I meant to post this last week but instead of writing on New Year’s Day we sat around in our PJ’s and played video games. And then I had to work on Friday. #thestruggleisreal
On New Year’s Eve I went shopping for groceries in Carmel Mountain Ranch. It was cloudy, dark, and drizzly and at about 12PM we reached a high of 45 degrees. What in the what?! I know for someone who doesn’t live in San Diego this might seem warm, but to us San Diegans this is like “real weather”, yo. I took advantage of our real cold snap (it was in the 30’s that night) and made a fire!
That poor fireplace doesn’t get much use but it sure is nice and cozy. On Pinterest I saw the idea to make “time capsules” and to fill in little year in review sheets. Jake, T and I drank hot cocoa and filled out our sheets in front of the fire and then read them aloud. It was a pretty great year, actually, and it was a nice way to reflect.
And then we ate snacks! Like these Bacon Cracker Things that I’ve been making for New Year’s for the last few years. Jake and T love these things and every December they ask, “Are you going to make those bacon cracker things again?” Yes, yes. Of course I will.
I saw these originally on the Pioneer Woman. It’s basically just a saltine cracker (she uses Club Crackers), a little Parmesan cheese, and then you wrap the whole thing with half a strip of bacon. I highly recommend using THIN slices since otherwise they take longer to bake. You should also cheat and use a rolling pin to thin them out. Bake these on a rack over a baking sheet for 2 hours at 250 degrees. They shrink and shrivel and are a gloriously meaty little snack. I myself can only eat a few but the boys love these suckers.
We also had some Brazilian Cheese Bread (left) that I bought at Sprouts and some crescent roll things I made.
I used the same filling for the crescent rolls as I did for these “nests/should have been pinwheels” things. The mixture was just ground pork, fresh sage and lots of onions, plus cream cheese. I wish I had spread more of the filling across the puff pastry but I only put it on 1/4 of the sheet. Live and learn.
Ugh, I almost forgot to post these! I also made the simpliest dessert ever. Ritz crackers. Dulce de leche. Chocolate. Boom. Done.
My chocolate coating is ugly though because my chocolate hated me that day. These are really tasty even without the chocolate.
Like my mustache?
T enjoying the treats.
Jake is obviously a heavy partier.
So am I.
While eating snacks, I decided we would do a little “soda tasting” since Minion got me these sodas for Christmas. On New Year’s we tried the Root Beer, the Sweet Corn and the Old Fashioned Lemonade.
We tried the “safe” root beer first. It was pretty good.
Then we moved onto the Sweet Corn…
This is T’s “OMG what did I just drink?!” face which was followed by a “I want to retch face” which I decided not to post to be nice.
My reaction was immediate and full of discomfort.
Jake turned away too soon for us to get a photo because he immediately went to spit it out.
Suffice it to say, the Sweet Corn soda was totally disgusting. Thanks, Minion.
We did the lemonade one last and I thought it was going to taste like Lemon flavored soda but actually it just tasted like old, flat lemonade. It was better than the Sweet Corn but that’s not saying much.
Other fun photos:
Mustache removal fail.
We used sticks for ours!
After snackies and weird sodas we flipped around TV stations watching boring Carson Daly and Ryan Seacrest (yawn) and watched a little bit of Pitbull’s dance party in Miami before retiring to watch When Harry Met Sally (I love that movie).
Bye bye, 2014! I hope to remember to write 2015 instead of 2014 now.
Great pix, especially with those cool party frames!
I’ve actually tried the corn soda and didn’t think it was too bad. It was a gift, along with bacon soda, which was pretty gross.
I need to make your Ritz/Chocolate/dulce de leche crackers and the cracker/bacon/cheese appetizer! I love easy and tasty recipes! Sounds like you guys had a great NYEve! 🙂
Thanks, CC! The corn soda just tasted all kinds of wrong to me. I think we tried a chocolate bacon soda before, too, and that was almost as bad as the corn one. I don’t like overly sweet sodas to begin with so it really had no chance with me.
Dude. The Ritz/dulce de leche things were this last minute lightbulb of an idea I had in my head. I was thinking about how much I used to love making peanut butter and jelly ritz “sandwiches” and that I had this jar of dulce de leche just hanging out in my cabinet (I bought it with no thoughts of what to do with it). I felt like it was one of my “brighter” moments haha.
This was so cute! Looooved all your snacks. I can’t imagine how the bacon cracker one tastes like but I am intrigued.
And I am overjoyed that Trader Joe’s is selling dulce de leche! No more buying condensed milk cans and boiling them for 2 hours 🙂
Thanks, J.S.! The bacon crackers are like… crunchy salty goodness. I think my bacon was much too thick this time around so I really saw the importance of thin bacon haha.
I immediately had to buy that dulce de leche from TJ’s even though at the time I had no idea what to do with it. It’s sooooo good. Even just dipping the Ritz in it is beyond delicious. Who has time for boiling cans?! 😀
haha looks like fun! i can’t believe those cracker bacon things take 2 hours to cook! and you didn’t mention the pumpkin pie drink… did minion try these drink flavors himself or only bought them?
we invited friends last minute for NYE but of course they all had plans already (which mostly consisted of staying home). those BUMS! ha, we bummed at home too. since we didn’t have to serve people snacks, we just baked red baron pizza, nothing as fun as your evening!
Hi Lynn – Yeah, you do them over really low heat so… they get more magical, I guess? And probably so the bacon doesn’t burn! I’ve never tried increasing the temp to make them faster, not sure how that would work out. I imagine it would just burn and overcook really fast. I always like doing little snacks on NYE so it feels a little more special, even though we don’t go out anymore.