Excess indeed.

Oh lord.

There was much revelry last night. At 5 pm I realized people would be descending upon the house in a few mere hours and we had nothing to feed them. So off I dashed to Shopper's Corner with decadence as my guiding principle instead of a shopping list. What could I make quickly that would still taste fabulous and celebratory? Into my cart went champagne, smoked salmon, prosciutto, crème fraiche, dill, capers, hummus, olives and olive tapenade, cashews, rosemary, salmon roe, goat cheese, a wedge of Petit Basque, truffle pate, and several loaves of francese bread. Not the cheapest shopping expedition I've ever made, and certainly not the healthiest, but I had the makings for a whole array of delicious crostini. Just slice up the baguette, drizzle a little olive oil, let the toasts crisp up in a hot oven, and then top them with whatever you please. My favorites were goat cheese with olive tapenade, prosciutto and Manchego with a kalamata olive, and smoked salmon, crème fraiche, a little salmon roe, and some dill. Hil picked up some guacamole from El Palomar, and I doctored up the store-bought hummus with lemon juice, salt, cayenne, and cumin, and drizzled some top notch olive oil over the top. It ended up tasting homemade, a new little trick I'm glad I have up my sleeve.

I also got a wild hair and decided that I had to, positively had to, make a batch of lemon bars. I was sick of those Meyer lemons staring balefully up at me from their bowl on the counter, daring me to make something of them. The lemon bars are delicious but turns out people don't really want to eat dessert when there's a night of drinking ahead of them. Let's just say I still have about 95% of them. Now the lemon bars stare at me balefully from their pan, daring me to eat them. I'm not sure if this is an improvement.

My first meal of the new year? A breakfast burrito from Chill Out about the size and weight of my head and 20 oz of the hottest coffee I've ever had in a restaurant. My tongue is still recovering. The burrito was also about 500 degrees and had a curious way of retaining heat. When it came to me, it was too hot to even pick up, and it simply did not cool down. Perhaps its surprising mass had something to do with heat retention - less surface area relative to volume or something like that. I would have been able to explain it better in high school when physics was something I understood. In any event, that sucker refused to cool down, boggling my still-drunken mind and burning my poor long-suffering tongue.

Tomorrow? Carrot sticks and herbal tea, preferably lukewarm. Sheesh.