Christmas 2009.

Here are some pictures from our Christmas this year.

This year, amazingly, I was extra organized, baking-wise, and stuck to the schedule I set for myself, which included lots of new recipes (as mentioned on the recipe list for December).

This picture is from the day before Christmas Eve, and I'm pouring out the peppermint chocolate rum cake, ready for marbling - which turned out to be the recipe Mark and I liked the least. I thought it was going to be Christmassy, and I tried to dye the chocolate part of the cake red, like red velvet cake, to go with the green-dyed peppermint part. But I don't think I used enough food coloring because it just looked a bit auburn. It was ok, and the marbling was well done, if I do say so myself, but the taste didn't really wow us. I don't know if that was me, or the recipe.





One thing that did work out well were the mini-pecan pies I made. I wanted an alternative to mince pies for me, since I don't eat raisins. This is from Christmas Eve day:


We drove to Brean and stayed overnight with Mark's mum on Christmas Eve. Sarah was back in town from Thailand.

On Christmas Day, Mark and I got up and went for a walk along the beach to Brean Down in the morning. You can see the hill in the distance:


You walk up a bunch of stairs and then at the top there's a nice view. Plus some remnants from an old Iron Age fort. Plus this thing, which reminds us of Aslan's table from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.



That's Weston-Super-Mare in the background. You can't really see our flat from here.


Then we had Christmas lunch. I contributed Julie's Kahlua sweet potatoes, cornbread dressing, and homemade cranberry sauce.






Later we played Ticket to Ride.



On Boxing Day, we walked up another hill, called Brent Knoll.



Then on the day after Boxing Day, we walked up Brean Down again, this time with Mark's family (they didn't come with us when we did it before), and we went all the way to the end, which we didn't have the time to do on Christmas Day.

The tide was all the way in and it was really windy and pretty cold.



On New Year's Day we did the last hill in our "Three Somerset Peaks" holiday challenge (there is an annual event here in the UK called the "Three Peaks Challenge" where teams of people compete in a race to walk up the three highest peaks in Great Britain - Ben Nevis in Scotland, Scafell Pike in England and Snowdon in Wales - all in one day). Mark has done it before, but they didn't win, though I don't think that was the point for them.

We had decided to do a Somerset-based (and much easier) version over the holiday period - Brean Down, Brent Knoll and Crook Peak, all of which are less than 15 minutes from our place. And they aren't peaks, just hills, though the views are still pretty good.

We walked up Crook Peak on New Year's Day with Mark's family. We didn't take the camera so we don't have an pictures. It was fun doing all three, though.

Catching up: the rest of the recipes.

I actually achieved my single New Year's Resolution for 2009, though I didn't keep up with blogging about it, which will surprise no one. (You might remember that the blogging wasn't part of the resolution, just a technique to help keep it, so I of course don't feel that the lack of blogging negates the success of the resolution itself.)

But today, on the last day of the year, to close off the resolution, I'm going to try to at least catch up a little bit by listing the other recipes I've tried this year.

The belated recipe posting means that I'm interpreting the resolution as a total of 24 new recipes in 2009, rather than a set of two per month. I actually think that I probably ended up doing two per month any way, but since my last posting about it was recipe number six back at the beginning of April, I don't think I'm going to remember all the ones I've tried between then and now, nor when exactly I made them.

But I can remember a lot that happened in the spring and over the summer, especially since I know that I got my Essentials of Slow Cooking and Vegetables Every Day cook books at the end of March, so I would have been trying recipes from there in April and beyond. Some of them I know vaguely when I did them - like I remember doing Carnitas in August, and the list below is in roughly chronological order. Plus I tend to try a series of recipes from a cookbook back to back. I can of course definitely remember the whole host of things I tried for Christmas (I got a cook book for my birthday from Mom and Dad and I bought myself my first Christmas-themed cookbook).

I'm just going to list all the recipes below - if you want more information about any of them, just ask. I can give you the full details of how it worked out and any lessons I learned. Although I don't remember exactly when I tried them, I can remember how they all tasted!

I've linked the first mention of each cook book to their page on Amazon (I'm too lazy to link every single mention), so you can see where all the recipes are coming from. If you want any of the recipes, let me know.

