and did a lot of preparation for Saturday night’s Christmas feast – we put the turkey in its brine, peeled and cut up the potatoes, made the rice pudding base for the ris a l’amande and wrote up a big minute-by-minute plan for getting everything to the table on time
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It’s been a while since I’ve made one but it turned out well, which has the added benefit of meaning that I have a couple of yummy lunches this week for work – yay!
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Very tired after the intense socialising of the weekend (1, 2, 3… awwww!) so have had trouble applying myself to anything much today, so I’ve focused instead of trying to get some housey stuff done – I want everything to be in order with the house and with all my lists and tools before I go back to work, which could be next week, so I have to get cracking! So I did a load of laundry, changed the sheets on the bed, swapped the summer doona out for the mid-season one, tidied my in-tray (didn’t actually do anything with the stuff in it though), did a mountain of washing up, made teriyaki meatballs for late lunch/early dinner, made a batch of home-made apricot muesli bars and wrote to my mama. Now I am procrastinating over finishing up my Australian tax returns for 2005, 2006 and 2007, but in doing so I have gone back over all the accounting software I’ve assessed in the last few days and decided that iBank comes closest to meeting my needs. Next task with that is to email my accountants (Australian and UK) to make sure that the reports it produces will provide them with the data they need. But I can’t do that until the tax returns are done, so I guess there’s an end to my procrastination – nose back to the grindstone!
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Tasty but VERY sweet. If I made it again, I’d probably serve with freshly whipped cream to cut the sugariness of the caramel on the top.
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Sad to have to make one’s own, I know, but it was a good excuse to try out a recipe I haven’t made before – my grandmother’s fudge cake, which my mother has pretty much made her own. Turned out pretty well!
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A layered potato and onion baked thing. Went very well with the roast chicken, I’m pleased to say 
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Worked really really well this time, although I think the chicken was a little dry in the larger chunks – maybe I’ll try more of a shredded approach next time. Or possibly just not cook it for quite so long. I guess using the thigh fillets the recipe specifies overcomes this (rather than breast meat) but I hate thighs – yes, they’re tastier, but then you have to content with the horrible chunks of fat (blech – chicken fat is disgusting) and the nasty sinewy bits. Still, flavour was good and the boy went back for seconds, so I guess it was OK.
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Everyone said so! Roast turkey with mascarpone, lemon, garlic and herbs, roast potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, parsnip and carrots, little cumberland and lincolnshire chipolatas. Djelibeybi played sproutmeister with a little help from our friend Robert. Lis made mulled wine. And I even made a passable ris a l’amande for pudding!
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Getting a head start on Saturday’s big Christmas dinner party. Brownies are from Nigella Lawson’s How to be a domestic goddess. Pretty good. VERY fudgy though – I prefer my brownies a bit more cake-like in general.
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… with my new spice, wild sumac, bought at the food festival we accidentally discovered yesterday.
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