Wherever you are in the world, I hope
you had a fantastic New Year’s celebration!
Here in Warsaw, we rung in
the new year at home with my longtime friend, Becca, and her husband,
who are visiting us from the U.S. We’ve known each other for more than 12 years
and have stayed in touch through all of our many moves in the U.S. and abroad.
I feel blessed to have good friends like this! We also celebrated the festivities
with our new Hungarian friends – one of the best parts of our expat
life – meeting new friends.
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| Good friends - Becca and me at home in Warsaw. |
Our
home was filled with good food, which included a full-sit down dinner with a creamy
celery root soup with truffled croutons, herb-crusted beef tenderloin, au
gratin potatoes, roasted Brussels sprouts and a berry topped New
York Cheesecake (In Poland, you can substitute serek
smietankowy
for the labne.) Luckily, I had three
prep cooks in the kitchen with me to help with this amazing meal!
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| New York cheesecake topped with a mixed berry compote. I made the compote with some of my frozen cherries, strawberries and blueberries (leftover from the summer bounty), a bit of sugar and orange juice. |
Of
course, hubby was our drink mixologist and whipped up a batch of these pomegranate margaritas,
which we like to refer to as Nar-garitas.
This drink is the perfect reminder of our love for Istanbul. In fact, these pomegranates had
labels on them saying they were from Turkey! I seem to find a bit of Turkey now
wherever we go.
A
variety of drinks followed after our Nar-garitas,
which may explain why some of us are feeling a bit rough this morning, as well
as an evening filled with dancing to some of my favorite 80s tunes and dance
music. What a fun evening!
Finally,
Warsaw did not disappoint us and displayed a multitude of fireworks in the sky
throughout the evening, concluding with a fabulous explosion at midnight. We
had the perfect view from our balcony and could run inside when we got too
cold.
I’m
a little relieved to put 2013 behind us as it was a tough year. I moved from a
city I loved and had to start all over again. Such is the life as an expat! I’m eagerly
looking forward to a fun-filled 2014 and settling down in our new city.
Happy
New Year my friends! May 2014 be filled with new adventures, good food and
terrific travels!
As
always, thanks for reading!
 |
| We had a fantastic view of the fireworks over Warsaw! |
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6 comments:
happy new year joy! sounds like yours was lots of fun!
@Joyce, maybe a little too much fun! ;-) Happy New Year to you and your family in PA!
What wonderful fireworks! We so miss them here.
Beautiful! That view reminds me of watching the fireworks on NYE at your old place in Baltimore. Happy new year to you and Jason!!
Oh dig! The cheese cake is so amazing. And even I was fortunate enough to enjoy the fire works! :)
@Barbara, Warsaw did put on a good show!
@Xani, Happy New Year to you too! Yep, we definitely miss our old house in Bmore sometimes, and we may be putting it on the market this year too. We don't see ourselves living in the US anytime soon!
@kitchensmitten, Thank you! This is one of my favorite cheesecake recipes! Happy new year to you as well!
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