Celebrating Not Just Surviving New Year’s Eve With Young Children

Staying up for midnight on New Year’s Eve was never a problem for me.  We celebrated at parties with friends.  We went out to First Night in Boston, and Stamford, CT.  We stayed in for a fabulous home cooked dinner with friends in Maine.  We had large celebrations and small parties.

Then, I married an early bird.  Okay, so night owl and early bird doesn’t always work, but we would just have parties that ended very close to midnight or duck out early and watch the ball drop in NYC on television in our jammies.  Then came children…

Now by the time we’ve done all our Chanukah, Christmas, and Boxing Day celebrations, I’ve had a good many nights of exceptionally bad sleep.  The children sleep poorly at home and much worse away from home.  I unpack our bags, get the wonderful new toys put away and donate the toys the children no longer use, open the rest of the Christmas cards, read through the holiday newsletters, sit down ready to collapse, turn on the Food Network and see chefs whipping up delicious appetizers and meals for New Year’s Eve.

I look at the calendar and see that we have two days before New Year’s Eve.  I have no plans.  I’m not exactly a party girl, but I love to throw a good party and have participated in a good many as well.  Most of my friends with young children have vague plans if any.  So what do we baggy-eyed parents with children still unwinding from the sleepless, sugar-full state of the holidays do?  We celebrate New Year’s Eve in Paris.

Last year, we celebrated New Year’s Eve in Paris, with many of our French friends who are living in the US.  We don’t celebrate New Year’s Eve in Paris because we have many French friends.  I would celebrate it if we had no connection to France at all.  However, we celebrate New Year’s Eve in Paris because it is midnight six hours earlier there.

New Year’s in Paris is a perfect solution for families with young children.  If you happen to be a francophile, even better.  You can play French music.  We had some great French wine, Champagne and cheeses.  I’m not for overdoing a theme, but you really can’t go wrong by having French food for a New Year’s Eve party.

So, if you have no plans this year, send out an evite.  Have a New Year’s in Paris celebration and ring in the New Year at 6 p.m. Eastern Standard time.   Have a selection of good French wines and real Champagne.  You can head over to Formaggio Kitchen for some great French cheeses and some French-style baguette from the wide range of bakeries in the Boston/Cambridge area (see the information box).  Everyone will be home just in time for dinner.  If you’re lucky you might even be able to find some good gourmandises, such as les papillottes, from Cardullo’s for a special treat.  Keep the menu simple, olives, cheese bread, perhaps some warm appetizers.  My daughter and I love to make crepes and they can be filled with savory or sweet filling.  A frozen sheet of puff pastry, some good gruyere and mustard can also go a long way.  I made this savory palmier recipe for a Solstice party and it was a huge hit.  They are also very simple to prepare.

Bonne année et bon appetit.  ttyl your BFF (Boston Family Foodie)

For more info: Hi Rise Bakery, Iggy’s Bread of the World,Clear Flour Bread, Sel de la Terre, B & R Bread

Thanksgiving: The Peripheral Meals

I think the biggest problem with Thanksgiving is when you forget about the peripheral meals.  There are the friends who drop by the day before because they are in town.  There is tea after the New Yorkers come in after their longer than expected drive.  There is lunch on Wednesday for the whoever came in last night and aunt Margaret who just got picked up at the airport.  There is Thanksgiving day breakfast.

Our newest Thanksgiving routine has been to gather in the morning for our Thanksgiving Family Triathlon.  The three legs are stretch, bike, and run.  The children have a short bike ride and run to the end of the block.  The adults (minus a few who take care of the kids and the kitchen) go for a long ride and run down Huron Ave.  We then have a light lunch and finish preparing the Thanksgiving meal which starts early and always ends later than expected.

Our peripheral meals usually involve lunch and a Wednesday night dinner:  this will be our weekly pizza and salad.  Thursday morning breakfast:  this usually involves a trip to Hi Rise and if we get to it homemade sticky buns from Vermont’s Baba a Louis’ Bakery Cookbook on loan from Grandma.  Thursday’s post Triathlon lunch:  soup and bread.

I try to have the usual suspects on hand for the children: things I know they will eat.  I expect that they will also partake in some of the other offerings.  I also try to have a lot of things that are easy to pull out and make a decent spread:  dips, hummus, olives, pita bread, some cheeses, veggies for slicing or crudites, fancy cheese crackers, chips and salsa, nuts, and perhaps one or two prepared foods.  This year I have been eyes some of what Sofra has to offer as well as Petsi Pies and Clear Flour Bakery.  Petsi Pies has a savory Roasted Vegetable Spinach Ricotta open faced pie.

Some great offerings for peripheral meals at Clear Flour would be their Spinach Onion and Gruyere Quiche or Boston Brown Bread (just add some cream cheese topped with smoked salmon, some goat cheese with a sliver of sun-dried tomato or roasted red pepper, or a slice of good cheddar and a slice of tart apple).  For tea or breakfast Clear Flour has Cranberry Orange Almond Tea Cake, Pumpkin Buns, and Grandma B’s Pull Apart Sweet Rolls.

It is not online, but Sofra Bakery has some great offerings also for those peripheral meals.  For tea they offer Nan’s Pumpkin Bread, Crunchy Crumbly, Cornmeal-Almond Torta, Pumpkin Jam Tart (I am addicted to their pumpkin turnover), Fig-Almond Serpentine, Pear-Almond Umm Ali.  For the lunches and dinners they have oven-ready savory pies:  Cheese Borek, Carrot Kibbeh, Spanakopitta, Farmers Market Tart..  Also perfect to pull out for lunch, dinner, snack are items from their Mezze Bar:  Smokey Eggplant Puree, Bean Plaki, Armenian Bean and Walnut Pate, Skordalia, Moroccan Carrot Salad, Syrian-Style Lentils, Beet Tzatziki, Moroccan Goat Cheese, Labne with Pecans, Green Olive & Walnut Salad, Whipped Feta with Sweet and Hot Peppers. A little of these tasty treats goes a long way.  I think I will probably head over to Sofra for breakfast with my mom and whoever wants to join us and we will pick up a few of these tasty treats to pull out when needed for meals over the days before and after Thanksgiving.

I will be making my shopping list for the main meal in the next day or so and will start hitting the farmer’s markets and shops on Friday and early next week.  Then I have to lay out my game plan, buy what I need for peripheral meals and we’ll be good to go!

Bon appetit.  ttyl your BFF (Boston Family Foodie)

For more info: Clear Flour Bread, Petsi Pies,
Sofra Bakery, Baba a Louis Bakery

Cranberry Roquefort Tartines

This is a great bite that you can throw together in minutes.  It is a perfect addition to a cocktail party.  You can serve it with drinks before a formal meal.  You can pour a glass of wine and throw it together for a grown-up “after-school snack” while the children play lego on the coffee table.  I used it to round out a meal since I had only planned a spinach salad for dinner earlier this week and I knew we needed a little something extra.

Ingredients:

Cranberry Sauce (my favourite recipe)
Roquefort (you don’t have to buy the best of the best here- you can get by on grocery store cheese – Sorry Formaggio)
Baguette (also the best of the best -I love Clear Flour’s baguette- is not necessary)

-Slice baguette into rounds on the diagonal and lightly toast.  You can brush it with olive oil if you like before you toast it.

-Spread a little cranberry sauce on the baguette.

-Place a decent-sized sliver of Roquefort on top and melt under the broiler.

-Serve & eat.

Bon appetit.  ttyl your BFF (Boston Family Foodie)

For more info: Cranberry Sauce Recipe
Clear Flour Bread