Christmas Eve

Today was Christmas for me.   I love Christmas.  I love everything about it.  Even the things I hate about it. 

However, I don't like the lack of parking when I need to go to the shops but I do love the hustle and bustle of it.  I am fascinated by the need for giant amounts of food that people feel compelled to buy.  And to eat.  When I went to the supermarket yesterday I could see that people had their supermarket trolleys loaded for impending doom followed by the prospect of pestilence and starvation.  

Me included.  There are a couple of things I buy excess off at Christmas and they are raspberries and strawberries.  I am not sure why because, when I really think about it, I don't like them all that much.  I think I like the look of them.  I do like them in a Summer Pudding but since I have never made one I cannot even use that as an excuse for spending money on them.   Actually, I don't think I really like Summer Pudding that much because it has white bread around it and that gets all soggy with the juice from the berries.  But it looks very pretty.  

Anyway, that's just babble.  Yesterday I had to go down the street and stock up on the items that one has to for Christmas.  I bought a turkey buffet thing from some boutique butcher.  They stuff it and roll it and wrap it in the stretchy net thing to hold it together (I had to ring them today to ask if I had to leave it on when it was cooking).  The butcher's was packed with people buying meat, sausages, more meat and meaty meat.  Then I went past the place that sells seafood and it was packed with people buying fish, fish, prawns, oysters, fishy smelly things and then more of it.  Loads of it.  

I got home and wedged everything in the fridge which is currently sitting out on the back verandah while the kitchen is being renovated.   I thought I had too much food but figure it is better to have a bit much than not enough.  

My sister in law rang me and asked what I wanted her to bring.  I told her nothing and then reiterated that I meant nothing.  No chips to nibble, no pretzels, no nuts, no chocolate.  Don't bring anything because it is not needed.  All that snacking and nibbling before dinner is just enough to make a person vomit.  How much food can one put in their stomach on one given day?

This morning I was meant to do an exercise class to make up for the one I reneged on on Thursday night. I woke up early with a vague headache and decided that doing a fitness test at 7.45 am was not a good way to start the day when I had to cook in the afternoon.  So I got out of bed and started to cook the rice for the Danish Ris a la mande.  The stove is outside and the photo is of me in my pi's stirring the pot.   

I have a problem with rice.  I can never get my head around the whole expansion thing.   So I put the whole bag of rice in the pot and added three litres of milk and stirred away.  It took about half an hour or so to make and when it was done I put it in the fridge to cool down.  I would be adding cream and almond meal to it later in the afternoon.

Well, you know what happens to rice when left in just a bit of liquid.  It does that absorption thing.  When I took the pot out of the fridge later this afternoon it had become this solid block of rice.  I added some cream to it and broke the handle of the wooden spoon while stirring it.  Then K took over and the same thing happened.

The only way to mix it properly with the cream was to use my hands.  So I washed them and then sunk them into the now sticky mess.  But K had to add more cream.  Then more.  Then milk.  We then tipped the expanding gloop into a huge mixing bowl I have and I continued to mix it.  It took almost a litre of milk and the same of cream to get the rice back to a nice creamy state.  It was quite funny.

But you know, it was really nice digging my hands in the creamy rice.

Outside the weather was stinking hot and I had to do the cooking out on the back verandah.  Sweaty and hot.  I had the turkey thing and some roast eye fillet.  Loads of potatoes and pumpkin.  Did the token vegetable thing just for colour.  I had thought about doing a salad but figured it was a waste since I am the only one who eats it.

So, I stood out there and did the dinner, made gravy and the sauce for the dessert.   Twice the tea towels nearly caught on fire.  When I took the turkey thing out of the oven and had a taste I realised that they had stuffed it with some sausage kind of stuffing which really made me dry retch.  But everyone else liked it. Apparently that is the traditional thing for stuffing turkey.

We decided to eat inside which meant sitting on the couch and arm chairs because I don't have a table inside anymore.  It was far too hot outside.   It was like having a picnic without the bugs and flies.

After my brother and his family left (which seemed to take for ever) K and I cleaned up.  You know, I have to say that washing dishes in a laundry trough is about as close to roughing it as I want to get.

I sent my brother home with all the left over Ris a la mande because he just loves it.  I do too but one small bowl is enough for me.  It's so rich.  Besides, I saw how it was mixed..........

Now it is 11.00 pm at night. S is at his computer playing a new game.  K has gone to bed with a case of "belly fullitis" and I am just happily sitting down at my computer doing my blog and pfaffing around on Facebook.

In the afternoon I went next door to see my neighbour whose husband had died three months ago.  I was there for an hour chatting away.  Well, she did a lot of chatting and talked about what had transpired since her husband died.   Honestly, he was a man on a mission for an early demise.  First heart attack at 42.  Smoked even though he had all of the health problems that would get worse with smoking.  Type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, a stent in his heart.  You know the sort.

He had the worst cough for 18 months prior to being diagnosed with lung cancer and refused to mention it to his doctor.  When it finally got diagnosed he went off his tree at his wife because she wanted him to tell the doctor he was still smoking.  He said he couldn't because he had told his doctor for the past six years that he had not smoked at all.

So his wife is made from good Yugoslavian stock and grief is a process that makes one stronger.  Her children have found it harder to deal with.  She is of the generation that has seen friends and family die and those left over talk about it with the knowledge and understanding that goes with it all.  They always go into fantastic detail of the discovery of each illness and the subsequent consequences of it.

As I left she gave me a lovely hamper of food and later on brought over a little box of her home made Christmas biscuits.  Last time I had those her husband had brought them over and I ate them all day long.  I was glad that she still baked them this year and had managed to continue that tradition.

I think I must go to bed now.  Tomorrow we have a couple of Christmas visits to do and then home.  I can tell you I will be going for a long walk because I feel like a roly poly pudding.  I shall have to ration the neighbours biscuits.  They are very nice.

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and even if you don't celebrate Christmas I hope you have a Merry Non Christmas which is almost the same but completely different.

You know what I mean.

Keep safe and peaceful amongst it all.

Ciao
LC