I stated getting ready for the New Year on Wednesday by baking World Peace Cookies. These are Nancy Leson from Food for Thought’s favorite cookies. I figured I give them try, and World Peace sounded like a good theme for the new year.  Here they are after baking and many had already been sampled by Tom and his son.

I worked until 8 AM New Year’s Eve so picked up groceries, did the animal chores and took a nap.  I got up at 5 PM and watched the 2005 Pride And Prejudice (as it expired from Netflix that day).  

Tom made us a prime rib roast for dinner.  We missed our usual roast for Christmas Eve, prepared to perfection in the past by my grandmother and then my aunt.  So we purchased one from Island Grown Farmers Co-op.  He used this recipe, and here is how it looked coming out of the oven.

Here it is carved,

And here it is on my plate with a baked sweet potatoes and our canned green beans.

It was great.  We watched Wonder Woman 1984 and then as the midnight hour approached I made us French 75’s.

We watched the KING-5 broadcast of the virtual display at the Space Needle.  It was fairly lame but appropriate for the year.  

So for New Year’s Day dinner I wanted to make a traditional Shetland dish, New Year steak and sausage pie.  This is from the Shetland Cooking on the Edge of the World cookbook I received last Christmas.

Traditionally in Scotland and Shetland you have a steak pie on New Year’s Day, often purchased from a local butcher.  In West-Central Scotland where Tom Morton came from it included sausage.  So the book’s recipe is a steak and sausage pie.  It is to be started on Hogmanay, New Year’s Eve to us.  I did start it 12/31  but used our venison instead of steak.  Here it is cooking with stout beer just poured in.

For New Year’s Day we started with a nice breakfast of our eggs, bacon and scones.  I did the animal chores (Tom’s knee is getting worse).  We had bowl games on TV as background noise, the Citrus Bowl, the Rose Bowl game (from Texas!?!), and the Sugar Bowl.  We had a late lunch, and I prepared a cocktail to take down Christmas with.  I received this book from my cousins Keith and Christina for Christmas.  Mysteriously they gave me a cocktail book last Christmas as well.  

I decided to break in this new book in with their old fashioned recipe.  This one is quite different than my grandfather’s recipe.  It is bourbon, bitters and simple syrup stirred with ice and then poured into an old fashioned glass with ice.  The rim is rubbed with orange peel and then it is added to the drink.  The cherry is optional!?!  Anyway, here it is mixed up.  

So I sipped this basically straight bourbon drink as I took down the decorations.  (I do still prefer my grandfather’s Old Fashioned, unlikely to change my mind).

The tree went out to the sheep and goats to eat.  I wasn’t done until 4:30, and it was dark out so the majority did not leave the barn to nibble on the tree.  The weather has been particularly nasty with high winds and  heavy rains.  I do not blame them.

I have had some leftover sweet pastry from the mincemeat tarts.  I have been pondering for a couple of days what to do with it.  I decided to make the Downton Abbey Cookbook‘s Custard and Jam Tarts with it.  One thing I figured out since the mincemeat tarts is that using this small round object (not sure what it is) made for better tart crusts than cutting them out.  I also decided that I will finish the recipes in this cookbook this upcoming week as they are all sweets, and leftovers can help fatten our hogs who hopefully will not be with us too much longer.  They do love their sweets.  And they are not picking about the nationality of their foods.

The recipe is basically a custard.  But it doesn’t specify what to do with the jam.  In the photo it looks like the jam is on top and cooked.  But the custard is runny at the start of baking so I decided to add the jam at the end of baking and then warm it in the oven a bit longer to help spread it.  Here they are after cooking.

We had given Izzy a couple of cat toys for Christmas.  We actually have twice as many because I had bought some for Chloe as well :(.  I will save the extra for next year.  But Izzy was playing with it today, and Tom commented that it looks like a coronavirus toy.  What do you think?

I prepared the steak and sausage pie.  You just put it in a tin (in my case glass baking dish) and place rolled puff pastry over it.  They said you can add decorations to it so I decided to add stars.  Here it is after baking. 

And here it is on my plate with mashed neeps (turnips to us) and tattoos (potatoes to us).

It was really good. I am still not a fan of turnips, but I keep trying. But the pie was amazing. Definitely a keeper recipe and may be out New Year’s Day (Ne’erday) tradition from now on. The tarts are good as well.

We finished the evening with RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked the World, It was amamzing to learn of the increidible influences our indigenous peoples had on our rock, blues and jazz music.

So that is our pandemic New Year’s. I hope you all had an enjoyable one and desperately want this next year to be much better than the last!