Christmas!

Well ladies and gentlemen, we are back from our mammoth 10 day holiday and blogging is my number one priority. After all the other ‘keep-the-clidren-alive’ hum-drum of course. And lucky for you people, I took my computer away with me specifically so that when I came back the photos were primed and in order to splash across the web day after day after day, forever after. In theory. Let’s see how we go. Speed of posting may depend on comments (oh wow! Would you look at that! It’s one of those 2-way streets! Amazing.) as well as my general motivation which is pretty low at the best of times.

I obviously took a ga-zillion photos, most of which you will be thankfully spared from, but will post a few of them in broadly associated bunches, kicking off with the calendar highlight of Christmas Day. Behold! This is Christmas day in Appledore.

Background: We arrived in Appledore in the early evening of December 23rd which followed the most excruciatingly slow journey from London. Yes, yes, I realise that Mez had far more holiday-motorway issues around pesky Birmingham - but did she have 2 over-tired screamers in her car?!? No. Only one. Anyway, so we arrived, dealt with the kids and passed out. The following day we had a peek around the town and I fiddled with the oven in preparation for some goose-roasting. Now I’m not too sure how it happened, since prior to moving to London I could only cook toast, but cooking is a bit of a thing for me. A recipe-follower through and through (books rule!) it’s one of those turnarounds of character I don’t think that my parents ever forsaw. And one of the first things I learnt is that ovens cook differently. The one in Appledore is no exception as you will see below.

We had a few pressies on chrissie eve (see boys blog) and then early to bed for Christmas day.

I was on the AM duty Christmas morning which saw me and Fred rise for a good hour before the other two boys.....

we have finally reached the thomas stage. he is officially the  best bribe  coolest dude in the house.

a proper-sized (plastic) cristmas tree! with light aesomeness! This was waiting for us on our arrival. And in setting it up they somehow managed to inlude the tv and dvd player on the same circuit as the lights, thus they were on petty much every day... much to the boys disappointment.

puzzle awesomeness. the new fave. the puzzle above (thanks liv!) baffles most adults (well dave anyway), but Fred does it in the blink of an eye.

pancakes! man food. add water and shake.

ok. these were not exactly cooked with the pancakes - or at any point during our holiday -as they became Fred's mock cooking food of choice AKA something that gave me 5 minutes relief from the sceaming. Bless you chestnuts.

feed me now. i am ready.

a couple of pressies after breakfast (i should just state here that in all our cooking exploits this week, I failed to ONCE photograph the final products. Probably due to my diminished child-brain and the fact that when actual kid-eating occurs ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE, and a camera  is not easily added to this situation.)

right. here begins goose 101. put all this awesomeness in a pan to act as the trivet for the bird. it will later be mashed into the gravy. kneel down to the gibletty awesomeness, easily the best addition to a gravy you can make.

the aforementioned 5 spice with subtly pierced oranges to stuff.

this is one seriously big bird. it doesn't yeild the highest amount of meat, but the breaking upof the carcas was beyond anything Ive ever done before! look at those wings!

on another aside - few facts about geese - 50 years ago theywere the english christmas bird of choice.  But with the advent of marvellous modern farming practices the tukey took over... because geese cannot be intensively farmed. Inflict every trick in the book on a goose and thy will simply not produce more than 1-2 eggs a year. Viva la goose! So rest assure this goose was lovingly raised amongst butterflies and fieldmice, sunshine and rainbows and there is available geneology had we cared.

you know all my banging on about using an unfamiliar oven?? Hmmm? and how you lauged at my analness? Turns out I was RIGHT. The fucker wouldn't shut properly. A small gap poured forth all my precious heat, making the concept of putting an oven on full (as mr goose requires) pointless. Luckily handyman dave had packed his 3 wood. What a man.

parboil veg till borderline crumbly (potatoes, carrot and parsnip raditional english fare) . Meanwhile add all of this stuff.....

(making sure to use the Rock-Loved clementines first)

... to some of this stuff. Which I'm sure Lachy will recognise in an instant, but for those who ain't been to the Borough Market in hte lead up to christmas - it's goose fat. Awesome, ridiculously unhealthy goose fat.

(and let me just say that on pure taste value I would pick rapeseed oil every time, but the aim was a proper english christmas, so there was no other choice....)

mmmm. you just KNOW that an hour in the oven is going to produce something wonderful...

italian cavolo nero cabbage (kale essentially). Remember to pack all of your own good knives seeing as a rental cottage is guarenteed to only have serrated ikea crap. Also remember the knife sharpener as there is a chance a doofus kind helper will put them in the dshwasher (NOOOO. NO.NO. NEVER.)

parboil* cabbage, leave on rack to cool, when cool squeeze out excess liquid

(*i realise parboil is the word of the blog, but parboiling is awesome when you are trying to time things as it means you do 90% of the work potentially hours in advance [the night before!] and only a little bit of finish at the end.  Freeing up your time allows you to....)

accept a glass of bubbles from a cute boy sporting a new (and rather fluoro - how daring!) cockfighter top

and eat some of this heaven. i realise this cancels out all our good efforts with the goose, but it's the one thing i just can't say no to. Especially when you eat it with sauternes. And it came all authenitc from France (thanks nean!) to boot....

milk/champagne

wines organised by the sommelier.

after 2-3 hours (depending on goosie size), take out of oven and set aside in foil. Now for the GRAVY! What I consder to be the most essential part of a roast and something your plate should be swiming in. Now a goose has a LOT of fat that renders as you cook it.  This is one of THREE bowls I removed from the tray....

giblets dont sound too crazy when you see that, hey? holy sweet jesus (thank you for this day) this was awesome gravy. Add your best stock and simmer way for as long as you like....

get a supermodel to mash up the veg'n'gibs in the gravy (i removed the ginger because... well... wine+ginger=not great)

ok. NOW you can call me anal. i couldnt find a recipe online so had to take notes from a couple of tv shows.... and it sowballed.  But hank god it did as I was a bit light-headed come the business-end of kitchen work.  As you can see my goose (or was it oven? hmm?) unfortunately did not pass all it's tests and required a further 20 in the oven. Which I think pushed it mildly onto the vercooked side, but not by much. Disappointing (you hear me Mez, I know) but not at all a disaster.

bon appetite!

Celebrate full tummies and the suprisingly nice afternoon sun by throwing rocks into puddles..

hope you all had a lovely day, ours was a treat.

xxxxx Heather