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  

Ugly Sweater Holiday Party

UGLY SWEATER HOLIDAY PARTY

I kind of started a tradition among friends and then I guess they liked it so much that they kind of expected me to do it every year. It started as a Swag Swap gift exchange to clear out things accumulated during the year.  Last year I didn't do it because the one I did 2 years ago after the Ice Storm was extremely difficult and kind of burnt me out.  Last year a few of my friends got together at my friends place to do a gift exchange and that was nice.   This year I wasn't going to do it because I have had a bad financial year and it costs me a couple hundred dollars to do these parties with the food, decor and gift bags etc.  After deciding that I needed to do some de-cluttering after accumulating a lot of things after a year of food events and generally spending too much time moving things around my small space to make them fit.  Every time I have a party I spend a few days afterward trying to tuck things back into their place.  Because of blogging and my shopaholic tendencies I had accumulated so much stuff I didn't know what to do with and since this year more than others I couldn't afford to go out and buy my friends actual new gifts I decided to have a Not So Secret Santa Ugly Christmas Sweater Party.  Yeah I decided to hop on the Ugly Sweater bandwagon.  Comfy and fun.

Not so Secret because I was the Secret Santa giving gifts of things I didn't need anymore to my friends.  I asked them NOT to bring anything to exchange and told them I didn't want anything I had to store somewhere and the point of this party was to clear my space, get together with my friends all at the same time and give them gifts I can't go buy right now.  Most of the things were things like T-Shirts that aren't my size from events I attended.  Some of the housewares that I didn't have room to store or haven't used, homemade treats and some of my impulsive buys that never got used.  I gave one of my friends a small makeup case and a whole bunch of makeup I got as samples or stuff I never used and she was really excited about it.  For me the makeup kit was too small to use Professionally and I didn't have the space after re-organizing my makeup kit.  For her she was thrilled to try new makeup that she couldn't afford to buy.

One of my friends just moved into a new place so I gave her an orange serving tray and placemats and other stuff for her.  She is also a blogger and we always need new things to style out photos.  Turns out she didn't have a tray and I have like 4 so it will be used instead of moved around here.

What I did was wrap up different things and some had specific people that I thought would like it and a few things could go to a few different friends.   I passed out the gifts and gave them the option to trade for something else once if they didn't like it.  I got down to the last 3 girls and I couldn't decide who to give what to so I let them choose and then let the group decided if they could keep it.  It made it a bit more fun.   As it turns out nobody wanted to trade for anything else.  The only one that traded was one of my friends afterward wanted a candle holder instead of a large book box.   No problem.  The point is that I somehow managed to choose things I didn't need anymore that were new gifts for my friends.  Yes they all knew the plan.  They know I am not working steady and can't buy gifts and the fact that I had all kinds of food at the party and they didn't really have to do much made them pretty happy.

I only asked for them to bring a few things that they could choose if they wanted to bring something for the party like Wine, Pop and salads.

This was the first year that I was running behind and didn't have everything set up before my friends got there so I had one of my friends help set up a cheese and charcuterie board. I actually didn't have time to even take a photo of it but here's the board with some cheese.

I also had some entertaining food from winning a Sobey's gift basket and also St. Hubert Poutine bites that I had to blog about that I knew I couldn't eat by myself so I thought it was perfect for a party.

For the Food I made the Poutine bites which were what they call "insideoutpoutine".  They are mashed potatoes stuffed with cheese and gravy and coated in breadcrumbs.  All you have to do is heat them for about 15 min in the oven and serve.

Even my friend's 1 year old daughter tried one and I think she was a bit confused trying to figure out what it was.  She just started eating regular food so it's all new for her.  The tiny bites were huge in her little hands.

My friend somehow also managed to find time to bake the most amazing Gingerbread Bundt cake in a Jewish Star Mould. Unfortunately everyone was so stuffed that not everyone had room to try it but I did and loved it.

I had 3 bottles of BBQ sauce in my fridge so I decided to make meatballs and since I didn't have a lot of time I just bought some store bought ones.  Unfortunately not a big hit as they weren't very good.  Homemade is always best so next time I skip the meatballs.

I also made both Mac and Cheese and Vegetarian Lasagna the same time that morning.  Now I know how Chefs feel juggling dishes.  The Mac and Cheese was ok but the Lasagna turned out fantastic.  I used some no cook Molisano noodles that I haven't tried before and they were great.  I will buy them again for sure.  I mixed frozen spinach into ricotta cheese with grated parmesan and that was my veggie bonus layer.  The rest just tomato sauce and cheese.  I still have some left in my freezer.  Yes I always make too much food.  I never know what will turn out and what won't and who can eat what so I make more just in case.  I also wanted to have the leftover lasagna for myself because I don't make it often just for myself.  My friend lent me her Pro Catering Chafing dish that took up a lot of space on the counter but freed up my oven at least to make other things.

