Hello, happy new year! I'm writing this in TextEdit because I have a new computer that doesn't have my bloggy-bloggy software on it. And if there's one thing I've learned from associating with techno-boffins it's that you must always write in TextEdit if you're planning to paste something into a website. ALWAYS! If you use Word, then you'll break the Internet and society will collapse and you'll inadvertently publish some code that triggers a nuclear attack on Rockall. Use TextEdit to write your blog posts. Just use it! Or Notepad. That works too.

Anyway, things went downhill like a lardy bobsled after we last spoke. The boy and I caught a horrible virus that made us wheeze and simmer for weeks on end, operating a tag-team coughing rota that meant no one could sleep and everyone hated each other a bit. While this was happening, we each had to meet our mag deadlines and deal with some tedious passport-related drama and a flat inspection, so once again it hasn't been the jolliest of Decembers.

In happier news, I had a birthday. Thank you everyone who sent lovely cards and gifts, you are clearly awesomepants. Chris gave me some stylin' half-height Hunter wellies and fancy BeneFit make-up that smells like watermelon. Nice. I will make him take a photo of me modelling these items. This is my sixth birthday noted here at the Ribble. See? 26, 27, 28, 29, 30. I get older, my hair gets bigger, and I keep going back to Pizza Express.



In Christmas food news, the chilli jam seemed to go down quite well with the Tap! gang, and we made two batches of mince pies so delicious that they make me want to cry. The mincemeat tastes nothing like shop-bought stuff. You can taste all the individual fruits and spices, and it's much less sweet. Check out the recipe in Delia's Happy Christmas for next year.

Here's our iced cake. The stars look a bit like starfish.



And I made two half-cakes to give to our parents. To make up for the missing halves, I created 'magical' woodland scenes.



Cheers to you! x

Since August, life in the Poringe has fallen apart in a painful but dignified kind of way. Holidays have been abandoned, weekends lost, episodes of Doctor Who missed. Tragic.

I’ve done what every good Scotswoman does when faced with adversity: I’ve made a massive amount of food.

Look! Here are lots of jars of mincemeat:



They don’t look very appetising, but each jar is filled with fruit, zest, spices, sugar, treacle and brandy. Mmm! I made this back in September, because it needs to mature for a good while before it’s used.

Next up, Christmas cake! I was feeling cocky and decided to use a much more complicated recipe than last year; there was a lot of whisking and soaking and warming and blending. Also, it took four and a half hours to bake. Crazy. I made the cake in early October, and now it lives in the cake stand and sucks up a few spoons of brandy once a week. It’s like a quiet but needy pet.



This weekend, I made sweet chilli jam. It’s good with cheese toasties, sausage rolls and other cosy lazy lunchfood. These will be Christmas presents for the lovely Tap! team, who’ve worked like demons all year long.



That’s it! When I’m stressed, I find an afternoon in the kitchen is pretty relaxing. I also like the ancient tradition of boiling, baking and jarring in the autumn. In centuries gone by, mincemeat, chutneys and dense fruitcakes were a way to preserve harvest fruits through long winters, providing much of the calories and good cheer required for dark days in the Northern hemisphere. I especially love that my modern mincemeat recipe held on to a medieval memory; the fruit sealed in beef suet to stop fermentation.

Next up is my birthday, then Christmas. Cake for everyone!

x

Why hello, I hope you had a wonderful Christmas!

I’ve got a full two weeks off work, and I’m very much enjoying the peace and quiet. After what’s been a rather stressful and fractious year, I was determined the boy and I would have a lovely Christmas Day, so spent the first week of my holiday cleaning, shopping and cooking so the day itself would be an easy peasy roast-the-turkey-and-heat-stuff-up affair.

These things never photograph well, but I can assure you it was delicious! For the food geeks among you, I did Jamie Oliver’s get-ahead gravy (amazing), Christmas butter (Christmassy), and the chestnut sprouts recipe from the December issue of his mag (sadly foiled by lack of sprouts – I had to use cabbage). I’m not really much of a cook, so I was pretty pleased with my Christmas dinner.



Because we’re big softies, we chose a turkey that’d had some kind of yuppie life, with massages and cooked breakfasts and holidays in the Algarve. That turkey had a better life than most humans. It’d only been roughly plucked, though, which meant I spent Christmas Eve with a pair of eyebrow tweezers and a stoic expression.

We also had gigantic slabs of The Cake. It’s very good, though oddly you can barely taste the half-bottle of brandy I poured in.



One thing I didn’t plan for was the death of our fridge-freezer late on Christmas Eve. Not a disaster, in the grand scheme of things, but I was a little bit heartbroken to see all my painstakingly prepared food starting to spoil and our breakfast prosecco getting warm and our ice cubes melting. We ferried everything out to the car boot and crossed our fingers that it wouldn’t freeze solid in the snowy night.

We’re getting the new fridge-freezer tomorrow, which after a week without one is terribly exciting. Chris has made a pile of ice cube trays and booze he’s planning to put in there as soon as is scientifically sensible. Hooray for cold drinks!

Tomorrow is also Hogmanay, which means I’ll get drunk too early, have a headache by midnight and fall asleep during Jools Holland’s Hootenanny. Tradition!

This summer has turned me into a real No-Fun Phyllis. I've become obsessed with keeping the flat clean, which is so unlike me that I'm amazed the boy hasn't checked to see if there's a man in the walls with a pistol trained on my face or something. Also, I've been doing responsible things such as learning how to reverse park and completing my school work a whole week before I have to. AND I put our ten thousand regular number of empty wine bottles in a plastic crate to put out to the recycling van tomorrow. The worst part about all this is that being organised and tidy has in no way made me more relaxed or good-housewifey. Now I just spend all my time worrying about dropping Bombay Mix on the carpet. BAH.

Here is how to make Kir Royale (Not sure if it should have that last 'e' or not - French speakers plz comment).

Kir Royale
You will need:
1 bottle champagne - Yes, I know. A good cava will suffice.
1 bottle creme de cassis - It's an INVESTMENT okay?
A pretty glass
Chopstick, knitting needle or other implement

Chill champagne until ice cold.
Pour a decent measure of creme de cassis into glass.
Top up with champagne.
Stir with pointy implement.
Enjoy sense of Bombay Mix-worry slipping away in a haze of blackcurranty deliciousness.