food – Page 3

Christmas Eve 2013

December 29, 2013 by Susan

Christmas Eve didn’t start too well for us – we had storms the night before and this was the view over our garden:

Four fence panels broken, but I know we are lucky compared to some of our friends who have flooding.

The view inside was much more attractive:

We had a relaxed morning, then spent the afternoon listening to Carols From King’s preparing the vegetables for Christmas dinner and even managing to persuade Rebekah to do a little bit of crafting.

A quick dinner and then one of our most important Christmas traditions watching, the best version of A Christmas Carol, The Muppets.

Martin, Jonathan and I then went to a friend’s party for nibbles and cocktails, then back home so everyone can get in bed before Santa comes to visit. This year we gave Santa a hand and did a secret Santa of stockings, but he was coming round to check we had done everything properly so we left out something to eat and drink for him and the reindeer!

Festive Day

December 19, 2013 by Susan

I’ve had a great day.

I went on a walk with Martin to work and instead of just rushing back I went down to the sea and just stood and watched for a while, peaceful and beautiful.

Then we got the pre-Christmas cleaning up done – all the children joined in and so did Caleb who, unfortunately for him, was around to help out!

We had a bit of time to spend making a few decorations and some gingerbread trees and snowmen followed by a quick spot of lunch.

Then we had friends over to decorate gingerbread houses. Jonathan made a gingerbread camp site complete with a fire and an abominable snowman. Val was quite sure we had made a brilliant gingerbread city. There were a lot more sweets at the start than managed to end up on the houses!

I also got some mulled apple juice going , non-alcoholic but with a little kick from some Rochester dark ginger drink and while the icing was setting (we used Mary Berry’s royal icing method and it was brilliant) we made some decorative stars.

Some Favourite Advent Activities With Other People

December 17, 2013 by Susan

For the last few years we’ve run a singing group with The Learning Zone leading up to Christmas, we’ve learnt some folk carols and enjoyed singing some sea shanties and silly songs as well. We performed Sweet Bells, Hail Chime On, The Wexford Carol and While Shepherds Watched (Lyngham) at the Newport Churches Carols in the Square. We were in between The Salvation Army band, puppets, gigantic pass the parcel and various other bits a pieces. Our grp did really well and they had worked so hard to produce a lovely sound. You can get a little taste of it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1w30F9yzBW0

Rather than do a concert with the songs we had learned this year I opted to run a Christingle service where we could sing the carols we had learned and some more traditional carols too. We had loads of people, everyone made their own Christingle and there is something so beautiful about singing carols in the candlelight. Unfortunately as I was busy running it I couldn’t take photos during it but here is a snap just after of the girls and Caleb.

We followed the Christingle with another favourite Christmas tradition the annual Learning Zone cookie exchange.

We made 110 cookies at home and packaged them up into 11 bags with labels. When the kids were small it was ever so difficult to make so many cookies – with the “help” of little children – but now everyone does their own thing so it’s only a moderately large batch each.

This year we all sat round in a circle and handed out the cookies explaining who had made what and giving some details of the cookies.

We ended up with 110 cookies of all sorts of shapes. styles and flavours. We always spread the cookies out when we get home and examine them decide if any can be put in the freezer for closer to Christmas and which one must absolutely be eaten immediately. Then we sit and have a cuppa with a selection of the cookies.

Autumn Baking

November 1, 2013 by Susan

We were inspired to make some blackberry shortbread when we saw pictures on the Home Baked blog, however ours were nowhere near as pretty as hers and we felt they needed a little more sugar, but it was a good excuse for Jonathan to have a go with the piping bag and a good use for a handful of autumn blackberries!

When I asked Jonathan what he would like to bake he said a spiders web cake, we had followed a recipe for one before but couldn’t find it so we used Mary Berry’s chocolate version of the Victoria sandwich, our made up version of ganache and some cheap Aldi white chocolate for the web and spider!

I have been using up the apples in the garden. We have had loads and my old jam jars are all full of chutneys and jam, I have been trying to make Andy Hamilton’s Sort Of Cider and I have made three different apple cakes, Devon apple cake, polenta apple cake and my mum’s grated apple cake. The Devon one is a really easy yummy everyday type cake and I think I have made 8 so far this year and will be making more to take to church on Sunday too. The polenta one is an adaptation of this lovely raspberry cake recipe, I’ve just used thin slices of apple instead of the raspberries, this is great for Martin who is trying to avoid wheat and is definitely the best straightforward gluten free cake recipe I have used, we use fine cornmeal instead of standard polenta and it tastes lovely! My mum’s recipe takes a bit more work, kneading the dough, grating it and cooking the apples but it is definitely my favourite (it would be my inheritance track, if I was choosing food rather than records!) and here is a pic of it!