Happy New Year! Midnight was approximately eight minutes ago in Iowa, and I celebrated it in my usual Iowa fashion -- alone, in my pajamas, while my parents slept soundly in the living room. I believe that my brother is also asleep, since his closest friends weren't around this weekend either; if he's not asleep, he's certainly maintaining a deathly silence to keep me from knocking on his door.
It's certainly a fitting whimper-y end to 2010; for all that I had some v. memorable high points and a generally happy past few months, the year had an undercurrent of anxiety and defeat that I am more than ready to put behind me. That's perhaps putting it on too strong, since I'm thrilled that I quit my job, genuinely happy with the state of my relationships, and overall feeling healthier and more balanced than I have in ages. But, without a job to bitch about, my book is hanging over me more than usual, and my writing certainly didn't progress in 2010 as I would have liked. So I'm looking forward to 2011, and to all the projects I intend to work on, and even to turning thirty and acknowledging that life is moving too fast for me to keep wasting time.
But enough about that. Today was our old country feast, which ended up being about as much work as one might expect of something related to the old country -- it certainly would have been a hell of a lot easier to just order pizza and call it a night, but the deliciousness of what we produced made up for it. I got up around noon and messed around until 2:30, but then cooked straight from 2:30 to 7ish. My mother made a chocolate meringue pie (my favorite) which we didn't even eat tonight because we were so full from the old country food. I made syrniki, which are these awesome, sweet, fried 'pancakes' made of cottage cheese with raisins, egg, and a bit of flour -- you really can't beat fried, sweet cheesy goodness. It's more of a breakfast food, but I had wanted to recreate them ever since we had them in Ukraine, and I finally found a recipe that seemed worth trying. I also made 125 pelmini, with meat leftover to make that many again tomorrow -- pelmini are essentially little dumplings filled with pork, beef and onion, boiled and then tossed in butter, and these were absolutely to die for (even if rolling out the dough and filling/shaping that many dumplings is not a quick task). Then, with my mother's help grating the potatoes/carrots/onion, I made deruni, which are fried potato cakes that are perfect with sour cream on top.
So needless to say, we had a lot to eat tonight, although the house didn't smell quite as Ukrainian as it might have because I assiduously avoided any dishes containing boiled cabbage (which means that it wasn't really so authentic after all). However, it was also rather exhausting, and so we didn't end up playing games tonight as planned -- luckily, if I hold my Lincoln vs. Stalin party, everything that I would make could be made in advance (although I'll have to decide whether I really want to fry stuff during a party -- or whether I should, given that mixing copious vodka consumption with hot oil sounds like a dangerous proposition). So instead, we watched tv, everyone fell asleep, and I even briefly dozed off before deciding to come downstairs and go to bed.
And that, my friends, is the end of 2010. I'm going to sign off and write in my journal a bit before going to bed. I hope that you all have lovely celebrations and a wonderful new year!
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