This was lunch on Xmas Day...

Christmas lunch was totally untraditional this year, I've never cooked a turkey (my mother always does on one of the holiday days, in fact, this year today is turkey day).  I cooked the beef and the pudding on Xmas Eve and had the ingredients for the nibbles all ready to go on Xmas day and just sort of made them up at the appropriate time.

Here's what we ate to start with nibbles to go with out fizz:

Prawns in my special made up marinade (coriander, fish sauce, ginger, garlic, red chilli, sugar), smoked salmon with horseradish creme fraiche on blinis, smoked salmon pate also on blinis, Dolcelate and Blackstick's Blue on chickory leaves.

 

For our main - shin of beef casserole with herby mustard dumplings, sprouts with bacon, cabbage and cavolo nero and squashed new potatoes.

Pudding - Chocolate and chestnut terrine - seriously rich and rather nice!

A tasty quick lunch at home

A tasty quick lunch at home, originally uploaded by multum in parvo..

Perversely, I quite like it when there's 'no food' in the fridge and I have to have a bit of a rummage. This was a yummy rummage lunch - courgette and mushroom frittata with home made spicy chutney and some watercress. It even photographed nicely as well as being delicious.

Bbq Prep and Demolition

"Let's have a bbq, " they said, "we'll go and get the food and would you mind getting it ready?". Of course I said "yes", we havent' had a barbie for ages, none this year, and the weather was lousy all last year and we didn't manage, so the prospect was good.

The (male) hunter-gatherers did their thing and returned to the kitchen and offered me, two packs of beef mince, two packs of sausages, one French loaf, a pot of yoghourt and three courgettes......Out of this offering plus the meagre contents of my fridge and my well stocked store cupboard we are having the following:
Home made Moroccan spiced burgers, shop bought sausages tarted up with extra seasoning and herbs, oven roast red onions and courgettes with thyme, home made herby humous, plain yoghourt with masses of herbs, Greek salad (tomatoes, cucumber and feta), basmati rice with coriander spice, peas, herbs and lemon. It's taken me hours and I'm knackered! But at least I won't have to deal with the cooking of the meat and I'm certainly not washing up....

...later...

It was all delicious and I prepared far to much food as usual. There will be plenty for lunch tomorrow.

Rain

I've just been standing on the threshold of my terrace while the rain is pelting down, it smelt wonderful and was beautiful.