Blown Away by New Year's

Happy New Year! We hope you're all being safe and enjoying a fun holiday.

As for those of us in Northern California, we're experiencing high winds and, in some parts (not ours, thankfully!), flooding. We have had some precipitation, but nothing too extreme. And, thankfully, the lemon tree (at last glance, at least) has not had all of its blossoms blown away so we're still hoping to get a lemon or two off it!

We rang in the New Year with a game of checker shots. We bought a pretty fun set with a glass checkerboard and two different styles of shot glasses which act as pieces. You play the game as you normally would, but when a piece of yours is jumped, you have to drink a shot. To ensure that we would still be somewhat in control of our faculties, we had "mini" shots. Mark enjoyed chocolate liqueur while MeLissa decided to try a bunch of different things - butterscotch schnapps, chocolate liqueur, as well as sour apple and watermelon (her favorite) shots! In the end, MeLissa's practice sessions with her Grandpa Moss when she was very young paid off again - she won the game by triple jumping Mark! Either way, though, with all the yummy liqueurs, they both won!

We stayed up until the year was new and gave each other a kiss for luck! Given the fact that MeLissa was already a bit tipsy, we saved the champagne for lunch today!

Speaking of lunch, we had a nice spread of ham, grape salad, green beans with bacon and mushrooms & spinach and artichoke dip. If you're curious, the grape salad and spinach and artichoke dips can be found in our recipe group on yahoo. For dessert, we made another attempt at a frozen pie substituting blackberries for the strawberries in the recipe. We can't wait to see how it turned out!

Oh, and, by the way, we never mentioned it, but the cookie caper was a success! MeLissa successfully baked, without the use of eggs, both gumdrop and chocolate chip oatmeal cookies! Both the allergy-free and regular cookie recipes are, of course, also available on our recipe website!