The Great Annual Post-Holiday Funfest Extravaganza

That's the title I gave to my party this year, which happened on Saturday. And, if I may say so myself, it almost lived up to the name.

A few days of prep, and we were ready to go. Mad props to Sherin and especially Cory for all the help - cooking, cleaning, shopping, setting up, decorating and hanging snowflakes. Sometimes, it's hard work having fun. We got a whole bunch of last-minute help from Aaron, Shannon and Jacquie too - getting ice, building bruschetta, setting out crackers & cheese, setting up the bar, all kinds of final-moments-before-the-throng-arrives details. AND - many thanks to Susan for bringing a huge batch of cupcakes in honor of Daniel's Birthday, which had been a couple days prior. Happy Birthday Daniel!

This year's menu, in part:

• Sweet Potato Soup
• Recession Stew with black beans, black-eyed peas, and mystery ingredients
• Bruschetta with goat cheese and olive tapenade
• Cheese platter featuring Tallegio and Danish bleu cheeses
• Chicken and Fennel Stew
• Portabella Mushroom Risotto
• Saffron Shrimp Risotto
• Peanut Blossom Cookies
• Chocolate Chip Date Cake
• Fudge
• Peanut Brittle
• and... Susan's Cupcakes

That's most of it. Vegetarians, Fishitarians and Carnivores were taken care of. Yum!

There was a healthy debate as to whether or not the Peanut Blossoms looked like boobs. Every party should have at least one conversation like this.

The bar was pretty well stocked with booze and mixers, and people brought beer and wine to fill it out. Conviviality flourished, and as usual it was a gathering that brought together loyal longterm friends and some of my newest friends and colleagues. About 30 people turned up in all; only a few were scared off by the nasty weather (which turned out to be milder than the histrionic meteorologists warned us it would be). This year's snowflake theme was Impressions of Obama (what the hell, it's an unprecedented Inauguration we're going to have next week), and I think that there may have been more snowflakes created this year than ever. The Argentinians really got into it!

No pictures yet. I was so psyched to shoot at this party, but when the time came I didn't want to do anything that felt like work. But other people took a bunch, I think, so I should be able to post some shots before long.

Special shoutout to Cory for the Iranian saffron (I think it's from Iran; I know she bought it in Istanbul though), which was featured in some of those dishes. She brought me some of those tiny but potent threads from her trip to Turkey. SOoooooo good! AND - we stayed up late late late to clean up afterwards, so no giganto mess the next day.

Which meant we got to play a legendary, Titanic game of Scrabble. I scored 311, which is usually enough to win, but not this time. No sir. Miss Cory scored an otherworldly 436. 436, people. That means that even if you took away the bonus points for her two bingos, she'd still have beaten me by 15 points. We used every tile but one. I guess you have to be a Scrabble fan to appreciate this, but let me tell you, it was a pretty cool way to polish off a great weekend.