Xmas at home 2012

Xmas was pleasant enough last year but we vowed that this year we would spend it at home, just the two of us and the cat.

So many Christmases in my life I have wished for less. Less family, less conflict, less resentment and so on. Sometimes less is more.

So we slept in. Then when we got up, Hubby made himself scrambled eggs with smoked salmon while I had a slightly more reserved bagel with cream cheese.  But I felt like champagne, so champagne was had.



There was present opening, where we both thoroughly spoilt each other, plus presents from his family in England and the cat chased after his new mouse which made bird noises (confusing much?).




Then we watched some television and It’s a Wonderful Life. Required Xmas viewing IMO and after a few glasses of champagne, I may have set a record for number of tears shed during the movie.

And Santa looked on from the tree. He’s in board shorts because he’s an Aussie Santa and it’s too hot for fur-covered suits here!




We may have left it a bit late, but around midday Hubby decided it was time to cook the roast (his big breakfast might have hindered his motivation a bit there! ;) . He made my favourite – stuffed roast chicken with potatoes parsnip and carrot. The recipe he used is something I love: roast chicken with whisky spiked gravy and we used an organic free-range Barossa valley chicken, which was expensive, but possibly worth it (I’m still a little unsure whether the price differential to other organic free-range chooks of $10 was justified). While I set the table.




And this is the spread in the end.



(hubby likes to break up the chicken to serve – I personally think carving it before bringing it to the table for admiration is sacrilege! We compromised)

Now an anti-recommendation for the Scrabble Xmas crackers: There are NO JOKES in them! Appalling! Luckily we’d watched the Vicar of Dibley Xmas special the night before and I retold the jokes from there (What do you do when you see a space man? Park in it man) to good effect. Very disappointing.  Xmas REQUIRES there to be groans from lame jokes from the crackers. A couple of years ago, we even scored some that were in Chinglish which made them even more funny, but I prefer the classic groaners.

For afters, we had a steamed pud from Burch and Purchese (rather confusingly pronounced “Purchase”), which didn’t look like much beforehand, but after two hours steaming was by far the best pud I’ve ever had (the addition of custard and cream didn’t harm it either) and there has been fights over the leftovers of that!

All that was left to do after that was to clean up and then watch more Xmas telly and pat our full bellehs. I may have fallen asleep mid-afternoon, but it had nothing to do with the port I consumed with the pud! ;)