Staying up late, crocheting Christmas presents, watching Nigella and Jamie's best Christmas dishes on TV for the last few nights has left me feeling as if I have a hangover in the morning. Although last night Heston did me a massive favour by forcing me up to bed with his talk of chemistry and physics, which frankly has no place in my Christmas cookery heaven. I love those cookery programmes, and I have been thinking a lot about food, planning meals and writing lists and trawling through recipe books and online.
This year will be a different type of Christmas for my family. For the first time, we are welcoming boyfriends and girlfriends of the children to the Christmas table, when for so many years it has just been the eight of us. We are also attempting a slimming world Christmas, which will consist of some treats, but food cooked with love and care, but sadly without whole packs of butter and sugar. I am finally confessing to the secret of my success in the kitchen - that being sugar and butter. When the children were very small and we travelled up to Staffordshire to visit their grandparents, they refused to eat Granny's carrots, much to her horror.
"But you love carrots!" she said to a 2 year old T and a 5 year old H. "We like Mummy's carrots" they explained. I shrugged my shoulders and feigned bewilderment, thinking ' I hope everyone just thinks it's because I'm an amazing cook, rather than realising that my carrots are cooked in butter and sugar.' I think I carried it off ok.
But this year the pigs in blankets will be more like skinny pigs, made from lean minced pork with onions and a few spices, wrapped in fat free bacon. And the roasties will doused in fry light and sea salt (although maybe with a frivolous sprinkling of semolina ), and will not be going anywhere near goose fat. The gravy however, is something I cannot skimp on. Gravy can make or break my Christmas dinner - and I cannot risk it. The secret of good gravy, passed down to me by my mum, who was a fabulous cook, is to thicken it with a little batter, saved from the Yorkshire pudding. If I make a particularly spectacular gravy, Mr C will always compliment me with "Lovely bit of gip Beryl", which were always my Dad's words as he cleaned his plate of Mum's gravy.
Pudding is a problem. We bought a Slimming World Christmas recipe book which has lots of nice ideas, but the puddings are very fat free yoghurt or quark based. I will make something with plenty of fruit, not too much sugar, but it will need to contain cream and maybe chocolate too. On Monday night, Jamie Oliver made a Semi Freddo using snickers bars, which the kids would all love. If I don't make it, I might well die.
And as for the crocheting, I won't spoil the surprise for a number of very lucky people, but let's just say that there will be extra big smiles on Christmas Day. I will try to remember to take a few photos to capture the joy on the big day. To compensate for the lack of photos to accompany today's blog, I have inserted a couple of our Christmas dogs, to make you "ah". Paddy reminds me of Shirley Bassey with his red tinsel boa. And while I'm at it, to finish, I give you my favourite Christmas joke. What happens if you eat Christmas decorations? You get tinselitis.
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