Happy Christmas!

Wherever you are spending the festive season, I wish you a very happy Christmas. As always I cook the Christmas meal for any of the family who can come and it goes like this: turkey, mini sausages wrapped in bacon, two types of stuffing (one made into balls for baking), bread sauce, cranberry sauce, roast potatoes (and boiled), Brussels sprouts, parsnips, carrots and gravy.

We have home made lentil soup before it and home made trifle afterwards, with coffee and chocolates if we’ve room! A veritable feast compared to what we usually eat. Personally, I love eating up some of the leftovers on Boxing Day since I don’t have to cook it all then.

It’s so cold here compared to our usual December; normally we have temperatures of -1 or -2. But we’ve been in a new ice age since November. The past week, it’s hardly risen above -8 or -9, and it’s worse further north. I’ve been trying to keep the garden birds supplied with food each day and yesterday brought an interesting visitor.

We’re at the top of a hill in our village and the back garden overlooks the fields, with woods not far away. So, in strolls a pheasant looking for some food. She is nice and plump for someone’s dinner table but we don’t shoot them here (in this particular place)! I’m more likely to adopt her as a pet, if she keeps coming back.

In Georgian and Regency times, the Christmas dinner probably contained a goose or venison, and perhaps other game birds, so my pheasant would most likely have ended up on the table. Turkey didn’t become as popular until Victorian times.

Hope you all enjoy your own particular celebrations.

Romy