Fig Jam and Lime Cordial

We wish you a Merry Christmas…

We wish you a Merry Christmas…

We wish you a Merry Christmas…

…and a Happy New Year!

Much love to you all! ♥

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There are only ten more sleeps until Christmas!

I’ve been crawling out of bed at 5am to temper chocolate before the Sydney temps climb too high (max of 38ºC today)…

I’ve had my hair cut short and my new Christmas sunnies have arrived from Zenni. Pete just rolls his eyes – I tend to lose my mind with excitement at this time of year! Four months of daily walks have given me a respectable summer tan…

I baked the first batch of Christmas cookies on the weekend, but Pete and the boys have already scoffed half of them, so I’m going to have to bake some more…

Gift boxes of fruit cake and chestnut flour brownies are ready to go…

I’ve been knitting dishcloths while waiting for the oven timer to go off…

My friends Olivia and Juan made me new Christmas earrings…

I think the backs are nearly as beautiful as the fronts…

Yesterday we visited Ian and Diana to pick up our annual garlic supply…

While we were there, Ian proudly showed us his new Flow Hive – this brilliant new Australian invention makes beekeeping accessible to the ordinary home gardener and allows the honey to be extracted without disturbing the bees…

Our lovely friends sent us home with a taster jar of honey…

…and the headsup on a sublime local gin (distilled right here in Sydney)…

It only seemed right to combine the two into a cocktail. Here’s my early Christmas gift to you – the Bee’s Knees cocktail comes from the 1920s and this recipe from The Telegraph is simply grand…

• 50ml gin
• 15ml lemon juice
• 10ml good, runny honey (use the best you can find)
• 5ml water

Stir the honey and water together to dissolve, then add it to a cocktail shaker with the gin, lemon juice and a few ice cubes. Shake, strain into a glass, and drink. Repeat.

I hope you’re all enjoying the silly season as much as I am! Let me end with a Muppets clip for you! ♥

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As you know, we’re listening to Tim Curry’s performance of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and we’ve just heard the most glorious description of dinner at Bob Cratchit’s house! The whole novella is available for free courtesy of Project Gutenberg if you’re looking for a festive read.

In the meantime, pour a cup of tea, put your feet up and enjoy this foodie snippet…I hope you love it as much as we did!

. . . . .

Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose the rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter of course—and in truth it was something very like it in that house. Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigour; Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple-sauce; Martha dusted the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table; the two young Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting themselves, and mounting guard upon their posts, crammed spoons into their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose before their turn came to be helped. At last the dishes were set on, and grace was said. It was succeeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly all along the carving-knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast; but when she did, and when the long expected gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of delight arose all round the board, and even Tiny Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle of his knife, and feebly cried Hurrah!

There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn’t believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn’t ate it all at last! Yet every one had had enough, and the youngest Cratchits in particular, were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows! But now, the plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone—too nervous to bear witnesses—to take the pudding up and bring it in.

Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should break in turning out! Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the back-yard, and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose—a supposition at which the two young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of horrors were supposed.

Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook’s next door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered—flushed, but smiling proudly—with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.

Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing.

At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a shovel-full of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one; and at Bob Cratchit’s elbow stood the family display of glass. Two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle.

These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily.

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As I’ve mentioned before, Small Man is an elf.

He comes into his own in December, when it’s time to set up the Christmas tree. Often he’ll work on his own, but this year his brother decided to give him a hand. Our youngest son has very firm ideas about where each branch should go, so Big Boy opted to just open up the branches and hand them over, like a good assistant…

They set up the tree on Sunday morning, then Big Boy and I went down to the annual Haberfield Festa to get some lunch, while Small Man stayed back to add the lights…

Our local street festival is always busy and always hot, but I head down every year to get the delicious paella from the Sofrito stall…

. . . . .

The following day, I met up with my gorgeous young friend Clare at Spice Alley. After gorging ourselves on Malaysian/Singaporean food…

…we came back to our house for more eating and a quick lesson in chocolate tempering…

Lovely Clare (bless her) then kept us company as we decorated the tree, while listening to the irrepressible Tim Curry performing A Christmas Carol on Audible (it’s too wonderful for words, and here’s a tip – if you want to get it, buy the Kindle book first, then the audio version – it’s much cheaper that way)…

. . . . .

Many of our ornaments carry a great deal of history. It’s a joy to pull them out each year and hang them in honour of the friends and family they represent…

Clockwise from the top left are: Annie in NZ’s handstitched pig and the disco balls Jason sent me for my 50th birthday; just a few of my handmade Swarovski crystal decorations; a little raccon-dog bell that our best man brought back from Japan for me in 1985; and velvet polystyrene balls that the boys and I made in the late 1990s.

This sterling silver tree charm on a vintage Swarovski pendant is new this year. I had grand plans of wearing it as an earring, but it was much too heavy, so Clare and I ended up with a new ornament each…

Our finished tree is sitting in a new spot this year which seems to suit it well!

Hope you’re all enjoying the festive season as much as we are! ♥

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