I've had the same date for New Year's Eve for forty-five years. I am grateful to Peter for that. And I am grateful that for many years, we have shared New Year's Eve with our wonderful friends, Tina and Harvey. For a long time, the four of us would go to the movies and then to a very special dinner, cooked at their house or ours in alternating years. And for the last several years, we've gone to their vacation home in the mountains, usually cooking together for a bunch of their friends there. But this year, we stayed in the city because their beautiful new granddaughter was visiting from the west coast with her parents and we were babysitting with them.

My contribution was a special salad with candied almonds and mandarin oranges and a sinful cake that contained two cups of heavy cream, six eggs and a pound of chocolate. We ate giant shrimp, great cheeses, various other appetizers and a to-die-for prime rib. We took our shoes off. We drank good wine. We hugged each other at midnight and we went home.

It's a wonderful tradition.