New Year's PotLUCK

So the best combination of menu items at New Year's Day brunch turned out to be Rachel's Spalding's Bread Pudding..... dressed with Chef Tom's hot chile sauce. Spicy, Sweet, Savory, and Hot, I think the guests deemed it "Sexxxxxy," our new food word for 2010.

As menu items go, it was an unlikely pairing, created by a happy accident -- which is maybe true of all the greatest things in life.

I can say this: it was probably the best menu ever served on that table, and that is saying something. I don't typically do PotLuck and think of them as a little rude --- "hey, would you like to come to dinner? Great! Would you mind bringing it?!" --- but I realize now I've been wrong. PotLuck is all about letting go of control over the table and trusting everyone else to shine and show off: which everyone most certainly did.

The only criteria for this meal was that everyone bring a dish that conferred luck on the guests for the New Year. So we had orange-glazed pork loin; potstickers; deviled eggs; Orangina-Mimosas; and bread pudding. I made the token black-eyed peas (though I very nearly ran to DiscoKroger in the middle of the night and put together a strata based on my mother's horror that I had only prepared one dish. She honestly need not have worried.)

I'm looking out the window right now at the remnants of a Blue Moon. But I will do everything possible in 2010 to make sure that this gathering -- my beloved BFF and beloved college roommate; my gay husband and husband-in-law; my food gays; my junior gays; and my dear, dear assorted straights, old and new -- will not be a rare thing. Because I am well aware I was the luckiest person in the room.