As with all Christmases since the start of the pandemic this one was no different in the sense of confusion as to what to do. For health reasons we needed to try and make sure hubby does not catch covid so we basically cancelled Christmas yet again, but then, a ray of sunshine poked through our dark cloud highlighting its silver lining and son no.1 was allowed to come home for Christmas as he’d been working from home and had been self isolating for the last five days.

Just before he came home I had finished the Christmas cake decorating. I think that was reasonably successful.

The top cake for us and the penguins for Dad. Hubby is well into the cake now and I’m not sure if it will last until new year!

The Christmas tree was very nicely decorated by hubby this year, I think he did a wonderful job.

It may be a little wobbly, but it is very well loved and makes us both very happy to see it twinkling in the corner of the room.

This year I decided to try and grow some paper whites.

And they surprised us by beginning to flower a couple of days before Christmas. They are getting a bit leggy now so I think they need a little more gin to slow down their growth.

Son no.1 and I managed a Christmas walk to feed the ducks and walk by the lovely houses by the castle.

The onion bagels have been made, so it must be Christmas Eve,

On Christmas morning we managed to nip round to my Dad’s to say Happy Christmas and managed a quick selfie.

We managed a quick selfie too.

I think the turkey was the best we have ever had.

And hubbies Christmas pudding was a triumph.

And Christmas must nearly be over as the last of the turkey has been made into a turkey and ham pie with homegrown leeks and mushrooms.

We had a lovely few days, feasting and relaxing, it was the best of times.

My good friend Noelle shared with me a very successful dish that she had just made using as her inspiration a recipe in The Telegraph by Diana Henry, Cornbread with leeks and feta. As soon as I saw who the cookery writer was I knew it would be tasty having dabbled with three of her books, A bird in the hand, my first love hankered over for nearly a year from the Books for Cooks bookshop in Notting Hill’s famous bookshop, who doesn’t need a new recipe for chicken every now and then. How to Eat a Peach, a lovely recipe book bought by son no.1 for Christmas having heard about its beauty on Radio 4 one day while travelling for work and he remembered it and purchased it for me. A delightful book that I love to while away a warm sunny afternoon with. And From the Oven to the Table, which is my kind of rustic simple cooking that is bunged into the oven and left to its own devices filling my home with tempting smells and then filling hungry tummies until contented all from one dish, what could be better.

And so I read further and realised that I just happened to have, with slight adjustments to the key ingredients the doings to make a lovely savoury dish that would do justice to the pumpkin that had been roasted earlier in the day, the homegrown leeks freshly pulled from the allotment and an assortment of cheeses that were sat quietly in the fridge waiting for their moment of glory.

My Ingredients

350g leeks

450g onions

500g cooked pumpkin

35g butter

3 tablespoon virgin rape seed oil

350g assorted cheeses in this case Saint Agur, Camembert and a lovely strong cheddar, grated or chopped into small pieces

175 g polenta

2 tsp baking powder

4 medium eggs

oven 180 c

I prepared the onions and sautéed them in half the butter and half the oil until they were very soft and brown on the edges and then added the finely chopped and washed leeks and sauteed them until everything was soft. Added 280 ml of boiling water to a pan and added the polenta and baking powder and stir well, add a little more water if it seems too stiff and dry but not too much as the cheese and eggs will loosen it. Then add the cheese and beat whilst still hot and add the still hot leeks and onion, next add the roasted pumpkin that has been mashed up and stir really well and then add the eggs. Add salt and pepper to taste, but remember the cheese will contain salt so be careful not to over salt. Using a tablespoon or so of the remaining oil grease a baking dish of 30 cm by 40 cm and transfer all of the mixture and pop into an oven for 40 minutes, remove from the oven and using a butter knife pop the rest of the room temperature butter onto the top of the dish and as it melts spread it around the top and pop back into the oven for another 15 or so minutes. Leave it to cool slightly before cutting.

