Pic of old clock - over a hundred years old.
I didn't get a Christmas cake made, but I may still make a fruit cake and save it for later - or just eat it fresh. We were lucky enough to get two hampers and both of them have small slabs of Christmas cake, so we won't be deprived. I've also picked up some caramalised mini apple tart things instead of mince pies for us for Christmas as none of us really take to mince pies.
We are not having a turkey. Bear and DH don't really like the flavour, and even a small crown will be wasted on three of us. We are having steak. There'll be stuffing, roast potatoes, another stuffing, cranberry sauce, stuffing, roast parsnips and stuffing, with a few sprouts.
I've told the story before, but it's sort of part of my Christmas. My parents divorced when I was young, but father always came for Christmas dinner. He handed over the £5 voucher that he got from work as a Christmas dinner bonus (worth a lot more in the 1970s) to mother who bought the trimmings, but father provided the turkey. His cousins were farmers and they had, among other things, turkeys. As a point of pride, they couldn't let father have a little turkey, no matter how much mother begged, so every year he turned up with a monster. The biggest was 23lbs! My mother would have to get up at stupid o'clock just to get the dratted thing cooked, and as she didn't have a freezer, half of it would go to waste. My mother grumbled every year as she took out all the oven shelves and lined the bottom of the oven with foil as she crammed the monster into her (thankfully electric) oven.
It didn't help that father promised every year that he would be there by 10pm at the absolute latest, then would get caught up in a lock in at a pub (drinking after hours) and roll up at daft o'clock in the morning and my mother had to wait up to let him in. This did not improve her mood, especially when he recovered enough from his hangover to try and 'help' in the kitchen.
The tension would carry on during dinner. Mother believed that you got lovely food in for Christmas but you didn't put more than a reasonable portion on your plate. There was plenty, but not silly amounts. Father thought that if you could see the slightest sliver of plate, you were doing it wrong. He would have three times his normal portion, at least. So mother, my brothers and I would sit with generous but reasonable portions and father would be behind a sort of mound that was leaking gravy onto the tablecloth. He would slope off around about teatime and we would be having turkey leftovers for days.
And this is one reason why I am happy that we are having steak.
Hugs and good health to all.
What a great story! I hope you have that written down somewhere so Bear will remember it! I'm not sure what we're doing yet, but it will be quiet. Maybe a walk if it's not a bad day.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds as though you are very well prepared for - I was going to say the big day, but nowadays it seems more like the big week the way we're all encouraged to stock up. The latest delivery I could get was on the 21st too, and from Morrisons. I have a delivery saver pass with them, not because I particularly like them but because they were the only supermarket I could get one with before the last lockdown started. I am not convinced I will get half of what I've ordered for Christmas; every order I have had so far has things unavailable, multiple substitutes and on two occasions a significant portion of someone else's order mixed in. I am still working with them to get back money for the things missing but not on their list of missing items, which presumably wound up in someone else's basket just as the 3kg mince, pizzas and chicken stew ready meals wound up in mine. So I am steeling myself for a last-minute dash to whichever supermarket I think it likely to be least crowded and have the requirements for Christmas feasting. There are only two of us so on the big day we're having venison with a mushroom pie, crispy kale and celeriac or parsnip puree, depending on what I can get my hands on. Less common veg seems to be one of the areas I've had missing items over and over so I'm not holding my breath for the celeriac. But just for once I would like to follow a recipe properly rather than winging it and replacing stuff!
ReplyDeleteAs a family we often had beef or steak because my mother was squeamish about eating poultry, but I do remember one or two early goes at cooking turkey when we had several guests to entertain. One of my clearest pictures of Christmas is my father outside the back door trying to cut a giant turkey, a gift from his brother, in half with a rather inadequate wood saw. Inevitably these giant birds were dry in places because part would be crushed up over the gas burners for the oven and barely cooked in others because there was little room for the heat to circulate. Give me a steak any day!