obligatory NYE title

well, it's finally happened,  2011 has finally decided to pack it's crap up and get the heck out of town.  I've been after it to leave since May, but it didn't listen.  It stuck around to make life hard to bear for about 6 more months before it finally gave up.  In so many ways, 2011 was like a terrible boyfriend, and I'm not ever going to say I'm glad to see it go.  It was one of those years where I have trouble looking back of the mountainous crappy moments to even see where there were good times.  And there were good times, but I have a slight tendancy to see the scars, instead of the obvious healing.  And as long as I ackowledge that, I'm good.

So, while I thought for a while about my sister's excellent suggestion of how to bid this year goodbye in a manner that would communicate my general displeasure with the happenings that it brought, I decided the best thing to do is just be happy it's finally over and things can only get better from here.  Seriously.

Also, I don't want to slight 2012.  I wouldn't want 2012 to have any reason to be mad at me.  So, I did procure the traditional summer sausage, cheese, crackers and some champange.  And I imagine that I will sit around with my delightful family chowing down and watching movies, though not on netflix, because the xBox is still broken.  I'm going to have to get up out of bed at some point today and rent a redbox movie.

Anyway, I was thinking about champange cupcakes.  I contemplated making them for tonight's hurrah.  But they seem so complicated.  Just getting the cork out of a bottle of champange pretty much takes me a while.  So I think, instead, I'm going to make my absolute favorite flavor combo, a lemon creme cupcake with strawberry icing.

I really enjoy how I like to telescope my culinary ambitions via a post before the photo post.

I'm going to be very clear here, I'm not making anything from scratch.  I'm going to use a box cake and a can of frosting.  However, I don't have lemon cake, so i'm going to doctor a box cake with lemon extract and lemon peel.

And I'd like for the record, to state, that food is only as good as the ingredients you use, and so I try to stick exclusively to Penzeys spices.  In fact, I won't even look at McCormick or any of those others.  I'm completely spoiled.  There is a vast difference in quality, freshness and flavor.  I cannot recommend them enough.

Also, they have spice blends that are fantastic and EXCELLENT recipe helpers.  I used the Sunny Parisian blend and two cups of red wine to make the most delicious chicken the other night.

Anyway, I would shill for them till I was blue in the face, but I really ought to get off my ever-expanding ass to go and bake, so I feel like I sent this crappy year off with a sweet reminder of what it missed out on by treating me so shabbily.

I will tell you this, friends and followers (all 5 of you), 2012 is gong to rock prodigiously


My sister just reminded me that the  recommendation for a New Year's Celebration (highlight with your mouse to read. Not for those easily offended) was more of a joint planning.  As in, she started with one part, I added some grossness to it, and then we both laughed so hard at the idea, we almost drove off the road.

( Write 2011 on a piece of toilet paper.  Use the marked  toilet paper to wipe your hiney , and then flush it down the toilet.)