New Year's Eve "Party"

I was invited to New Year's parties, but I don't do New Year's parties. Ever. My family has a rule that you must wear stretch waist pants on New Year's Eve. We eat snacks and party food and go to bed at 12:01 (which is earlier than we normally go to bed, but that's not the point...) The point is, this year my mom, my friend Adriana, and myself stayed in and ate our way into the new year.

We had a makeshift bruschetta. I didn't want to deal with making a proper bruschetta...not that it's hard, but it's not exactly easy. So I toasted slices of baguette in a frying pan with some hot olive oil. I diced up a two nice vine tomatoes, drizzled on a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and seasoned them with some sea salt and black pepper. That's it. I served a bowl of diced tomato with the toasted bread on the side and everyone compiled their own "bruschetta."

We also had baked Camembert with apple, candied nuts, and olive bread. My cousins gave me a ceramic Camembert baker thingy for Christmas. I've never had a proper thing to bake cheese in before. I have to admit, it's really worth it! It baked more evenly and it was much less messy. The candied walnuts and pecans were delicious on their own, it's amazing we had any left to eat with the cheese and apple. The bread was lovely with it as well. The salty olives, the sweet nuts, the tart green apple, and the buttery cheese were just a perfect combination.

We of course had chips and dips, but those aren't really exciting enough to photograph. And anyway I forgot to take a photo of the nuts, so there was no way I was going to remember to take a photo of kettle chips and sour cream and onion dip.

For dessert we had brownies--just the Baked brownies I usually make--and chocolate chip cookies. I decided to try the melted butter technique with my chocolate chip cookie recipe. It was a huge success! The cookies were chewy on the inside and crisp on the outside. They had the usual rich flavor that I love and they were incredibly easy to make. I would have prefered them a bit chewier on the inside and a bit less crisp on the outside, so next time I'll adjust the sugar content down a bit and see what happens.

Happy New Year! Here's to a sweet 2014!