I'm not ashamed to say that most of my fondest memories from Christmas break are food-related. The corned-beef sandwich I had the last day of work from Manny's. The standing rib roast my mom made Christmas Eve that confirmed why I'm not a vegetarian. The annual Cuban restaurant outing Steve and I make that involves slamming at least two different kinds of meat and two different kinds of carbohydrate each in one meal. But one of my fondest was Food From a Bag Day.

Going out to get food on New Years Day is unthinkable. You don't want to leave the house for various reasons: it's cold, you might be hungover, you don't want to put on actual pants. But instead of ordering in I decided that New Year's Day was going to be a great day to prepare these various forms of free bagged food I had received over the last few months.

First came the pancake mix and syrup a client had sent me as a Christmas gift (I covet mail-order Christmas food). I don't normally make starchy breakfast food but I got around this in two ways: I made Steve make them and since you're just adding milk there isn't much "making" involved. The pancakes were lovely and moreover served to me by someone other than myself and with a side of bacon and some thin Vermont syrup it was the best thing I could have ever eaten as I watched the Outback Bowl.

Lunch was sort of cheating a little bit since they involved groceries I had already bought but the edamame carrot wrap I enjoyed involved three bags: the tortilla, the shredded carrots, the edamame.

Dinner was extra exciting though. My boss went to Italy earlier this summer and when she came back handed out little sachets to her co-workers. Basically, you add water, some olive oil and in a little while you have a nice pasta sauce. I always forgot about my astronaut pasta until I'd see it in my pantry and wonder if I'd ever get around to making it. New Year's day was perfect. It was really neat, actually: I ended up making Pennette All Sorrentina, which is a very spicy, peppery pasta sauce which tastes extra good when you realize you didn't have to chop a damn thing to make it.

So, I am going to predict that in 2010 we're going to move past this whole "localvore" thing and, once people inevitably realize how awesome it is to just take some food from a bag, add a liquid and have instant meal, we're going to move on to becoming "bagelvore." No bagels, though: those, oddly, are not allowed on the diet. Don't ask me why, though--I just follow the rules, don't' set them.