As part of a Gastropost Mission Challenge I had to make something with Walmart Canada's Brownie Mix and Wine Gums so kind of as late as I could make it I decided to make a Mocha Coconut Ugly Sweater Brownie Cake.  I had it at the party but didn't serve it up because I baked it too long and the bottom was a bit burnt so it was kind of dry.  Nobody was hungry anyway since I had so many other treats but it looked nice.

Along with the Ugly Sweater Cake I had an Ugly Sweater Contest where I encouraged my friends to dress very festive and I had a prize.  My friend Fabian won with his handmade sweater decor and his festive socks and slippers.  He was determined to win.

He won a Starbucks Ugly Sweater Gingerbread Men cookies, Dufflet's Cigar chocolates, Smores and chocolate crisps.  He was very happy as you can see. Oh and also a little ugly sweater ornament.

I made a whole assortment of sweet treats like Chocolate Chip cookies, chocolate covered apricots, Peppermint bark, Coconut macaroons, cinnamon roasted almonds and my friends mom's cookies, and there was lot's of chocolates too.

One of the things I made that I will make again was Ricardo's recipe for a Cheeseball.  It was so easy and it was so good.  Only a few ingredients,  Cream cheese, sharp cheese like cheddar, jalapeno and green onions.  It's all blended and rolled into crushed pecans.  I sampled it at a get together with Ricardo and liked it and I will make it again maybe next year and skip some of the other cheeses.

It was a lot of fun and for the first time I still had energy at the end of the party.  For me that's a successful party and my place wasn't a huge mess of wrapping paper everywhere this time.
As you can see some of my friends ditched their ugly sweaters before the party ended and I was the only one left wearing the Ugly sweater, although I was smart and most of it was just pinned on so I eventually took off the pins and just had a red cardigan and now it's just back to a regular sweater.

My place is all cleaned up again and feels a little less cluttered.  I want to encourage you to think outside the Shopping Mall and rethink Holiday gift giving.  Some of my friends did bring me gifts but mostly gift cards and a Starbucks mug and some other small things that will get used up.

I had to rethink my budget, and in the process helped the environment I think.  I want to make 2016 a year of less waste.  Less wasted money, food, stuff and time.  I hope I have inspired you to do the same or at least have an Ugly Christmas Sweater Party next year.

From me and my friends may you have a Very Happy Holiday and a Fantastic New Year!

HO! HO! HO!

St. Hubert introduces "Appy Hour" Poutine Bites

I was given a couple of boxes of St. Hubert's new Poutine Bites to sample recently. It's their new"Appy Hour" quick heat and serve appetizer.  They are what they call an #insideoutpoutine.

They are bite size quick to make appetizers with mashed potatoes coated in breadcrumbs and stuffed with cheese and gravy.  Less mess and you can eat them with your fingers even.

All you have to do is either quickly deep fry them or you heat them in the oven.  I heated them in the oven for about 15 minutes.  You cook them from frozen so they are great to stash in your freezer in case you don't have enough food or someone drops in unexpectedly.  You never know.  I was surprised that the box didn't even take up much space in my freezer which is tiny and always full.

I served them up at my Holiday party on the weekend.   They don't come with a dipping sauce but I served them with a bit of BBQ Sauce on the side.

My friend's 1 year old daughter even had one.  For her tiny fingers and mouth it wasn't a one bite but more of a squish and eat a bit.  But she seemed to like it.  I think she was trying to figure out what it was since she just started eating real food.

So if you are looking for more time to spend with friends and family during the holidays and still have a stress free Holiday dinner party then this is a good way to start it off.  You don't have to have a lot of culinary skills to present a cool looking platter.  Just a baking tray an oven and a serving platter and some toothpicks is all you need to get this out to your guests in a hurry.

Look out for them in your freezer section of your grocery store soon.

They are also great for Football and other sports parties and also kids birthday parties since they don't leave a trail of gravy like traditional poutine does.  They would probably also be a great after school snack for starving teenagers.

For more on what's new with St. Hubert follow them on their Social Media:
Facebook: /sthubert
Twitter: @StHubert_Can
Instagram: @StHubert_Can


*Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post. Poutine bites were provided by Group St-hubert, Retail Division and I am being compensated monetarily for this post but all of the opinions in this post are my own.