A toast to the New Year

Whew! The New Year celebration is done. I stayed home on New Year's Eve, and watched a movie with Celeste. O went visiting his cousins, who came here to pick him up. I bowed out, blaming my still puffy ankle. Before they all went, we had a toast to the New Year with Peruvian champagne that we got in a gift basket at work - and it was absolutely the WORST champagne I've ever tasted. Thank heavens there were seven people to share the bottle. Each of us got a little bit of champagne in a flute, raised our glasses, cried "Salud!" and tossed back the champagne. I sipped mine and nearly choked on the sickeningly sweet taste, similar to alka-selzter-plus-cold-medicine. As I looked around the room, I noticed that they all had the same look on their faces - kind of a frozen smile with bulgy eyes that relaxed once the nasty stuff was swallowed. Then everyone grinned and talked up a storm.

I've never had sweet champagne before. I've also never had expensive champagne, either, and O told me that this was cheap champagne. Vino espumado...sparkling wine. The cheap champagne that I tasted in the US had a flavor similar to beer.

Happily, we have paneton for breakfast tomorrow - YUM! O is a paneton addict, but we forgot about the one that's sitting on top of the cupboard. I like paneton, too, but I don't think I'm an addict yet. It is good, though.