Post-festive blather

[susie_flo]

Good afternoon fine people!  The internet seems to be a relatively quiet place this week so I am popping in to say hello and present you with some random post-christmas waffle.

Right now, my poor little pusscat is drying out like a microscopic drowned rat in front of the fire. Her evil mummy gave her a bath earlier... she's had an upset tummy for a few days and it's really the only way to de-ickify and get her properly clean. But she's hunched up so close to the fire that the grate keeps sizzling... (I'll give her tuna later to make everything alright again).

So did you all have lovely christmases? I know some of you have been lurgied... am sorry to hear that (it happened to me last year and it really sucks).  :-( 

Unlike last year, I thoroughly enjoyed my xmas this year.  It was a very adult affair as G and I were hosting for my siblings. For Christmas Eve we had mulled wine and then went for an Italian meal at a local restaurant. But for xmas day, G and I both really love the ritual of cooking lunch. In fact we're just a lil bit anal about it... (there was a spreadsheet involved).  G was a total cheffy master and spent the best part of two days in the kitchen churning out many courses while I faffed around as a sort of sous chef, helping with side-veg, table-laying and trimmings and the like.

This year was designed for pescatarians...  for anyone who likes ludicrous amounts of detail, the menu for the day was as follows..

 

Breakfast

• Smoked salmon on buttered granary bread (lemon and black pepper)
• Bucks Fizz

Lunch

• Seared scallops with vegetarian black pudding (yes really) on a bed of minted pea puree
• South African Viognier

• Chestnuts and mixed mushrooms en croute (a G speciality)
• Roast potatoes
• Citrus-glazed carrots
• Celeriac and apple puree
• Sprouts with roasted chestnuts and red onion
• Cranberry sauce
• Sage and cranberry stuffing
• Port and thyme gravy
• Can't remember the wines, but a couple of v. nice reds

• Sherry trifle
• Irish Coffees

Evening buffet

• Honey roast salmon
• Cheese board
• Freshly baked bread
• Leftovers from lunch
• Chilli jelly*
• More wine and beverages

* On the subject of the chilli jelly... I take back my Nigella sniping.  It was easy peasy and tastes fantastic and has set into a proper jelly in the jars.  So I would definitely recommend this recipe, if only for the extremely favourable deliciousness/difficulty ratio.

After lunch we went for a riverside walk in Twickenham - mainly to avoid falling asleep like a load of OAPs. It was bracingly cold and the sun began to set as we headed back home. Haved posted a few pics below...

 

 
 

The rest of the evening was spent playing games. 'Twas a jolly fun day all round.  (We recorded Dr Who but haven't watched it yet).

My main pressie from G was a telephoto camera lens, which makes me think that I need to get better at photography and find out more about the tecchie details  (my current approach is pretty much limited to fiddling with the ISO and pointing... I tend to let the camera do all the work.)   As if by magic, my brother bought me a 'Dummies Guide' to my camera, which I intend to use as a training manual.

I bought G a watch that he chose in advance.  Apart from being black and silver (i.e. custom-made for G) We were both rather charmed by the fact that it is entirely mechanical and made in England by a company called Throgmorton.  Although I bought it online, the whole purchase felt rather Victorian, especially when it arrived in an incredible wooden box wrapped in a green velvet cloth :-)

I wish more things came in boxes these days. You know how dresses and shirts always used to?  I have some opera gloves of my grandmother's that came in a custom-made leather box. It was the norm back then, but you just never get that sort of presentation these days... tsk.

For the last two days we've had Natalie and Helena visiting...  which has provided yet more proof that our microscopic flat is in no way equipped for a one-year-old.   Pretty much every second of the day is spent checking whether Helena has picked up something that she shouldn't have.  I am not sure how Natalie makes it to the end of each day without expiring from exhaustion.
 
Today we are all alone ...and it is raining ...and peaceful ...which means that it is a duvet day for me.  G is busy working while I am failing to do any of the things I should be.  At the very least I should probably get dressed and make some lunch.  Something that goes with chilli jam, methinks...
 
