The New Year is here, with a burble.

As it has a few times now, the New Year blasted in with a blaze of paella. A friend and I had a throwdown at a neighbors' house. She dove into a seafood rendition while I put together a traditional dish with chicken, chorizo, and a few shellfish for good measure. To boot, I cooked in my tux since we (minus one, sadly) were all headed to a neighbor's house for a black tie party after dinner.


It was a hell of a time, and both paellas came up beautifully. In the past couple years I've discovered a couple of my favorite secrets for a great dish — the right chorizo and smoked pimentin. The chorizo this year was a spicy, coarse-ground variety I located at Whole Foods. It had a delicious earthy character, and just enough spice not to overwhelm the other ingredients. This year, I finished the paella on the grill and finally managed a perfect soccarat. As a nod to some other great paellas I've had, I add asparagus and freshly-roasted peppers. The final trick for the New Years paella is a nod to Southern tradition — black-eyed peas. Buddha knows with the way December went and all the plans on tap for 2010 that I can use all the luck I can get.


Kudos to my neighbors for putting together such a great evening — both parties. In fact, at the dinner house, we concocted a little dinner party for The Kid and four others, complete with a babysitter to manage a slumber party while we trucked off to the party down the street.

That said, it is the new year, following a rather ignominious end to 2009. The hiccups of life and relationships got the best of me, and I spent a good bit of December melancholy and reflective. This past year was full of challenges and tests — and efforts to move into the next phases of my life. As it came to an end, I found myself looking at The Kid and realizing how remarkable she is — and how she will never be seven-and-a-half again. I found myself licking a few wounds and getting perspective on some old ones. John and I brewed a couple stellar batches of beer. All in all, the end of the year was much like the rest, full of contrasts between high points and low points and full of teaching moments.

For the new year, I'm not making many resolutions. In fact, I've really only come up with one so far — to do the dishes whenever I use them. I consider it a small portion of a larger effort to gain control of the chaos that too-often envelopes the house. Forget the pressure of bigger resolutions; I'm sure I will come across other goals to pursue along the way.

cooking, or getting to it

I realize that I haven't been writing very much lately on one of my favorite subjects — food and cooking. For one reason or another, I also haven't been doing very much cooking lately.

In any case, the coming weeks will bring my annual foray into my take on my grandmother's Swedish Meatballs. Much as I love IKEA's meatballs in a pinch, they have nothing on this preparation — particularly with the inclusion of meat from Belmont Butchery. In past years, I've done gløg. This year, I may attempt her Swedish fruit soup. Maybe I'll even pull one or two more Swedish traditions out of the woodwork.

For New Years Eve, I'll do the paella I've done the past few years. Since someone else will be doing a seafood preparation this year, I'll be able to return to a full-on recipe. I may even pull the rabbit parts out of the freezer for a flavoring saute, and I may even jump to a wood-fired preparation on the grill. It all depends how adventuresome I feel, and whether I feel like cooking in a tux again this year.

And then there's the Super-Dad Cookie Baking Party...

Happy Newwwwww Year

By all accounts, the paella turned out well. In fact, the entire evening turned out quite nicely, from the dinner party portion with kids enjoying Shirley Temples and adults sampling champagne to the dinner itself to the black-tie cocktail party up the street. I wisely avoided the temptation of whiskey and followed my companion's lead on drinking water in between glasses of wine and champagne. And when I arrived at our friends' house to pick Banana up post-sleepover, I found her sitting in her nightgown with a Happy New Year! tiara on her head. It was an adorable image.

On the topic of images, I add this one as proof of dads in formalwear working in the kitchen:

crashing to a close

So, tonight is my first black-tie event in recent memory, courtesy of a neighbor who's been throwing a NYE gala for several years. It should be a grand time. First, though, I have to sort my way through the early evening dinner party and kids while figuring out a whole new way of preparing paella.

Since we have at least two members of the group who eat fish but not more carnivorous options, I've dropped the chicken and the chorizo from the usual preparation. Instead, I'll build this year's paella around squid, clams, mussels and shrimp. There will be asparagus and peas in it, as well as home-roasted peppers. For a bit of a nod to southern traditions, I may also throw in some black-eyed peas. We'll see how the mood strikes as I'm working on it.

If it all comes off well, it will be a hell of a way to ring out another year of lessons in life, and a perfect introduction to a year that I hope brings even more positive steps forward for Banana and me. What that means exactly is hard to say, but I am determined to get even better about paring our life down to essentials and being more mindful and better about getting things done.