01 Jan A Visit from the Salad People

My family and I usually spend New Year’s Eve quietly together. No loud parties and no dodging the inebriated on the roads. We are not on everybody’s party list. In fact, I don’t think we’re on anybody’s party list –it’s been years since we were invited to a New Year’s Eve celebration.

So last night we decided to buck tradition, but buck it in our own special way. We still opted for a quiet night at home. But this year we invited our friends Liz and Doug, along with their daughter to join us for that sip of Zin to ring in the new year (fruit punch for the kids of course).

Early yesterday I made a beeline for Trader Joe’s, our favorite self-serve party caterer. Our Trader Joe parties are legendary. We sit around the coffee table with hors d’oeuvres of Trader Joe’s brie, Trader Joe’s artichoke dip, plastered on Trader Joe’s assorted crackers with a bit of guacamole (you guessed it, also from TJs). It’s the modern family’s recipe for a successful party: easy to put together, inexpensive, and it tastes great. With a little vino, we were all set.

At first we thought we’d make tacos for dinner. Fun for the kids and everyone could fill their tortillas with whatever they wanted (a good dish for our mix of light meat eaters and vegetarians). But then Susie had an even better idea. After filling up with pre-dinner snacks, was a big meal really necessary? Instead let’s make use of our new cookbook: Salad People And More Real Recipes: A New Cookbook for Preschoolers & Up. Let’s make salad people for dinner!

So we lined up all the ingredients (a little lettuce, pears, raisins, melon, cheese, olives, cashews, tomatoes, carrots, and some curly pasta) and let loose. Here are the results of our New Year’s Eve repast:

You can see each of us chose to interpret “Salad People” in a slightly different fashion. My wife and I did “interpretive” self-portraits (mine on the light blue plate, #2), hers on the pink one, #6). I used the pear as a nose while others used it as a body. One of my daughters decided to do a portrait of our cat (#8).

It was our idiosyncratic way of saying hello to 2006. An auspicious beginning to what I hope will be a creative and fun year.

[ New Year’s Eve ]