New York with all those assembled in Time Square. 

We put up what we did not eat and the bowls of crab and lobster awaiting their time to be turned into lobster bisque and salad or Thermidor and crab soufflé (my favorite), crab omelets, and crab salad in the next few days.

Also today Suzette finished cooking the beef broth that we will use to make Onion Soup and salad for lunch tomorrow when Ari, Luke, and Amber return from Santa Fe.

Soon after 10:00 Suzette and I were on our way to bed and Willy was considering how and with whom to celebrate New Year’s in Albuquerque.

It was a wonderful day of shopping, cooking and eating a magnificent seafood and champagne dinner that is our usual manner of welcoming in the new year.

The market went down slightly today after a positive start. Probably the smart money closing positions before a long holiday weekend.

Bon Appetit