December: Spaghetti & Meatballs
Every holiday season for the past decade, I’ve gone out for spaghetti and meatballs with two of my closest friends from college. The three of us have never lived in the same city at the same time, but we all end up in the tri-state area for either Thanksgiving or Christmas every year, so it’s become a great way to make sure we see each other (particularly now that we’re even more spread out than ever — London, New York, and Dallas). Since the very first one, we’ve used this dinner as a time to make resolutions for the upcoming year (and check in on the resolutions that we made a year ago). One of the resolutions I made last year (as evidenced by this blog) was to host a dinner party once a month in 2019. Since I kicked off the year with spaghetti and meatballs, it just seemed right that I host our annual spaghetti dinner as my final dinner party of the year and this resolution. With just two guests, I think this may have been the easiest one! There were no FreshDirect mishaps, no burnt caramel, no cookie crumbs, AND at the end of the night my guests gave me an A+ on my 2019 resolutions — some of which were more challenging than this one. While not so much has changed from our first dinner — we still drink lots of wine and talk about crushes and work drama — this year we also insisted that our resolutions have measurable key results so we can more easily track our progress and we talked a lot about getting our everyday tasks done on top of demanding jobs, so I think it’s safe to say that we are in fact growing up.
Recycling bins artfully framed in this shot by yours truly.
To put a bow on this year of dinner parties, I decided that for dessert I would try to make “the cookies,” again. In January, I set out to make Alison Roman’s famous salted chocolate chunk shortbread cookies and it was a comedy of errors — my hand mixer didn’t arrive in time, the dough never came together, I baked random pieces off into cookie crumbs — delicious, but disaster. I think I felt like successfully baking these cookies 11 months later would mean that I’d learned something. I used the recipe straight from the cookbook this time and even though I ended up having to microplane my brown sugar since it was so hard, it worked! The dough came together, I sliced it into real cookie shapes after it chilled, and I even got to use the fancy demerara sugar I’d bought way back in January to coat the sides.
12 dinner parties later, I can honestly say I enjoyed each and every one of them, but I am also ecstatic not to have to plan anything for January!
Rundown:
Prosciutto, soppressata, marinated mozzarella balls, castelvetrano olives, and marinated mushrooms all from our friends at FreshDirect
Perfect Meatballs (after trying 3 meatball recipes this year, including Rao’s, I think I like this one best!)
Quick and Easy Italian-American Red Sauce (this is the same sauce I used for the baked ziti, and while I really like it, Rao’s in the jar is just as good, if not better)
Anchovy Toast from Nothing Fancy (this is the umami-est garlic bread out there)
Salted Chocolate Chunk Shortbread Cookies
Assorted cookies from Levain Bakery from guest (INSANELY delicious)
