Unlike the past few years, when my wife has fallen asleep on the sofa by 9 and I eat some frozen something from the prior New Year, last night we had a change of pace.
For dinner, we had seafood gumbo. I do the cooking, but my wife (this time) did the legwork in getting the ingredients, and the most boring part of the prep work, which is chopping the veggies. Lots of onion and green onion and red bell pepper and celery. A couple of pounds of shrimp, a couple of pounds of andouille, a pound of crab meat ($30 a pound!), and just a little bit of oysters. Cook down some seafood stock, make a smoky, smelly roux, put it all together and it's heaven.
I took a drive to the next town to get some good fireworks. I don't know what you call them, but they're the tubes that shoot the big bursts, and clusters of tubes that shoot 50 or so small and large bursts in rapid succession. We haven't shot off fireworks in a couple of years, so that was fun. I was able to light three tubes at the same time for a finale, but that was a bit dicey.
Next year I'm going to buy a ton more, and rig up some electrical igniters for the fuses so I can fire several tubes in rapid succession or all at once.
My wife fell asleep probably twenty minutes after the fireworks, but I stayed up until sometime after three, listening to music. Everything from Bo Diddley, Johnny Otis and Eddie Cochran to Wilson Pickett and Sam & Dave to Dire Straits and David Bowie.
It brought back a lot of memories of New Years past, when we'd keep the bartenders working until 6 or 7 am, then get some breakfast and get home at 9 or 10 am.