I’m very grateful to Noelle that late afternoon for sharing her inspirations as I just happened to have all the ingredients to hand and hadn’t really thought about our supper. Barry was able to enjoy his piece and went in for seconds and I had mine with a hearty salad, which was glorious. The left overs were delicious and not a scrap of it was wasted. We will do this again, it was so easy and very tasty. Next time perhaps with a little crispy bacon and sweetcorn if the pumpkin has not been roasted.

I can’t remember where I first read about River Cottage producing their first Christmas recipe book, Christmas at River Cottage. I suspect it was some self promotion in the Sunday Times by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall or just a passing comment that I noticed on the internet, but my interest was piqued so I picked up a copy. To be honest and I know Christmas is looming but I’ve only glanced through it so far. But the recipe for Blackberry Whisky called to me and I happened to mention it to a friend, who does not have television or I think Sunday Times’s much preferring to gather his news through the medium of radio and he immediately waxed lyrical about hearing Hugh F-W on the radio and how if you stored the blackberry whisky for three years it transformed into the nectar of the gods.

The recipe looks to me a little short on sugar, but having read around the subject I think the idea is you add sugar at the end while bottling. I like this idea as I often find things too sweet for me, so it is good to retain control. I also could not fit the required 2kg of blackberries into my jar, just fitting in 1.2 kg. But again that was a very generous amount of blackberries according to some other recipes I’ve found, so I am sure it will work out.

Day 1, adding the frozen blackberries, all picked from my own blackberry bush, so I know they haven’t been sprayed.

One full bottle of whisky added along with the sugar. It will be shaken daily until the sugar has dissolved and then when I remember for about three months or so and then decanted into a bottle.

We will see. I will have to save some to see what it is like in three years time. It might become a regular item to make. I’m not normally a fan of whisky but I know a few that are.

I do enjoy the ritual of the Christmas card writing, especially when we seem to be about to undergo another round of covid mark iv or is it mark v I seem to have lost count. It is a simple way of showing your affection for the people in your life, no matter how infrequently you might see them. I had for a few years decided not to write Christmas cards and to donate to a charity, but it never felt the same and sometimes I think we live in too much of a nanny state which dictates what is seen as acceptable and right and proper and which is not. And if I want to waste my money on paper, stamps and ink, then I will, although I do concede and always buy charity cards these days. Long gone are the days where I would buy a bumper pack of 50 from Woolworths, the cardboard being that thin they would barely stand up to scrawl my good wishes to all and sundry. Although I wasn’t as bad as my friend Georgina, she used to carry a selection around in her handbag so she could write one, whilst on the hoof, to whoever she came across. I’m really not sure what the boys in the Kings Arms made of it all. But they all got a card.

This year I couldn’t find my inks, so I borrowed hubby’s precious pot of green ink. I’ve never chosen green ink for myself mainly because at school someone decided that if boys wrote in green ink that they were not to be trusted, that they were invariably mad. This was followed up by a close friend, who after a pretty nasty divorce decided to put an advert in the lonely hearts column to see if she could conjure up a few dates. Piles of letters came, who knew that there were so many keen men in the days before the internet. And even though she had gone to a different school, she immediately discarded the men who had written in green ink…. and there were quite a few. To be honest we had one of the best nights dissecting the letters for hidden clues about the personalities of the writers, but the green ink writers seemed to be the most troubled.

So when hubby had chosen the green ink for himself some years previously, I had valiantly tried to push him into another direction but he was not to be moved. I decided he probably was mad and it made me laugh how attached men seem to be to this particular ink colour.

I whiled away a happy couple of hours listening to Kings carols, watched the half finished Christmas tree lights flash (It is still half finished!) and the smell of the Christmas puddings steaming wafted through the house. Then hubby took them up to the main post office and off they went on their merry way.

Merry Christmas everybody.

I am sure I have many but my dirty little secret is that I quite like TikTok. You never know what is going to appear and it can be as entertaining as it is educational or just a waste of time, one never knows. But one evening a lady popped up talking about the beauty of growing your own paperwhites for Christmas. I think I have left mine a week or so late, but I’ve made a mental note that I started them on the 1st of December so it will give a good marker for future years.

So I bought some bulbs and a big bag of glass pebbles, also popping into my basket another type of daffodil to try.

