In my culture, we love the New Year’s so much that we celebrate it twice: on December 31 and on January 13. The latter celebration is called “the Old New Year” in reference to the old (Julian) calendar that made us lag behind the rest of Western countries before the October Revolution finally inaugurated the Gregorian calendar.
Thanks to that weird calendar mix-up we now have two opportunities to welcome the New Year. If, say, you made some New Year resolutions but managed to lapse in the very first weeks of January, here is a chance for you to start anew. How cool is that?
Happy Old New Year, everybody!

Happy Old New Year! I love that you essentially have a “do-over” – a purgatory if you will! I wish I knew, I wouldn’t have tried so hard to stick to my resolutions these weeks! 🙂
What are the dishes? Especially the one in the front.. with ham?
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I was speaking to someone recently who said she had nightmares after carving a whole chicken.I hope you are okay.
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It was a duck. 🙂 And I’m not of the faint-hearted. 🙂
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Looks great! Could you please give some details on the dishes especially the one at the front.
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The dishes are traditional in our culture. The one in front is really REALLY delicious. It’s a torte made out of blinis, cream cheese filling, smoked salmon and caviar. You take a blini, cover it with the filling and add caviar, then the next blini is covered with smoked salmon, and so on until you run out of either ingredients or patience. And then you make flowers out of smoked salmon and stick them on top of the whole thing and decorate with more caviar. It’s expensive. But it’s so gooooooooood.
And the bottles in the back are Soviet champagne and the best wine in the world – Georgian ( the country, not the state.)
Everything cooked by ME.
I didn’t make the champagne, though.
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Yummy! Pickles!
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I live for pickles, as you know. 🙂
That’s one thing on the table I didn’t make, though. 🙂
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Ah I see minds think alike – I was just coming to ask if the dish at the front was a giant blini. Yum. 😀
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Clarissa, could you please share the recipes for the other dishes? By the way, take a look at:
http://www.vermontcountrystore.com
They offer European holiday treats, comfortable clothing and hart-to-find stuff. My favorite things are New England Chowders and 100% cotton ankle socks by Buster Brown.
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Clarissa, I wrote #9 comment. I don’t know why it got posted as anonymous.
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It went to the Spam initially, too, and then I had to rescue it from there. Weird!
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Could the link be a problem?
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Usually it has to be 3 links and more to go to the Spam box.
The link is very good, though. Thank you for leaving it!
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