So I hope you are all enjoying the break and taking it easy.  My sympathies to those of you who went back to work between Xmas and New Year.  I think I will be in shock next week when it's all back to normal.  (Dread of dreads!)
 

   

Comments

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

My mouth is watering reading that menu.......I've just had a very dirty but very nice lunch of oven chips and onion rings with salad cream. The only booze I've had for the past few days is nightnurse - am itching to catch up and quaff all the fizz we've stockpiled.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

Heh, dirty lunches are often the best ones, especially when eaten straight out of the packet in front of TV. When G first met me he was appalled when I added half a block of Lurpak and some black pepper into some smash and proceeded to eat it with tofu wieners dipped in it (very dirty indeed)

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Oooh that is filthily fabulous...

However I've never been able to look at smash since I lodged with two chums who were often skint (ie spent all their money on booze) and their cheap lunch would be smash made up with twice or three times as much water as you would normally with an egg kind of beaten into it. It was worse than it sounds and even the thought of it is making me feel slightly sick.

Almost as bad as the time I was so skint I had half a pot noodle on some pudding rice. Not good.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

Oh god that sounds vile! I used to substitute butter for the water, so it was a complete lardathon. But G has long ago stamped out any chance of me eating smash... it's definitely flat-share food ;-)

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

It was always a standby in my Mum's cupboard but I don't think I've ever bought smash as an adult but I have bought vesta curries, pot noodles and tinned beans and sausages - the latter remaining one of my favourite standby meals. I buy Mr Pops pot noodles when he goes to Glastonbury and I did buy vesta once for a retro-fest but never again as it wasn't very nice and a lot of faff. I'll stick to beanfeast instead.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

I tried a pot noodle a couple of years ago to see if I still liked them, and was appalled... (have they got worse or did my taste buds finally grow up?)

This convo just reminded me of another time shortly after G and I met and he walked in on me drinking double cream from the carton. I still occasionally tease him about the shocked noise he made... I thought he was having a heart attack. I had no idea what was up with him, because drinking double cream seemed to me like a perfectly normal thing to do, but to G it represented gluttony on a scale never before seen ;-)

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I have been known to drink carnation milk* straight from the can - when it is only me who is going to have it that is, otherwise that is genuinely slatternly behaviour. If other people are going to be having carnation milk then you pour it from the tin into a spoon.

Pot noodles do taste vile but IME they are a good hangover remedy - I think it's all the chemicals they contain that make you feel vaguely human again.

*carnation milk = working class equivalent of double cream ;-)

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

"when it is only me who is going to have it that is, otherwise that is genuinely slatternly behaviour"
This made me snort my double cream :-D

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

I remember one year when I had a jacket potato for dinner practially every night... because I worked out it cost about 30p per day!

But mainly as a student I lived on beanfeast and those weird burgamix packets... I probably got more nutrition from the booze.

[r0ck3tsci3ntist.livejournal.com]

Oh is that the good ol' Thames? I miss the old thing! It's been SO long. Beautiful pictures. And your holiday food stuff sound completely delicious.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

Hello, yes it is the Thames. Did you used to live in London?
Oh, and thanks :-)

[r0ck3tsci3ntist.livejournal.com]

I did some school over there about a lifetime ago. It was good times. I still have a few girlfriends in London but with leaky roofs and old houses to be fixing up I don't have the time or money to visit.

[kissmeforlonger.livejournal.com]

How is Natalie coping with being a mum?

You do have the modern equivalent of a proper Victorian Christmas - that food sounds lovely.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

Natalie is coping a lot better than I would... (there might be some sense in being a mum at 18!) Helena is extremely cute, but it's a relentless business.

As for our food, I feel ashamed really that G and I make such a colossal fuss about cooking for four. We're such dilettantes. His step-mum, Margaret, is one of those women who regularly caters for 30+ people without making any fuss at all, despite having had an operation on her arm recently. We went there for boxing day... and somehow she provided a banquet for the masses without a spreadsheet in sight :-o

I think if that task were left to me I would ordering takeaways!