Ring­ing in the New Year last night, I decided to keep it safe, sim­ple and, most of all, fun. I often joke that Cen­tral Florida is full of trans­plants – many of us are here sans fam­ily and find that we make our own fam­ily through our friends. Not to men­tion, they say who you spend your New Years Eve with sets the tone for the year ahead. Who bet­ter to spend it with but my friends.

I was hon­ored to be selected by Food­Buzz to par­tic­i­pate in their 24, 24, 24 New Year’s Eve Event - 24 meals, 24 Hours, 24 Blogs. So, after much think­ing, I decided to cre­ate a din­ner for my “adopted fam” with one of the fea­tured ingre­di­ents being the fes­tive hol­i­day fruit – Cran­berry. I took some of my tried and true recipes and embell­ished on them a bit while I also attempted some new ones. I have to say it turned out to be a resound­ing success.

I was pretty much pleased with the menu. Some of the menu selec­tions were items that have been a hit at other din­ners and the Spiced Apple/Cranberry San­gria was inspired by my recent trip to Jose Garces‘ restau­rant, Amada, in Philadel­phia (more on that in a future post). Cou­ple that with my new fave linens from Williams Sonoma (in a fes­tive shade of cran­berry!), the party went off with nary a hitch.

Also, as a sen­ti­ment to start the New Year off right, my guests and those that were not able to make it will get a lit­tle “care pack­age” con­tain­ing some Cran­berry cen­tered items, namely their own small Cran­berry Vodka, Erin Cooks! fab­u­lous Cran­berry Orange Dark Choco­late Chip Cook­ies and the recipes for all the recipes used (and some that were con­sid­ered) for this event. I’m also sur­pris­ing my co-workers with Con­fes­sion of a (Some­times!) Serendip­i­tous Girl aka SSG’s fab­u­lous Apple Cran­berry Crum­ble on Mon­day. I was going to make it yes­ter­day how­ever when I was going through the recipe, I for­got two very vital ingre­di­ents. Note to self: Shop with a gro­cery list NOT on the black­berry. Lys = Air­head. Oops! I’ll make sure to do an entry on it with SSG’s per­mis­sion of course.

Well, not being one to exclude y’all, I’m also going to make the recipes avail­able for my read­ers. So, should you want the recipes, shoot me an email at Jus­tan­oth­a­gal [at] gmail [dot] com with the sub­ject “24/24/24 Recipes” and I’ll be happy to shoot them off to you.

Much thanks to Food­Buzz and my won­der­ful adopted fam here in Orlando. What a way to ring in 2009!

~ NOTES~
* The recipe is an Orange/Cranberry Vodka because the FN Recipe for Cran­berry Vodka is wrong. Just let the vodka soak in cran­ber­ries and you will love it. Trust!

** I sub­sti­tuted 2 tbsp. of cran­berry chut­ney for the equiv­a­lent of grape jelly. The fla­vors were per­fect with the chili sauce.