There are two types of people in this
world- people who go out for New Year’s Eve, and people who do not. I am quite
firmly the latter. I have attempted to be the former several times, namely last
year, when I went to the Lakeshore in Toronto and saw a band. The band, Dwayne Gretzky, was awesome. My company
was also amazing. I left at 12:30 and made it home without a DUI. Had it been
any other night of the year, it would have been a perfect night.
But of course, it wasn’t any other night of
the year. It was New Year’s Eve, so an awesome night isn’t enough. Are you
really going to bring in the new year with just an awesome night?! You can’t do
that. You fail at life if you do that. Your night has to be super perfect
awesome, obviously. Your one true secret love must reveal himself to you, kiss
you at midnight, and tell you how all along he knew how truly incredible you
are, and in fact he didn’t love that other girl the whole time you’ve been
secretly pining for him, because this is actually a teen movie and of course
later in the night at 5 a.m. while you eat breakfast together swooning, Simple Minds will come on
and then you’ll dance in the diner together much to the dismay of every other
broken hearted girl in the diner, who will enviously promise herself that next
year, HER night will end as perfectly as yours.
But of course, that will not happen this
year. You know what will happen? That guy will show up with his girlfriend to
the bar you paid $745,393.00 to get into, you’ll get drunk and cry in a corner
at midnight, your text to your back-burner booty call won’t go through because
EVERYONE texts their back-burner booty call at approximately 1:34 am when they
realize life is not a Richard
Curtis movie, and then you won’t be able to find a cab to save your life.
If you live in the frigid north like I do, you’ll wait in a diner out of
desperation until 5 a.m. surrounded by incredibly intoxicated people, reeking
of desperation, until you see some obnoxiously in love couple get up and dance
to an 80’s power ballad playing on the radio. At which point you’ll cry again
and promise yourself next year will be different.
You know what? It can be. I realize the
previous two paragraphs painted a picture of me as an embittered, sad, and
lonely spinster, naysaying what could possibly be the most fun night of the
year (whilst simultaneously chagrining my grade 10 English teacher with my
grammatical errors). But I’m here to present a second option: Staying In. Much
loved by crazy cat ladies and jaded 28 year olds alike; the old-fashioned
Staying In presents a night of nostalgia-filled board games, drinking champagne
that did not cost you half your tuition, and the opportunity to take advantage
of that eHarmony free communication weekend, where you can meet other
like-minded people who also enjoy staying in on the biggest party night of the
year.
If you stay in, perhaps you will invite
other human companions over to partake in the rejection of this pressure-cooker
of a night, and then you may also want to feed them. If you decide Albert
Burneko’s poached
lobster tails are not for you (although I urge you to try
them at some point), perhaps you’ll opt for the easier, if not cliché, red meat
varietal.
Should you happen to go for this, you’ll
want to jazz it up a little with something special. Nothing is better with red
meat than blue cheese and great red wine. So, here’s a nifty little sauce that
you can serve with your meal that will provide some acknowledgment to your
guests that this is, in fact, The Most Special Night EVER.
Start with a finely chopped shallot in
about a tablespoon of butter in a saucepan. The jury is still out on whether or
not to make a roux for this sauce, so I’ll leave it up to you. If you like a
thicker sauce, also add a tablespoon of flour to the shallot and butter and stir
that around until it gets golden. Now add a splash of sherry and reduce it by
half. Add a cup of cream (real cream, don’t chintz and go with milk. The
resolution diet starts the next day.) Bring the cream just to a boil and then
turn down your heat. Finally, crumble in a cup of blue cheese and whisk until
it melts into the cream. Finish with salt, pepper and the juice of one lemon.
Enjoy your evening whatever you do- but if
you can’t get a cab at 3:00 a.m., don’t say I didn’t warn you!
Happy 2014!
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