Over at last. The great Christmas overindulgence. Why do we sigh with relief when Christmas is done? Is it the end of fevered shopping for family we barely know? The nerve-rending round of goodwill to all men? The 361st repeat of ‘Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer’? Personally, I’m over the feast – the hunting, the gathering, the gorging, the disgorging. By New Year, I’ve eaten the entire cast of ‘Twelve days of Christmas’ (pick your own version) and the feast of Stephen. Plus one or two giant Toblerones.
It’s a time of tradition, right? So traditionally I make little chocolates in place of cards, because nothing says I’m thinking about you more than putting a few hundred calories onto your hips. I bake two batches of Erstwhile’s mother’s Christmas cake; one to eat at Christmas between bites of leaping lord and chocolate, one made into smaller cakes to be discovered in June in some dark cupboard recess. There’s four boiled puddings, because the quantities feed an Edwardian family of 13, not three. And, as family tradition dictates – and there’s no more tyrannical tradition – I hunt a ham about mid-December. This is so that everybody is traditionally tired of ham well before Christmas Day. This year, hunting the ham involved learning to drive very carefully through snowy countryside.
It feels strange to have a cold Christmas. On my last Christmas back in Oz, we had my brother and his family down from the coast on Christmas Eve. We went swimming and ate by the pool. There was nothing - no carols, no videos from the Northern Hemishphere, no shivering voices from the other end of the phone - that prepared me for the darkness of a winter Christmas. The lack of festive mingling at neighbourhood barbies, Christmas parties, Carols by Candlelight in the Domain. Cricket after Christmas lunch. That I would make my cakes and puddings not on a day sweltering in heat, but because the weather was so miserable and cooking made the house smell good. And those little sausages in bacon? It feels like I'm eating the Baby Jesus.
On Christmas Day, my sister rang. After the snowfall of the previous couple of weeks, she asked me how I was enjoying a white Christmas. I knew what she meant, but I thought about that other White Christmas that I don't get to enjoy. Not Bing's, but a mixed fruit slice. A simple thing to make, you would think. It is; it's usually what I make kids do to keep them out of my hair while I panic about whether I've bought the right present for my mam. Sadly, I haven't made it since I moved here. Two of the ingredients are not to be found on the supermarket shelves - full-fat dried milk powder and Copha, a vegetable shortening made of hardened coconut oil. I can source the milk powder, but Copha? An Australian cultural food to me - and a heart attack in a 250g block to everybody else.
Rather than waste time and money risking the NHS at Christmas, I spent the cash on my family’s traditional breakfast of Froot Loops.
On Christmas Day, my sister rang. After the snowfall of the previous couple of weeks, she asked me how I was enjoying a white Christmas. I knew what she meant, but I thought about that other White Christmas that I don't get to enjoy. Not Bing's, but a mixed fruit slice. A simple thing to make, you would think. It is; it's usually what I make kids do to keep them out of my hair while I panic about whether I've bought the right present for my mam. Sadly, I haven't made it since I moved here. Two of the ingredients are not to be found on the supermarket shelves - full-fat dried milk powder and Copha, a vegetable shortening made of hardened coconut oil. I can source the milk powder, but Copha? An Australian cultural food to me - and a heart attack in a 250g block to everybody else.
Rather than waste time and money risking the NHS at Christmas, I spent the cash on my family’s traditional breakfast of Froot Loops.
Why Froot Loops? That’s another story. Right now, I’m off to find another recipe with which to disguise ham...
I am far from home and my trusty school edition of cookery the australian way originally purchased in 1976 and referred to each festive season for the sausage meat stuffing. I have used it to stuff my turkey buffe each year and it is generally more requested than the turkey. I have been asked to share the recipe. From memory it consists of sausage meat, fresh breadcrumbs, herbs, onion and egg. Can you please check if I am missing anything. Merry Christmas to you and yours!
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