A wonderful New Year's Eve Dinner

We had a super evening with Chris and Susan and Monique. Monique made her world famous escargots and vichyssoise and brought a great Pinot Gris from Alsace to accompany the soup...perfect pairing. Chris and Susan brought a red wine from Australia called "Two Left Feet" from the Molly Dooker Winery (Molly Dooker is slang for left handed in Aussieland). This was fitting match to the escargot like you wouldn't believe! I think the best red wine I have ever had and Monique said she had only had one other bottle of red wine in her life that was better so I would say that's a pretty good recommendation!

Here's their website...I see you can get on their wait list (limiting purchases to 12 bottles per person) for a wine they call "Velvet Glove"...coming in at $195 a bottle. I imagine that's quite a wine.

Mollydooker Winery - Australia

My contribution was rack of lamb and this fancy thermometer Richard gave me for Christmas worked perfectly. You can set the temp you want the meat to come to and the alarm goes off when it's done. No need to open the oven to check it as the probe is in the meat but the thermometer is outside the oven...brilliant!

And Susan and Chris also brought a divine cake from Pure Vanilla and lots of bubbly.



I used my mom's china and my grandmother's sterling and it all went in the dishwasher with no ill effects.


Monique's world famous escargots.



Monique and Jim



Susan looking very elegant.



Chris trying to look elegant...