During the now-concluded holidays here at New Bellevue House, we welcomed some 50 friends, family and neighbors (along with a few odds and sods) at cocktail fêtes, dinner parties and soirées various. This wouldn’t have been possible without the help of the help - Finial, my butler, and his termagant wife, Margaret Mary Siobhan, the cook. But the culinary driving force was the Maîtresse de Maison, Mrs Leesa Lynn Oliver. She dreamed up the menus and oversaw creation of every dish from cocktail hour nibbles to the consommé right the way through to the cheese course and each bite in-between. Her work was masterful. Amid all this revelry, however, I pondered the season’s tropes, particularly the ball drop in Manhattan’s Times Square. Wherefore a ball drop, of all things? I axed myself. What follows is the amazing answer.
© 2024 John Oliver
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