The rules as I understand them are one waters them and lets them grow and then after a couple of weeks when they are getting tall, to feed them a measure of gin or vodka so as to stunt their growth and that prevents them getting too leggy. Well I will tell you this, I have never shared my gin with a plant! But if they reward me with a beautiful display of flowers, I will forgive them almost anything.

All set ready to go,

As are the daffs.

Fingers crossed that they bloom.

The Christmas puddings have been steaming gently for nearly 9 hours today, and have now had fresh greaseproof and foil applied. They look like they have been a success but the truth as they say is in the eating.

To that end there has been much discussion as to when the eating should begin. Hubby has decided that should be in about a weeks time and I agree with him. Not for my own ends of course as these puddings are purely for him, as he has strict instructions to build himself up before starting his course of radiotherapy. The grim truth is that half way through his course it is going to become very difficult to eat, which could lead to a feeding tube straight into his stomach. Other complications to consider with the amount of weight loss they are expecting is the mask will no longer fit securely which means the radiotherapy might not be going to the correct place. So we need to keep him at a good weight for as long as possible. The Christmas cake may well be started much earlier than is usual too…

We have also had to make the decision to keep Christmas very simple just us two. Not least because hubby is not going to want to feel like socialising, but also because of the risk of catching covid. Although there seems to be evidence that the new strain of covid is a little gentler than the others, it would mean that he had to miss a couple of weeks of treatment, if not more if I then caught it and the main thing with the treatment is that it must be continuous to do the most good.

It is a difficult choice, not to invite son no.1 for Christmas, but in truth he works and socialises so much that he is bound to catch it sooner or later. I socialise for a total of five hours a week with various clubs and an occasional, every few weeks, trip to the pub in an afternoon when it is dead as a dodo apart from a few of the boys who I have known forever. Hubby socialises less than that. I’ve even limited my Dad to a couple of hours a week of late. And I am worried, just very, very worried. I know this will probably go down like a lead balloon with son no.1 and I should have thought it through earlier. It is just a very difficult situation.

Anyway think of hubby eating all of his Christmas puddings won’t you. He may well finally come to a conclusion of the perpetual debate on whether it should be brandy butter, cream or ice cream or even custard!

No matter how hard I try to resist the Christmas traditions and trust me, there are years that I do, they always seem to pull me back into their warm embrace. This year for instance has been one of where I have valiantly tried to fight off the traditions knowing as I do that hubby may not be well enough to partake of much of the traditional food. And I have talked myself senseless about the ridiculousness of making a huge Christmas cake, christmas pudding and roasting a turkey just for son no.1 and I. And I even have a plan to do a luscious lasagne which with luck would be soft enough for hubby to eat with sides of fresh garlic breads toasted in the oven and a home made coleslaw for others.

But then I started to mooch around the cupboards and realised I had enough dried fruit for not one, but two Christmas cakes and… a christmas pudding. And a quick reconnaissance of the butter, brandy, fresh citrus fruits and eggs revealed that I had enough ingredients to make said Christmas cakes without going to the shops! Well you can’t ignore a push like that from the spirits of Christmas past and so I set to work and started the process of soaking the fruit in brandy.

There are two cakes carefully wrapped up in greaseproof paper having been lavishly anointed with brandy waiting for a couple more dosings before the next stage of the marzipan and icing. One for hubby and one for Dad.

Hubby has made the Christmas pudding today and this is resting overnight before being steamed for 8 hours. Apparently he used to make Christmas puddings at school, he made one and he was so happy with it he went on to make more and more, said his mother to me once, whilst wiping a bead of perspiration off her brow at the memory of eating them all. As it is, I have got two puddings to steam tomorrow, which I am not sure how that has happened as last year with the same recipe I only made one pudding… I think it is best not to ask questions at this point.

And some how, due to the requirement of having to spend some Tesco vouchers before they expired, and only remembering at 3.00 a.m. whereupon I made a mad cyber dash to secure a home delivery before they ran out of time. I have ended up with a turkey in my freezer, as well as a ham to boil, streaky bacon and sausages.

The Christmas spirits must have been whispering all good things to me in the dead of night, just the mince pies to go!