Christmas 2014 in St André

 

Christmas Day in St André was a quiet but lovely one.  The sky was blue and the sun shone – perfect weather for a post-prandial afternoon walk through the village and then I sat in the sunshine up on the field with the animals for a while.  

You can see the awful mud that we are having to contend with - the worst I've ever known it.  Thank goodness the far end of the field still has grass.

Three of the sheep standing very still in the sunshine.

The sunset was great as the following photographs show:

 

Christmas food started with the usual gammon or collar joint, cooked the day before and sliced on hot buttered toast with Coleman’s English mustard.  For lunch I had bought a frozen lobster

and having prepared it, after watching a youtube tutorial, I mixed butter with garlic, parsley and lemon juice and then spread it liberally on the prepared crustacean and placed it under a very hot grill.

It was pleasant enough but the quality of the flesh was not as good as a fresh one would have been.   In previous years, I have prepared fresh crab and really enjoyed it, so I shall do that again for my future Christmas starters.

As I was alone, I chose to eat my main course a few hours later and cooked duck breast with spiced red cabbage, roasted butternut squash and onions, petit pois, dauphinoise potatoes and a gravy with red currant jelly.  

It was delicious!   This is about the fourth year running I have cooked this plate for Christmas lunch and I see no reason why I would ever change this tradition.  One of the great things about it is that there is no long cooking of any meat.  With the red cabbage prepared and cooked the beforehand, the whole meal doesn’t take more than an hour to get to the table.  My electric slicer, bought secondhand for €20 a few years ago, efficiently slices the potato for the dauphinoise into beautifully thin, regular slices and I used my own home grown garlic for this dish too. 

Too full to eat Christmas pudding, I opted for Bourbon vanilla icecream and homemade blackberry sauce made with the fruits I’d picked in the lane this year.

I followed this with Camembert which I eat with Petit Beurre biscuits – I like the salty and sweet combination.

My family in Cornwall were all spending Christmas Day together and Skyped me just before they had their prawn cocktail starter – so lovely to see them happy and enjoying themselves.

The tulip bulbs I planted in November are already popping their heads up through the wet earth in the terrace bed alongside the house.

At the end of the afternoon, which I'd spent with my two smallest chicks perching on my feet, I took them to their new home in the back barn.  I was happy this morning, Boxing Day, to see that they were fine and not being attacked by the bigger chickens.  Today is not a good weather day.  Purrdy, my oldest cat, has just come in soaking wet.  It is miserable out there now, luckily it was dry when I went up to do the animals first thing. 

The Christmas tree, a beautiful Nordmann fir, a present from friends is decorated but without lights. When the decoration bag was opened a strong smell of urine emerged.  I spread out a newspaper on the floor and tipped out the contents which included a mother mouse and her four babies.  The four sets of lights from the bottom of the bag, completely urine sodden, worked perfectly when plugged in but the stench was so bad that they were unusable.  The four new sets of lights, previously unused in another unaffected bag, wouldn’t work – not one of them wanted to light up.  So, unfortunately, I have no lights on my tree this year which is rather odd. 

This morning I Skyped with the New Zealanders who are going to house/pet sit for me in April 2015 when I go back to the UK for my usual dentist visit.  They seem really good people and I feel happy that they are going to take care of everything here for me.

Lunchtime today saw me cooking plaice goujons and prawns in homemade breadcrumbs with salad from the polytunnel – a nice light change from yesterday. Tomorrow I have been invited out to friends so can leave the cooking to someone else.

I am now relaxing in front of the woodburner with a half full tin of Quality Street – there are benefits to spending Christmas alone!

I hope everyone is enjoying their Christmas and that we all have a Happy and Healthy 2015.

Three things I like:

1.   Skype, for the opportunity it offers to keep in touch with and actually see friends and family.

2.   All the birds visiting the bird table just a metre from the sitting room window.

3.  My ducks and hens, who are laying so magnificently, even through these winter months, that I'm running out of ceramic egg trays.