New Year's Eve…scallops and new fire pit

Happy New Year! 2013 was filled with a lot of excitement and great things for me, I'm eagerly anticipating what awesome things are going to come in 2014, like maybe finishing my bachelors degree but we'll see, that all depends on scheduling. 

So I'll age myself a little here, as I get older I play things more and more on the safe side, like New Year's Eve for example. When I was younger it was all about going out to bars or clubs with a large group of friends, now it's become more about not drinking and driving and spending time with those nearest and dearest. So this year we stayed in and we whipped up a fabulous seafood dinner and broke in our new fire pit. 

The fabulous dinner was a brown butter linguine with scallops, peas, and toasted breadcrumbs. The breadcrumbs are mixed in a bowl with a little fresh lemon zest, salt, and olive oil then scatter then on a baking sheet and bake them at 350 until nice and toasted.

Cook the pasta in salted boiling water and right before it's finished at a good serving of some frozen peas, or fresh if you prefer. 

We also had super crab dip from the Fresh Market on little toasted baguette slices.

The scallops were salted and cooked on medium high heat in some olive oil, about 3-4 mins per side. A lot of people are afraid to cook scallops because they can become tough and overcooked very easily but it's not as scary as you think I promise, give it a try and remember practice makes perfect!

After the pasta and scallops are finished, wipe the pasta pot out and brown some butter and salt in the pot, then add back in the pasta and scallops mix it all up and then serve it up with the toasted breadcrumbs on top. This was incredibly easy to make and was so delicious, it's going in regular recipe rotation for sure. 

Our cocktail of choice for the evening was bourbon and cola, this Wild Turkey 101 is my husband's favorite bourbon, just in case you ever need to buy him a gift. 

For Christmas a friend bought us a fire pit, perfect since it was freezing cold on New Year's Eve we decided to gather some sticks and chunks of wood and have ourselves a nice warm fire with our cocktails in hand. 

I hope everyone had a fabulous and safe New Year's Eve and that great things come to all those who deserve it in 2014!