Saturday, December 25, 2004

So it's Christmas and what have you done?

I shall confess all, in the lead up to Christmas I didn't get anywhere near as much as I would have liked to get done. Not even any knitting.

Today's the day, come tommorrow it'll all be over. Have you all survived? I certainly have. I began to have doubts the week before last, but this last week I've been very comfortable with the idea of Christmas. Perhaps a little too comfortable because I struggled to get organised. Arrghhh!

My Christmas celebrations started on Tuesday when we had guests to dinner, they stayed on and we had more guests after dinner. Now my later guests I know LOVE Xmas pudding, so rather than eat it for dessest after dinner we kept it for later. This Xmas pudding, is made by me and my family (my sister and I this year) each year from our Great Grandmother's recipe. This is royalty of puddings and I say this having eaten a lot of other Xmas pudds over the years - all because I think I LOVE it. In truth I love ours, the only one I've tasted that is as good was one made by one of my mother's friends who we had shared our recipe with. This is not something we just hand out to anyone you have to understand!

Back to Tuesday night, for years I have wanted to flambe the pudding. Nobody has really been up for it, I remember once many, many years ago someone in the family tryng it and it was a bit of a fizzer. Nigella Lawson uses vodka for this procedure in her book Feast. Vodka apparently has more staying power than brandy. Translated - you get more flaming time. Now this being the first time round I have nothing to compare it to, but there was blue flames and they burned for quite some time. I was impressed, my guests I think we're impressed and perhaps slightly worried they mightn't get out alive.
I suppose this was the first time in 24 years they'd seen me with hot alcohol and matches in my hands at the same time. It was after midnight before I got to bed, I was left to be Cinderella and clean the kitchen up. Not a bad job, to the victor go the spoils. I finished off the last of the open cider and then drank the last of the champagne (an entire glass, to think it was just going down the sink! Waste of very nice champagne.).

Wednesday night we visited friends who have family visiting from England. I had coke and "a little something", it turned out to be a home-made Tia Maria. Divine! I will be asking for the recipe. Then later on I had a few (small) glasses of home-made Baileys. Also divine! Now this I have about half a dozen recipes for (which I keep meaning to try), but I think I will have to ask for this recipe as well.

Thursday I attempted to recover from two late nights of entertaining. I went to the supermarket and came out leaving my meat behind on the counter. Note to self drink less Baileys before shopping day. Better note to self, get someone else to do shopping and spend what would be shopping time at home enjoying Baileys.

Friday, Christmas Eve, I came home from work and decided that making sausage rolls wasn't likely to happen. What did happen was I had a few drinks (half a cider, half a Midori Splice and half of something begining with A that had Cointrou in it.), where would we be without RTD's? Put all the Xmas lights on and watched the Simpson's Christmas special on Ten, what fun that was! I'm serious it was.

That brings us to today, Christmas Day. I made Gingerbread Muffins (Feast) aka Christmas Morning Muffins (Nigella's Xmas Bites) this morning. They'll be a permanent fixture from now on. Did not much else apart from open presents, my sister gave me among other things the first half of Season Two of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I love the early season's of that show, before it took itself too seriously.

Then we come to lunch. Turkey, ham, pasta salad, roast potato and sweet potato, cauliflower cheese and prawns with tequila mayonnaise. Somehow in the organisation we (my sister and I ) missed green vegetables. I think the trouble was we w're both meant to be buying stuff and we didn't co-ordinate very well.

We're going to have dessert now, I think there's room in the kitchen and in our stomaches now for it. Leftover plum pud and Massacre in a Snowstorm (Feast) aka Pomegranate Meringue Mountain (Nigella's Xmas Bites). Only we'll be using raspberrys.

I have enjoyed my Christmas lunch, so much so I'm looking forward to doing it next year.

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