A Christmas full of whippets
On Saturday...
We went to the farmer's market and bought a (free range) goose and ridiculous numbers of vegetables.
Then we spent the evening chopping and preparing the vegetables, and finally we drove the goose and its assembled vegetable courtiers to my mother's house, where we had agreed to convene, as the last two Christmases have been phenomenally frosty, making the steep approach to our house perilous in the extreme. Of course, this year it decided to be very warm and damp instead. Oh well.
I also made a chocolate marquise for philmophlegm, who scorns Christmas pud. Things to note if I ever do this again:
1) non-alcoholic grenadine is not a straight swap for Grand Marnier. It turns the white chocolate pink and also I think it curdled it a bit.
2) chocolate that is not 100% cocoa would probably melt better and combine better with the cream.
Still, the end result was certainly very edible, if not quite as intended...
On Sunday...
Things were more relaxed than they might have been due to all the huge amount of pre-emptive chopping that had occurred.
Also, we were able to get all four dogs over there easily as the food had already travelled.
philmophlegm's parents were there too and were surprisingly tolerant of the canine contingent.
Christmas with six dogs (greyhound, lurcher, fosterwhippets, Mum's whippet & collie) is a lot of dogs. Mostly whippets. But they were all very good and slept a lot of the time. Mollydog overdid it in the morning, haring about like a loon, and had a swollen leg in the afternoon.
The goose was really delicious. I have the bones in the oven and tomorrow I shall boil them into something... soup maybe. We managed to burn the parsnips, singe the sausages, and completely forgot about the leeks in cheese, but there were so many vegetables this was no great loss. Possibly a list of things to eat would solve this problem (or we could just be a bit more sensible about not preparing absurdly too much food...) Still, we shall have leftovers for aaaaaaaages, including for the animals...
I thought the best foodstuff was a stuffing I made with minced venison, thyme, cranberries, garlic, bread and rosemary.
Weirdest foodstuff idea - on the pot of brandy butter it suggests " Why not try me on crumpets" CRUMPETS? Who puts brandy butter on crumpets? That's just WRONG!
Mostly I got second hand books as presents (YAY!) including some obscure Rosemary Sutcliffs (DOUBLE YAY) but also I got some rather nice sketchbooks and a new box to keep art supplies in that turns into a portable easel. Woohoo.
Watched Doctor Who when we got back in the evening. I liked the Narnia tribute idea and the snowy woodland : not quite so sure about the central plot, and the casting of Alexander Armstrong to play a straight WWII RAF pilot role. I like Armstrong, and he's a good actor, but casting him as a pilot in a straight/tragic role when he has made a great success of playing a *comedy* pilot didn't quite work for me.
On Monday
I determined to rest Mollydog's bad leg. She was prepared to go along with this in the morning, because she was tired and achy, but she became very loud and protesting in the afternoon, so I gave her a tiny mini-walk. She clearly felt this was not enough, and rushed around the house yodelling and stirring up whippets. I fear that I may have to cave tomorrow and allow her to run again.
We washed and brushed the front path! This is a major win, as it (like everything left unmolested in the Tamar valley) had turned very green and slippery. Now it actually looks (temporarily) like it is made of tarmac rather than Purest Green, and there is less chance we will accidentally kill a postman. We got rather wet and grubby, but it was worth it.
Then I did some drawing and Pp installed Christmas games, while we watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt 1. We would have watched Pt 2 as well, only our Sky box has no phone connection and I don't know where the long telephone cable has got to, that we need to access Sky Boxoffice. It is a Mystery.
We watched Sean Bean in Black Death instead. It was quite a good film, if rather grim (and there were no explosions or giant crocodilians).
I haven't started this year's tree carving - actually, I haven't even done the final finishing on last year's carving, because for some reason the skin on my middle finger on my right hand has cracked very painfully right across the first joint, and I'm not sure I want to be using a chisel with it. Even typing hurts a bit. Damn fingers.
