Happy New Year's!

We trust a relatively peaceful and happy evening was had by all?

Casa de Los Gatos, aka ThePoliticalCat, celebrated with Ms. Manitoba the day before. A steak tasting was held, generously accompanied by grilled eggplant salad and roasted beets, and steak was cooked three different ways. The tasting was pronounced a success, and all held that the addition of crushed red chilli pepper flakes, and a sauce composed of 1/2 cup chicken stock and 1/4 cup red wine used to deglaze the roasting pan, combined with leftover marinade of red pepper, ginger, honey, and vinegar provided a delicious bite, as it were, to the steak.

Last night's celebration was slightly less muted: A fire, a game of scrabble, a slice of hazelnut chocolate torte, a slice of a chocolate sponge cake with dark chocolate ganache and sweet chocolate buttercream icing, a small bottle of Quady's Essensia. Later, a truly terrible movie called "Gow: The Killer" was watched, for reasons having to do with certain parties' nostalgia for Papua Niugini.

No one asked for our opinion, but clearly we don't wait for solicitations to begin holding forth: Don't watch the movie. It'll make you want to strangle the smug colonialists who shot it (come to think of it, you could shoot them. It's full of 1920s camera work (black/white, of course) of bare-breasted Melanesian and Polynesian women and men, while some droning fool opines in a terrible saltwater accent about the likelihood of cannibalism and the level of civilization attained by these, as they phrase it, unfortunates.

Bunch of shite.

Other than that, a good time was had by all, and we accept solicitous inquiries about the health of dear Bandicoot, who is finally beginning to recover from the wretched cold that has had him in its snotty grip for well over two months now.

In other news, we finally updated the Book List on our sisterblog! Book reviews will be posted imminently.

Finally, let it be said that I expected I'd read 60 books this year, and I'm really pleased with what I've achieved with the reading. Book Lists are a good idea. Now if only I could get off my duff and finish writing them.

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