New Year's Eve - 2016

 Tom arrived just after 11 am and brought with him almost everything he'd need to cook the three of us a special meal for New Year's Eve. It pretty well fit in a cardboard box. But that doesn't illustrate the time it took to gather the ingredients and to do some advance preparation.

 Tom's working on the pasta dish here, The pan in his left hand contained two entire slices of melted butter. This isn't an inexpensive dish, I'll post the recipe below but, seeing as how I don't like hazelnuts, Tom substituted chestnuts. Of course he left out the meat, too.

 Tom even brought fresh sage which he chopped on our cutting board.

 This is a veggie "roast". We had one of these for Easter, too. It seems to be made with texturized vegetable protein (i.e. soybeans) and when sliced makes a wonderful meat substitute.

 Here's the finished pasta dish just out of the oven. The recipe follows.

 This recipe is courtesy of the Arbor Day Foundation.

 Later I made a dessert that consisted of angel food cake, a dark chocolate ice cream bar (Klondike) cut in half, cherry sauce and whipped cream.

 It was a nice way to prepare for 2017's arrival. Tom left about 5 pm and I watched a little TV and then read throughout the evening (I'm reading a Horatio Alger book that was my grandfather's from 1913). I was in bed by 9 pm and didn't wake until 2:30 am. So the "neighbors" must have been quiet. In past years I'd hear fireworks and pots and pans being hammered. But not recently. The new year came in quietly.