Happy New Year’s Eve, everybody. In this video I’m up early (coffee in hand) getting the fire going, checking on the snow, and doing my usual outside routine—clearing a little path so the birds don’t have to “scuba dive” for seed, and topping up the buckets. It’s super snowy here and even hockey practice got cancelled, so it’s one of those cozy, hunker-down days where you just keep puttering and getting things done. Then I’m in the kitchen all day prepping our big Asian-inspired New Year’s Eve supper for just the six of us. I make honey garlic pork, get basmati rice going (I even use beef broth because we’ve got a whack of it), and start building a chicken-and-veg dish with bok choy, mushrooms, snap peas, baby corn, soy sauce, and a bit of curry paste—kind of a “concoction” because I grabbed the wrong black bean sauce at Walmart (it was chili oil with black beans). I also start sweet and sour meatballs, talk about keeping portions reasonable so we’re not eating leftovers for days, and I even share what’s been going on with Nova Scotia Power after the hack—because honestly, we don’t need another plot twist at the end of the year.