Red.

Red pork, red lobster, red/pink ‘peppercorns’:  It wasn’t a plan, but after the fact the red tones in this simple meal seemed right [Left] for the turn of a year in anxious times, even if the pleasures of the celebratory meal itself were nothing of the sort.

• red pepper taralli

• four ounces of thinly-sliced prosciutto Friulano Levoni from Eataly, served on a plate with a little Campania olive oil (Lamparelli O.R.O. from Buon Italia
• pieces torn off an Eric Kayser ‘baguette monge’, from the bakery/store near the Flatiron Building (still very warm when purchased at 5 that afternoon)

• lobster-filled mezzaluna (about 13 ounces) from the Rana store inside Chelsea Market, with a sauce of only a few tablespoons of rich Kerrygold Pure Irish Butter, melted, a few sprigs of chopped tarragon from Whole foods and some crushed pink peppercorns, the last a delicacy I had discovered in the original Dean & Deluca store on Prince Street in the early 80s
• more bread, to finish the sauce

• a toast, at midnight, with a split of Perrier-Jouët Grand Brut Champagne

• the wine throughout (until the midnight toast) was an Italian (Campania) white, Feudi di San Gregorio Falanghina 2014
•  the music throughout was WKCR streaming, the very last hours of its 9-day ‘Bach Festival 2016, then topped off after midnight with Bach’s delightful secular cantata-almost-opera,  ‘Geschwinde, ihr wirbelnden Winde’ (Swift, You Swirling Winds), the dramatization of a dispute between Phoebus and Pan about the relative merits of popular and ‘learned’ music