Tuesday

Good morning!

Yesterday was a funny old day, a mixture of pleasant and not so pleasant.  The weather reflected this with sun, rain, calm and wind all chasing each other around the day.

Beth came over and we started trying to put our Christmas book together.  The first job was to choose a providor and, unfortunately, the first one we tried (which was the best value) turned out to be so inflexible and awkward to use that we really couldn't be bothered to push it through any longer.  We ended up with Vistaprint.  Not the cheapest but it worked for us.  We downloaded software which gave us so much flexibility and it was fun working through the pages.  We didn't get it finished but that's OK as it is all safely stored on my hard drive ready for the next time we can get together.

I now need to start another one - one that reflects the holidays we have spent at Streele Farm over the namy years.  That's going to be a bit more complicated but should be worth it.

Another thing that was up and down was the way I was feeling.  I think I'm fighting another virus.  Booooo.  Anyway, after finishing this I might go back up and see if I can get a bit more sleep, which might help.  Anyway, I kept falling asleep all evening despite some interesting telly.  Maybe I am just catching up!

I've realised I haven't posted any Christmas photos (or photos I took over last week) so over the next few days I will do that.  Here's the first!!

One of my lovely Christmas owls!

Finally, it is the end of the year.  In many ways it has been a good year for me and I'm grateful for that and for all the lovely (and, occasionally, not-so-lovely) people who make life so interesting.  I am particularly grateful to all of you who have stuck with my bloggy ramblings - you have my thanks and an encouragement to leave a comment now and again.  I'd love to hear from you.

Here's a card for you with my wishes for a Happy New Year for us all.  Just click on this link.

Monday

The second week of the Christmas holiday although I don't feel that I have had much holiday so far.  I'm taking it a lot easier this week, believe me.

Yesterday was good.  The pie I made was delicious, as was the ice cream, so we ate well for lunch.  Today will be mostly leftovers (of leftovers) but I am seeing light at the end of the food tunnel and it's not been as bad as previous years.  Inevitably I have thrown a few things away, but not too much.

I have a lot of fruit to use up, which isn't such a bad thing and should help to clear the palate after all the festive excesses.

Today is going to be idle and easy (I hope) with not a lot on except going through the Christmas photos and selecting some for a book.  Should be good.

Sunday

I had great plans for yesterday, very few of which came to fruition.  I did manage to finish sorting out the turkey, thank goodness, and now have pots of stock and bits and bobs to keep me going through January.
I also made some Christmas ice cream (recipe in Teacher's Recipes) which is very delicious.  The rest will get done today as I really MUST sort out the fridge.

After Mum and dad had gone, I just crashed.  Slept in the morning, slept in the afternoon, even fell asleep during a Poirot I hadn't seen before and then slept all through the night, waking much later that usual.  I must have needed it, for sure.

So today:
Beth and Alex are over so I need to make a dinner.  Shouldn't be too tricky.
Washing - before it takes the house over.
Ironing (over telly this evening)
Fridge (sort out, de-clutter, clean, etc)
Tidy kitchen and living room.  It doesn't take too long for me to get back into my usually slattern-ish ways!
Stay awake!

I think I will make a turkey and ham pie for Alex and me and I have something bought and vegetarian for Beth.  With it we will have red cabbage, roast potatoes and sprouts.  The Christmas ice cream will do for dessert and I still have some orange flavoured cream to go on the top.   Yum!

Breakfast is toast and pate (needs using up) and tea will be cream of turkey soup.  That should do!

And now I need to get started.

Saturday

There's no doubt about it, Christmas is lovely.  All the preparations, the anticipations and the celebrations combine together to make it a very special time.  I'm old enough not to expect too much of Christmas.  No parties, no energetic knees up, just a gentle, fairly quiet family time with our own little traditions and habits.  As a result, I am rarely disappointed.  Last year was the only real disappointment I can remember and that was because I had flu and it was cancelled!!

This year has been one of the best for me.  Granted, a couple of traditions have gone by the board, but that's OK.  Everything has gone well: games have been played, meals have been enjoyed and leftovers are exercising my culinary brain.  It's all been great.

Today the last of my visitors head home.  I will be alone again.  You know what - it's nice to have loved ones here but it's also nice to be alone again.  I'm used to it, I appreciate the quietness, the lack of any pressure, the freedom to do what I want, when I want and how I want.  Today is going to be peaceful, even though I have a pile of washing and, as a result, ironing to do and a fridge to sort out and reorganise.  I have time, I can do it slowly and while watching telly, reading my books, snoozing under my lovely owly fleece . . .

The turkey has finally been dismantled.  The inedible bits have been discarded and the last stock is slowly reducing on the hob as I type.  It carved very well so there wasn't a lot more meat to get off the carcass but there's enough to give Beth's cats a post-Christmas treat.  There's still some brown and white meat to finish off and my guests will take some home with them while I will freeze the rest.

There's some christmas pudding left, some custard and some cream.  I thought I might whisk the custard and the some of the cream together, make ice cream with it the usual way (because someone has borrowed my ice cream maker) and, on the final whisking, add some crumbled up pudding to make Christmas pudding ice cream.  I might add a couple of mince pies too, as I have a few left over.  It'll taste good because the ingredients are all good!
Then there's some bubble and squeak patties to freeze for another meal another day, some more cream to make into butter and all sorts of bits and bobs to deal with.  Just my kind of day, in fact!!

I have set myself a challenge and that is to not do any food shopping for at least a fortnight (apart from milk and, perhaps, a few veg).  That should be very achievable and I will eat well, that's a fact.  It's back on the frugal bandwagon for me with perhaps one little blip over New Year, although at the moment I crave simple food and not too much of it!

