A Polish colleague once told the Czarina of a New Year’s cultural superstition that has driven us to frenetically find sparkly things to do every New Year’s Eve for the past four years.

This co-worker, during a discussion about parties, innocently said, “We believe that how you spend your New Year’s is how your year will be.”

Right after she reported this interesting fact, the Czarina felt cold – she envisioned 365 days of watching reruns of VH1s “I Love The 90s, Part Deux” and crying for the Lost DotCom Boom while eating stale Nutty Bars in dirty sweatpants and listening to the Small Palace Dog goad the Large Palace Dog into chasing him by biting her ankles.

No, no, no. That will never do. I’m now a hamster on the NYE bling treadmill and I can’t get off. The only way I can feel better about being stuck adhering to a superstition that doesn’t even belong to me is to pass it on to you. Don’t say your monarch never does anything for you!

To get your hamster-life started, I’ve summed up some of the most fun-looking events going on in Chicagoland for NYE. The Czarina’s experience has been that it is essential to make reservations now for the best selection! Feel free to submit your own if you know of any goings-on that meet the foodie/bling/oenophile/fab criteria.

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Everyone knows that you need tongs, a spatula or two, a decent knife set, yadda yadda yadda.

But what do you do when you’ve reached that intermediate stage of cooking – that no-man’s land of not a n00b but not a professional either? Such lost and wandering souls go to Williams-Sonoma and boggle over all of the slots holding items in the Tools wall, and stare vacuously at the mounted and labeled samples like one would at butterflies skewered by pins in the Natural History Museum.

Fear not! The Czarina has compiled a list of kitchen tools that you now need, you cute graduate you! Alternatively, you can “suggest” your significant other buy them for you this holiday season. And by suggest, I mean that you should buy a bunch of them for yourself and proclaim proudly to your partner, “Look what you bought me! Aren’t you nice?”

On to the goodies:

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Happy Thanksgiving from your Czarina! Happiness and health to all! *waves from Palace balcony*

The Czarina is selling pies now – and she had approximately ten pounds of apples to peel this weekend in preparation for Thanksgiving pies. Peeling apples, in the Czarina’s humble opinion, is by far the most annoying and fatiguing part of the whole operation.

I found the Rösle Crosswise Swivel Peeler while taking Chopping Block cooking classes. The Chopping Block had recently acquired the Rösle line in their retail store and staff were selling the tools fairly aggressively. At the time, I was thinking that: 1) Wow, this tool is expensive at $20, but 2) it’s a German company, and as a rule Germans know how to make things work.

This product has saved both my sanity and my wrist. It has preserved my sanity because, as a way to entertain myself, I attempt to peel each apple in one long strip – that magical ability so exhorted in Sleepless in Seattle. (Oh, don’t give me that, you know you’ve tried it at least once.) This tool makes horribly romantic apple peeling seem attainable.

Rösle has saved my wrist because even after ten pounds of apples, my wrist wasn’t sore at all; when I’ve used more traditional peelers I start feeling the strain after only a couple of apples. It’s stainless steel, so you can throw it in the dishwasher with impunity.

Therefore, if you peel potatoes, apples, carrots, or any other foodstuff, you need this product. There is a left handed version as well. The Rösle Crosswise Swivel Peeler gets a solid A from the Czarina, and she’s stingy with the As.

Sleepless in Seattle gets a C+ for screwing me up when I was single.

No, none of those are me. Thanks for asking.

The Czarina was extremely curious about Nigella Lawson’s afternoon tea at the Ritz Carlton. She was interested in it not only as a creative book promotion event, but also as insight into the goings-on at the Food Network. She has heard and read much grumbling on several blogs (for instance, Television Without Pity) about how the Food Network is increasingly moving away from chefs cooking and is becoming “increasingly banal". The main complaint is that there is too much focus on the person next door cooking and fewer shows that highlight the skills of the professional chef.

I haven’t held a strong view one way or another, because I can see the need for both. So I was hoping that this trip would clarify a few attitudes for me, both mine and other people’s. And that it did.

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