New Year's Eve wishes & resolutions

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

I planned on writing a post for New Year's Eve celebration tips but I was too busy planning what I wanted to do on New Year's Eve.  It's now a few hours away from the New Year and I wanted to wish all of my Blog readers a very Happy and Healthy Food Filled New Year and I hope all of your wishes for the New Year come true.

This holiday season I decided to
"Be the Change you want to see in the World" as they say in my own life.  In my case i wanted to celebrate the Holidays doing the things I wanted to do.

For Christmas Eve this year I went to a friend's party for a few hours and was amazed at how many people she had turn up on a Christmas Eve.  Since I don't celebrate the Holidays with family but I do enjoy the Turkey dinner's that I didn't get to have growing up so I decided to stay home and cook my own Turkey Roll from Whole Foods dinner and duck fat roasted potatoes, sauteed green beans and clementine glazed carrots.  I had a lot leftover and was planning on making Turkey Pot pie but I got lazy and turned it into Turkey Tettrazzini again.  You can probably find a previous post about this.  It's an easy way to turn Turkey leftovers into a whole new thing.

Anyway, for New Year's Eve for the past few year's I have stayed home to watch all the countown's on TV.  I just eat whatever I have usually but this year I thought it might be fun to invite a small group of my friends over to chill out with me.  I dug out my New Year's Eve box of noise makers from my storage locker and I made these clock and date cookies today.  I also picked up some Greek Honey balls from Athens bakery on the Danforth and added some gold spinkles to dress them up.  I really wanted Italian Struffoli but there isn't any around near me and I didn't have time to make some.  My neighbour used to have them every Christmas when I was a kid.  Nobody else I knew had them so it was a treat.

I still have a whole lot of sweets leftover from things my friends gave me as gifts and things I had from my party plus a whole lot of Skittles that I got at the Skittles Pawn shop for trading in the rest of the stuff I have been trying to get rid of.  

So that's about all the effort I have put into New Year's Eve this year because we are going to order Chinese Food.  Maybe this will become a new tradition if it works out.  I was invited to a party downtown but I wasn't in the mood to trek downtown by myself and squeeze into packed subways with drunk people.  I will stay in and avoid it this year.  Yeah a sign I am getting old but I was never one for going out and "clubbing" on New Year's Eve.  It's over priced and over-rated and not so much fun if you are single.  

I hope this year it's an easy breezy stress free start to a New Year.

This year was a year that I lost a couple of friends and gained a whole bunch of really great food blogging community friends.  I am hoping for bigger things in 2016.

Some of my Resolutions for the New Year include:

1. Work on my food styling and plating
2. Get better at decorating cookies... shaky messy hands.
3. Spend lot's of time meeting up with my blogger buddies and having great food.
4. Keep improving my photos and my blog posts.
5. Find some new and interesting events to attend this year.
6. Spend more stress free time entertaining and hopefully more tips for you.
7. I hope to do some travelling outside of the city and find some foodie adventures.
8. I want to have a balance of cooking at home and eating out.
9. Try and eat the best quality food I can get.
10. I want to waste less food and money.

That's what I have on my mind and I am sorry I didn't have a more interesting food post for you but I hope to do a follow up of my New Year's Eve adventures.   I skipped the Christmas one but if you want to see what I made you can find those photos on my Instagram feed @lindamatarasso.

I hope you all have a fabulous New Year filled with only the Best Things.

Please remember as I always say each year at this time to make sure you Don't Drink and Drive!

Stay safe people and go into the New Year with Bang but not the kind with a car..:) not funny but punny.

More foodie adventures in 2016.   

Thanks for reading all of my rambling blog posts.  I hope you are enjoying them as much as I am writing them.

XOXO