New Year’s Eve was a quiet affair.

We spent a large portion of it sitting anxiously in front of our entry-level mini oven - as Richard, my husband (sometimes it still feels weird to say that), likes to call it - keeping an eye on the chicken we were roasting. The chicken was poulet de Bresse, which meant it enjoyed running around the farm throughout its life, and it cost us €35. So, you see, we wouldn’t want anything bad happen to it. Additionally, if we screwed up, we had no plan B for our NYE dinner. We had no other options but to succeed.