We went to the farmer's market and bought a (free range) goose and ridiculous numbers of vegetables.
Then we spent the evening chopping and preparing the vegetables, and finally we drove the goose and its assembled vegetable courtiers to my mother's house, where we had agreed to convene, as the last two Christmases have been phenomenally frosty, making the steep approach to our house perilous in the extreme. Of course, this year it decided to be very warm and damp instead. Oh well.
I also made a chocolate marquise for philmophlegm, who scorns Christmas pud. Things to note if I ever do this again:
1) non-alcoholic grenadine is not a straight swap for Grand Marnier. It turns the white chocolate pink and also I think it curdled it a bit.
2) chocolate that is not 100% cocoa would probably melt better and combine better with the cream.
Still, the end result was certainly very edible, if not quite as intended...
On Sunday...
Things were more relaxed than they might have been due to all the huge amount of pre-emptive chopping that had occurred.
Also, we were able to get all four dogs over there easily as the food had already travelled.
philmophlegm's parents were there too and were surprisingly tolerant of the canine contingent.
Christmas with six dogs (greyhound, lurcher, fosterwhippets, Mum's whippet & collie) is a lot of dogs. Mostly whippets. But they were all very good and slept a lot of the time. Mollydog overdid it in the morning, haring about like a loon, and had a swollen leg in the afternoon.
The goose was really delicious. I have the bones in the oven and tomorrow I shall boil them into something... soup maybe. We managed to burn the parsnips, singe the sausages, and completely forgot about the leeks in cheese, but there were so many vegetables this was no great loss. Possibly a list of things to eat would solve this problem (or we could just be a bit more sensible about not preparing absurdly too much food...) Still, we shall have leftovers for aaaaaaaages, including for the animals...
I thought the best foodstuff was a stuffing I made with minced venison, thyme, cranberries, garlic, bread and rosemary.
Weirdest foodstuff idea - on the pot of brandy butter it suggests " Why not try me on crumpets" CRUMPETS? Who puts brandy butter on crumpets? That's just WRONG!
Mostly I got second hand books as presents (YAY!) including some obscure Rosemary Sutcliffs (DOUBLE YAY) but also I got some rather nice sketchbooks and a new box to keep art supplies in that turns into a portable easel. Woohoo.
Watched Doctor Who when we got back in the evening. I liked the Narnia tribute idea and the snowy woodland : not quite so sure about the central plot, and the casting of Alexander Armstrong to play a straight WWII RAF pilot role. I like Armstrong, and he's a good actor, but casting him as a pilot in a straight/tragic role when he has made a great success of playing a *comedy* pilot didn't quite work for me.
On Monday
I determined to rest Mollydog's bad leg. She was prepared to go along with this in the morning, because she was tired and achy, but she became very loud and protesting in the afternoon, so I gave her a tiny mini-walk. She clearly felt this was not enough, and rushed around the house yodelling and stirring up whippets. I fear that I may have to cave tomorrow and allow her to run again.
We washed and brushed the front path! This is a major win, as it (like everything left unmolested in the Tamar valley) had turned very green and slippery. Now it actually looks (temporarily) like it is made of tarmac rather than Purest Green, and there is less chance we will accidentally kill a postman. We got rather wet and grubby, but it was worth it.
Then I did some drawing and Pp installed Christmas games, while we watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt 1. We would have watched Pt 2 as well, only our Sky box has no phone connection and I don't know where the long telephone cable has got to, that we need to access Sky Boxoffice. It is a Mystery.
We watched Sean Bean in Black Death instead. It was quite a good film, if rather grim (and there were no explosions or giant crocodilians).
I haven't started this year's tree carving - actually, I haven't even done the final finishing on last year's carving, because for some reason the skin on my middle finger on my right hand has cracked very painfully right across the first joint, and I'm not sure I want to be using a chisel with it. Even typing hurts a bit. Damn fingers.