The close of the holiday season

I am taking a soft landing from the holidays - tomorrow I am not going back to work, I am cooking all day for Mark's work's holiday party, pizza for 30, at School Woods.

Thursday will be a regular work day, then Friday I am going to Brookfield for a meeting of the Wi Library Association literary awards committee - I am not completely sure that I am ready for it, although I have read, or at least skimmed over, in the book reviewing mode, 4 or 5 of the books.

I've also been trying to do a soft landing from holiday cooking & eating - last night I put out a spread of appetizers to try to use up excess ingredients - cocktail meatballs (they're kind of like this; I used chili sauce, apricot and raspberry jam, and a TBLS of Siracha, also made the meatballs, rather than purchasing frozen) that turned out better than the batch for the cookie party (the cookie party meatballs were hard - I must've over-cooked or -handled them, or what I really think went wrong was they did not have enough breadcrumbs per meat in); wienies in poppin' dough; the bacon wrapped dates, crab canapes (crab dip baked on toast rounds); cheese & crackers, and the very last of the sweets: marzipan dates, chocolate-dipped apricots, fudge, and peppermint bark. There's quite a bit of fudge in the fridge still, but pretty much everything else was consumed.

Today for New years I made black eyed peas; a "new" recipe from Joy of Cooking, with bacon and ham, and pilafed with the rice - but no one was aroundto eat it, so it'll have to eaten tomorrow or the next day, with the kale and dandelion greens I bought to go with.