Happy New Year, everyone!
I’m so glad the husband and I survived 2024 so we could say goodbye to this b*tch of a year and welcome 2025 with open arms. This year, we made a ham with pineapple slices and cherries, along with beer rice and plantains. If you’re wondering where the plantains come from in an American family, let me remind you that my husband’s family is Puerto Rican, and plantains are a common food staple in his culture. Also, I’m from Miami—Hialeah, specifically—and I was raised in a community full of Cubans who also love plantains. Naturally, I developed a taste for this Caribbean side dish early in life.
For dessert, the husband and I made a coconut cake, decorating it with marshmallows and cherries to simulate the hours on a clock. We used half of a ladyfinger cookie as the hand of the clock, pointing to midnight. We also made chocolate pudding and wrote our wishes for 2025, like health, money, and friendship, on coconut cookies.
At night, the winds picked up violently. This wasn’t a problem for us; it allowed us to open the back door and windows, letting the winds flush the old 2024 air out of the house and replace it with fresh air.
For those of you who don’t know, we are Wiccan. We recited an incantation to remove negative energy from our home and our lives, replacing it with positive things like new opportunities, money, and health—similar to the affirmations we wrote on the coconut cookies. We always find these incantations helpful for protecting ourselves and our home from negative energy.
When the clock struck midnight in Argentina, we drank champagne. (It was the cheapest sh*t we’d ever bought and will never buy again.) For us, though, the New Year isn’t official until the ball drops in Times Square. Sadly, we can’t watch Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest from Argentina, but we managed to watch the ball drop via the NYE Live Webcast.
We waited until midnight in New York City, which is 2 a.m. in Argentina. In preparation, we cleaned 24 grapes. This tradition involves eating 12 grapes, one for each wish we have for the new year.
Since the champagne earlier was so nasty, we made a mix of Malibu coconut rum and pineapple soy juice. When the countdown began, the ball started to drop, and 2025 officially arrived. After a long, emotional hug and a kiss, the husband and I drank our coconut rum mix and ate our grapes.
Phew! We did it! We survived another year in this world and living abroad in Argentina. I don’t know what 2025 will bring, but we plan to take things one day at a time.
Until next time…
