New Year Menu

 New Years has been at our house ever since boy 3 was a baby and we lived next door to the fireworks maniac who once shot water at my kids thinking that they were popping fireworks early. They were not. In fact once she yelled at my kids when it was her own teenager who climbed on the roof and popped off fireworks. We built that house in our late 20s, early 30s, so that you have an understanding of our mindset, but each year, we would save up our Christmas money and blow it on fireworks. We would wait until 9 pm, the county start time on New Year's eve and blast (in our gravel yard, not on the road) until 1 am (the county stop time). Every half hour we would do a string. All within the legal restrictions, but really just to irritate her. Call the cops. We are not doing anything. 

So see, we needed to be home for New Year's eve. We needed to be well fed and well rested for the "tradition" of irritating our neighbor.  

The second story is about my mother. She takes Christmas. She is also an extrovert where I was an introvert. She likes change for change sake. She loves to plan parties. Therefore, our menu changes. Ever since she did the Italian Christmas, she likes to change it up. I think somewhere she writes down what we have done so that she does not repeat. I, for my part, like to take something we like, and make it better. I am more about the tweaking towards tradition and not about experimenting, and moving on. 

Therefore, twenty years later, we have sort of come up with what our family knows will be at New Years. We have gotten to the point where we don't change much.

Menu:

Sushi Bar

• Sushi rice
• Nori
• making for temaki or chirashi
• raw fish in strips (ahi, salmon)
• cucumber
• honey mayo sauce
• tobiko
• ikura (moʻo favorite)
• imitation crab
• takuan
• assorted poke 
• seasoned aburage cut for poke bombs or somen salad bombs
• radish sprouts

Tempura Bar

• Assorted tempura using the box mix as well as Grandma Ikeda's fritter style dough
• shrimp
• ahi chunks
• slivered green beans and carrots
• squash
• sweet potato, steamed
• eggplant
• chiso leaves
• mushrooms like maitake, enoki bundles
• Daikon suri (daikon grated)
• Bottled dipping sauce
• Grandma's sweet sour sauce (also on the dough recipe post)

Other traditional "good luck items"

• red fish baked or steamed with ginger, cilantro, lup cheong, sizzling oil or kitsune style with sauce and bundles of somen noodles
• yokan
• kuromame (black beans)
• tangerines
• fish cake
• sashimi
• tako with miso dipping sauce
• konbumaki - pork belly wrapped in konbu and tied with kanpyo then cooked in a shoyu sugar sauce
• homemade peanut butter mochi