AFTER WHAT SEEMED TO BE a long stretch of one holiday hoopla after another, I've tumbled rather suddenly straight into the New Year! (Sincerely hoping I'll find you here, too, Reader Dear!)   When I took a photo of today's Pork and Sauerkraut 2013 Celebratory Dinner, it struck me that this meal would be the final one of the holiday season!





Desserts at today's meal consisted of:
Freshly-homemade, lavishly-iced coconut cake
Freshly-homemade gingerbread cake with whipped cream accompaniment
Chocolates
Cookies
Fruit salad
(And that, Dear Reader, was only the sweets.  It was as if everyone in The Yard Man's extended family knocked themselves out in a desperate attempt to trump the Christmas spread!  The sauerkraut was made from scratch! The pork melted in one's mouth!  The freshly baked baguettes made me vow I would set about getting myself a baguette pan of my own, and a baking stone, and ha-ha set aside four hours to bake some of this heavenly bread myself!  [And I haven't even stuffed your fancy with the stuffed mushrooms!])
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In the last hours of the old year, The Yard Man and I attended a party where the sweetest sweet was the fellowship of long-standing friends (long-suffering, too! All that groaning and laughing at the oft-told jokes).  But of course, the hummus, and chili, and Hoppin' John*, and veggies, and shrimp, and fruit, and chocolates, and being on the winning dominoes team were all pretty swell as well!


*Something new to eat this new year! The culinary marvel who made this dish claims it's got to be eaten on New Year's eve if one wishes to have even the slightest amount of good luck in the brand new year!  (Dear Reader, how unlucky for you! [She only passed along the recipe today])
**A guy went to jail and discovered that when his fellow cons were whiling away the time together, someone would inevitably call out a number and everybody would laugh.  This happened again and again.  In private he asked his cell mate, who'd been there for years, "What's going on?" 
"Oh," said his cell mate, "we've all been here for  so long, we've heard all the jokes so often, we know 'em by heart!  We assigned a number to each joke, and now we just use the numbers."  The new guy thought about this for a while, and decided he'd give it a try.  The next time all the prisoners were together, he called out, "Number Five!"  ......There was not a snicker.  The guy was embarrassed, but he tried again, "Number Seven!" 
Once again, not a soul laughed.  
As soon as they had returned to their cell, the new guy turned to his cell mate, "What the #&%," he exclaimed. "How come nobody laughed?"
"Well...." replied the older guy, in an apologetic way,  "you know how it is with  jokes.  Some folks can tell 'em, and some can't!"***
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*** "Number 4"