Christmas party

The Christmas party was lots of raucous fun. The Mansergh organic mutton was divine, cooked low and slow according to the River Cottage Meat book, and was melt in the mouth delicious, well done Luke. After dinner there was musical entertainment, and even a live skype link up with absent friends in London having their Christmas party simultaneously.

Homemade Christmas Crackers

We spent a lovely long weekend at Luke's parent's. The hampers went down very well, the biscuits were munched on all weekend, and we got a foodie Christmas present in return, a meal out at a nearby gastro pub The Crooked Billet, which was yummy. Luke made us all watch the BBC sports personality of the year, and what a great year it was for cycling, which made him very happy. I only watched with half an eye as I was knitting up 16 wooly bracelets from a tutorial over at the lovely resurection fern. These are for our friend's Christmas meal party at the weekend. Usually I'd have been cooking a dish for it, but when everyone made it clear they couldn't have a Christmas meal without crackers I volunteered to make them to avoid the eco-abomination of bought crackers. Hats made from last year's Cristmas wrapping paper, jokes found on the internet, and cracker snaps purchased from eBay, were the easy part. Then I got really stuck trying to think of what else to put in the crackers that wasn't plastic tat, and didn't cost anything, so we could spend more money on bubbly! Hmmm... many ideas were rejected as I worried my friends would think they were too lame. Then I spotted a list of handmade present tutorials, by one of my favourite bloggers, which included these sweet wooly bracelets. I nervously fished them out of the washing machine to find they'd felted perfectly and shrunk by just the right amount, whew! Thankfully I had lots of wool so they didn't cost a penny, so I could spend some of the budget on fairtrade Divine chocolate money instead.
Luke volunteered to go get the food shopping for the party by bike trailer, and to cook the meat. That way we can get the veggies from our lovely local greengrocer and organic meat from Mansergh, I can't wait!

Christmas hampers

For Luke's family we put together some yummy food hampers for his parents, granny, brother and sister in law. We included strawberry jam, allotment blackcurrant jam, backyard mint jelly, chilli jelly, spicy apple chutney and hot pear chutney. Also some vanille kipfl Austrian Christmas biscuits, and a bottle of sloe vodka. Yum!

Christmas Ham

We thought we'd start a new Christmas tradition in our house. Since we're not fans of turkey, and neither of us will actually be at home for Christmas day, we decided to have a ham made from scratch to enjoy over the holiday period. Here's the 5kg leg of pork we picked up from Foragers at Lancaster wednesday market. It's got to sit outside in a bucket covered in brine for about 2 weeks before the next stage of the process.

Hugh's West Country Cider Brine
2kg Salt
1litre Strong dry cider
4 litres Apple Juice
1kg Demerara Sugar
1kg Treacle
30g crushed black peppercorns
10 crushed bay leaves
30 juniper berries
10 cloves

Spong!

Awhile back I scored a Spong mincer from the charity shop for 99p. We tried it out for the first time turning lamb chunks into mince to make lamb burgers for dinner.