Reading back over what might be viewed as a somewhat smug and self-satisfied pondering (sorry, I didn't set out to be), I remind myself that, for some, this will have been one of the worse Christmasses.  I don't mean those in parts of the world where just existing is a struggle or those who live in war-torn strife (althought they are often on my mind and conscience), I mean those who were, like me, anticipating a lovely time, invested much time, energy and resouces into creating something good and lovely  but found their plans and hopes destroyed by appalling weather and its aftermath.

I hope all my readers have been safe, warm and dry over these last stormy weeks and that you remain so in the weeks to come.

Friday: sort of getting back to 'normal'

Sort of . . .

Today is turkey day.  Yesterday I had planned to have a turkey dinner with turkey heated in gravy and leftovers used uo.  As it happened, the buffet lunch I planned just grew and grew and none of us wanted a 'dinner' come the evening so we had a wee bit of turkey on french bread, a few crisps and a couple of biscuits, all washed down with a cuppa tea and that was that!

So today is turkey day.

I plan to make a chunky turkey soup for lunch.  Nothing to complicated - just saute some chunks of veg in turkey and bacon fat, add some turkey stock and simmer until all soft and delicious.  Then pop in some hunks of turkey and that's it.  There will be seasonings, of course, but I'll work those out as I go!

Then dinner will be what it should have been yesterday because if it isn't I shall have to throw away some stuff and I don't want to do that!  So it will be slices of turkey heated in the gravy, some Christmas veg cakes, some red cabbage and some broccoli, as a sop to freshness.  Then there's cranberry, apple and orange sauce, bread sauce and stuffing to finish off too.  Should be a grand dinner for very little effort.

The rest of the turkey will be picked over and the little bits sent in Beth's direction as a treat for her cats.  I intend to boil up the carcass to extract the last little bit of goodness (and meat).  Bone meal is supposed to be good for the soil - I wonder if I could then grind up the bones in Thermione?

Apart from that, weather permitting, we're really hoping to go over to Beth's to see the new kittens who are all doing really well and gaining weight rapidly, bless them.

Should be a good day but I ought to get going or half of it won't get done!

Thursday: Boxing Day

Good morning.  I hope everyone is feeling good and has had a lovely Christmas.  We were lucky with the weather - quite a lot of sun and the really strong winds seem to have more or less missed us out, although I gather the night of the 23rd/24th was quite bad.  However, once my hearing aids are out I hear very little so no problems there!  I hope none of my readers has been too troubled by the storm.

Yesterday started very early because I didn't sleep all that well so decided to come down and make better use of the time.  I took the turkey out of the fridge for its two hours of 'coming up to room temperature' and arranged everything into a sensible order in the kitchen.  After a lot of mental faffing around I decided to put the turkey in an hour earlier, 'just in case', allowing for an hour's resting time at the end.  Well, the poor bird ended up with two hours resting time, didn't it!!!

I've never had such an easy time with a turkey.  A cut up onion, orange and lemon inside and that was it.  No stuffing, no trussing, no rubbing over with anything, no bacon over the breast to keep it moist.
It went into mum's roasting dish (none of mine are big enough and it seems very silly to buy a big dish for one day in the year) upside down and into the hottest oven I  could get which was then immediately turned down to 180C.  Two and a half hours later I turned it over and that was the hardest part of the whole process.

 Half an hour after that it was done.  I frantically prodded all over with the thermometer to check but all was good so it went under a huge pile of towels to rest.  As I said, it's never been so easy and so trouble free and I may reconsider my decision not to get a KellyBronze next year, just so I can repeat the experience - I can save up for it!  It was also delicious, which is the main thing, and the stock that came off it was wonderful.  Being the kind it is, there's also a lot of turkey dripping which I, for one, am going to have on my toast this morning with a bit of salt sprinkled over.  Not healthy but once a year won't hurt.

There's loads left over so we shall have turkey again for dinner tonight and then tomorrow I will do the necessary with the stock pot!  Turkey hotpot - mmmmmmmmmmm.  Beth has also laid claim to bits for her cats who go crazy for it.

After dinner us golden oldies were shoo-ed out of the kitchen and the younger generation did all the clearing, tidying washing up and so on, for which I was hugely grateful.  I daresay I shall be finding things in odd places for the next little while but I don't care two hoots, it was so lovely of them.

The rest of the day passed in a bit of a haze, although we had a good game of Scrabble and then they had another game while I went into the kitchen to prepare a buffet tea.  I thought no-one would eat much but I was surprised, most of it went and the teenager's place was piled high.

Today I have seven for lunch but that will be another buffet which is very easy to do.  Dinner this evening is just three and most of that is already done as it will be leftovers.  I just have to cook a vegetable and I think it will be broccoli.  Yesterday's roasted root vegetables will heat up a treat, as will the gravy (which worked out fine) and everything else!

I'm hoping I can rest a bit today and, if I can, I will snuggle under my gift from Beth, a beautiful, double layered fleece blanket with cute owls on one side and a lovely deep fawn colour the other side.  It's so cosy and just perfect for the cold days when I'm not bustling around and keeping myself warm.  If my hands are cold I can use the owly hand warmers Alex gave me!

I've waffled on for long enough.  If you've managed to get to the end, well done.  Have a good day!

Was the turkey a turkey?

Well, I have to admit that there's something to be said for the new fangled way.
No foil, no bacon, no butter under the skin and definitely no stuffing (that was cooked separately).
Cooked upside down (or maybe I mean the right way up) and turned over (with some difficulty) for the last half an hour.
Three hours from start to finish and beautifully done.
A shame it's taken me so long to be brave enough to follow the Kelly recommended method.  But now I know!

I'll post it over on Teacher's Recipes when I've recovered from possibly the biggest meal I have had for years!