Ho Ho Ho Cathy!
Gosh, what a lot of baking, and it all looks so good. Your presentation is second to none dear.
We had a fabulous Christmas and only finished off the last of the turkey gravy this afternoon. We've been eating roast dinners every day to use it up, all except for yesterday when I went to London for my lunch. It was a very special occasion as an old friend from abroad was visiting, so I made the trip to Covent Garden to see her. We had a light lunch accompanied by Champagne Cocktails. Ever so slightly dizzy, I just about made it to the right platform at Paddington to catch my train home. On alighting at our local station I had a twenty minute walk, which might have been a bit spooky, had the bubbles I had imbibed not kept me all warm and floaty.
a turn, a little bit like all the wonderful ingredients that go to make a Christmas Pudding in the culinary sense. Speaking of which, I didn't make a pudding, but not to be out-done by you my dear, I did make Mince pies (with home-made mincemeat),
a Christmas cake,
a Trifle,
Christmas cookies with the children,
and some Bread Sauce. I know that Bread Sauce doesn't really count as baking but I do so love it. I go a bit heavy on the cloves as you can see.
On Christmas day I cooked the lunch, and all was going swimmingly until I went to prep the sprouts and found there weren't any. The silly woman who put together my veg order at the local market had not put them in and I had not checked. It didn't really matter because we had lots of other veg and I put some frozen peas on the plates for a splash of green. When I gave mother the bad news however, she looked gloomy and remarked:
'I always say it's not Christmas dinner without sprouts' - typical.
The next thing was that the oven started smoking. Some of the juices from the turkey were leaking onto the bottom shelf, so I took out the bird and got on my hands and knees with a fish slice to scrape up the sticky black mess. Just then Mr B from up the lane stuck his head through the open window to give me some of his chocolate covered Vodka Damsons. I must have looked a right state when I got my head out of the oven to wish him Merry Christmas. To top it all, as soon as I'd cleaned up the mess I managed to drop my delicious bread sauce on the exact same spot. I was quite upset, so I scraped it up and put it back in the bowl. Nobody seemed to notice, although it wasn't quite as creamy as it had been and there were a few little black flecks in it.
Anyway, we all survived. It's turkey curry tomorrow and the day after we are off to the panto - oh yes we are!
Speak to you in the new year, much love, Lucy. xxx
PS The Damson Gin worked out very well and I shall be making more next year. I found out too late that when you have drained off the liquid you can make a very nice crumble out of the gin-soaked damsons. Alas, ours were already on the compost heap!
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