New Year Celebration

It's been 11 days since we had our New Year celebration and it feels like it was ages ago. Everything turned back to normal so quick.

We ended 2010 with lots of food and good company and we welcomed 2011 the same way. This was the first year we actually celebrated New Years in our new house. End of 2009 we received the key for our newly build house and this year it was party time. Since our Portuguese and Greek neighbors were celebrating their first New Year in Holland I decided to organize a little New Years Party at our place with lots of food and drinks. Every family had to contribute by bringing 3 kinds of snacks and one dessert.  

My hubby spent all day cleaning the house and making everything look nice. After I came home from work I could start making my part of the party food right away. The day before I made salsa from fresh tomatoes, one small diced onion, some garlic, half a lemon and a handful of cilantro. I asked mom to make her famous chicken wings. I made some puff pastry stuffed with minced meat and a big pan of tomato soup with homemade meatballs.   

The house looks sooo nice and spacious when it is cleaned. Big thumps up for the hubby.

He also set up the table and put all my nice big plates on the table for me to use. And he put some lights on the table to make it extra festive. What would I do without him! I bought a nice table cloth. I thought it would’ve been big enough, but it wasn’t. The table was bigger then I remembered.

Of course the beer was ready for the guys.

I made my puff pastry with meat stuffing two ways. One was simple triangle and the other one was made like a jacket, showing the meaty inside. I got tired of making triangles and find this way very fast and easy. I started by chopping the puff pastry squares in half making two triangles. One of the triangles I folded together to make a stuffed triangle and the other one I folded back to squares leaving some room for the meat to show off. Two same sizes makes at least 2 different kinds of pastry. They tasted so good with sweet chili sauce.

Our Portuguese neighbors came first with their Portuguese snacks (the first 3 dishes on the photo). They had some cheddar spring rolls, cod croquettes and little chicken schnitzels. They brought more, but this is what I remember. The neighbor also made a huge pot of sangria loaded with fresh fruit. It was absolutely wonderful.

In total there were 5 or 6 different Portuguese snacks.

My sister made little Dutch cheese cakes (kwarktaart), but she also made a hug amount of pasta salad and a whole lot of Moroccan meat balls. She didn’t tell me she would otherwise I would’ve told her to bring the dessert only since I was expecting loads of food. She packed her pasta with sun dried tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, artichoke harts, rocket, raw ham and parmesan cheese. It looked very yummy on my big plate.  
On your right there's a plate with mom's famous chicken wings which she marinated over night and backed in the oven.

The chicken was so good! To bad my salsa is not on in the picture.

Our Greek neighbors came 15 minute later and brought so much food I forgot to take a picture. The whole table was filled! They brought home made moussaka with eggplant, potatoes, minced meat and béchamel sauce, meat balls, feta wrapped in phyllo and two different kinds of Greek desserts. I am sure there was more, but since I forgot to take pictures this is all I remember.

We started eating at around 7 and at 10-11 we took out the dessert. At midnight we all had champagne and we went outside to look at fireworks. The guys lit the fireworks they bought earlier. At around 2 we all ate a bowl (or two) of soup and after giving everyone leftovers to take home we jumped in bed at 3 am. The next two days we were to tired to do anything, but overall it was a great start of the New Year. No better way to celebrate then with good food and great company.

May everone's New Year be better then the ones before!