Between April and November:
7. Jambalaya with Shrimp, Chicken and Ham from Essentials of Slow Cooking (this is different from the other jambalya recipe I make, and more like what I understand traditional recipes to entail - and it's really good)
8. Tuna with Tomatoes and Olives from Essentials of Slow Cooking (this actually doesn't involve the crock pot at all, but it's really easy and yummy, though you do need to like tuna steaks and olives)
9. Spanish Chicken Stew from Essentials of Slow Cooking (which is different from recipe number four - and if I remember correctly, a lot easier)
10. Zucchini, Corn and Red Pepper Saute from Vegetables Every Day
11. Carnitas from Essentials of Slow Cooking
12. German Potato Salad from Joy of Cooking (very good)
13. Pulled Pork from Essentials of Slow Cooking
14. Cole Slaw from Essentials of Slow Cooking (this was my first time making it from scratch!)
15. Summer Coq au Vin from Essentials of Slow Cooking
16. Broiled Portobello Mushrooms with Asian Flavors from Vegetables Every Day
17. Chicken, Leek and Corn Soup with Chilli from Riverford Farm's recipes online (we buy our organic vegetable box from them - this recipe is really good)
18. Cabbage Gratin with Cheese, Bacon and Potato from Riverford Farm
19. Turkey and Stilton Pie from some random magazine
20. Leek, Potato and Cheddar Jalousie from Riverford Farm (I had never heard of a jalousie before, but from what I made, it seems to be just like what over here they call a "slice" as in "chicken slice" or "beef slice" which is savory flaky butter pastry with stuff inside it)
21. Pumpkin Cheesecake from Joy of Cooking

November:
22. Pumpkin Bread from Joy of Cooking
23. Parker House Rolls from Joy of Cooking (you can't buy them over here so I tried making them myself - they were good - and I used the bread maker which was a lot easier)
24. Pumpkin Pie from Joy of Cooking (I really don't think I've ever made one before -though I did cheat and use pre-made pastry, which I rolled out)
25. Ed's Victorious Turkey Hash (with leftover Thanksgiving turkey) from Nigella Christmas
26. Vanilla Sugar from Nigella Christmas

December:
27. Poor Niece Melissa's Humble Attempts at Re-creating Aunt Di's Bittersweet Chocolate Frosted Layer Cake from All Cakes Considered
28. Cranberry and White Chocolate Cookies from Nigella Christmas
29. Christmas Morning Muffins from Nigella Christmas
30. Naughty Senator Cake (a peppermint chocolate rum cake) from All Cakes Considered
31. Sticky Gingerbread from Nigella Christmas (really, really yummy - I don't know how I've lived without gingerbread before now)
32. Orange Loaf with Dried Cranberries and Pecans from Joy of Cooking
33. Southern Cornbread from Joy of Cooking (I've only ever made the Northern one)
34. Yule Log from Nigella Christmas
35. Seasonal Breeze from Nigella Christmas (it's a mixed drink, non-alcoholic)
36. Xmas Zinger from Nigella Christmas (ditto)
37. Redder than Red Cranberry Sauce from Nigella Christmas (which is pretty much the same as the recipe from Joy of Cooking, which I also tried but won't list separately - they're both so easy I'm definitely sold on making cranberry sauce from scratch for Thanksgiving and Christmas)

I think there are some others - I'm pretty sure I tried a chicken cacciatore from the Fix-it and Forget-it Cookbook, and there are some alternate bagel recipes I've tried - but I can't remember at all when I made them, so I'm leaving them out.

So it works out at three a month, plus one to grow on...not bad!

Christmastime is here!

Our Christmas tree went up last weekend.



Mark really is an expert tree fluffer. His branches always look so nice.




I love Christmas.

Catching up: Weston-Super-Mare Carnival (also known as Danielle's birth day).

At the exact moment Danielle was entering the world, Mark and I were with his parents at the Weston-Super-Mare carnival.

It is an annual parade (with lit-up floats) which tours around the county at several towns on different nights, all around Guy Fawkes Day. It's unique to this area of the region, and it's a competition, so clubs spend the year building floats to enter them into each parade to compete for nightly and then overall prizes.

There are other people involved to raise money for charity, like these firefighters:



But mostly it's the competitors, on floats, or performing as they walk, and more than anything, it's BRIGHT:



This is Mark, completely lit up by a passing float - this is at night, with no flash at all:


The floats are themed, and fall into different categories, and they all have music, so it's loud, too. It's pretty much like Las Vegas on wheels, in Somerset.





They go all out within the group's chosen theme, including the people who drive the floats:


And so you can get a bit more of the full experience, here's a video of one of them. This is actually of the joint-overall winner of the competition. Just a warning - at one point I flip the camera on its side (I forgot I was videoing and the problems it would cause. We could edit it around, but it's way too much trouble for such a short clip!). But I think you'll get the idea of what it's like - though watching it on video doesn't quite give you the full smack of light and sound of the passing floats!




We imagine Danielle's arrival must have been much the same, just without the fire.

Catching up: Jessica's birthday.

Next up was my birthday.

I also got lots of very nice presents, including this one, from Mom and Dad, which was wrapped up nicely by Amazon. I have bought presents wrapped by Amazon before but I had never seen what it looked like, so in case you're wondering, this is how it arrives:


And this is what was inside:


A cookbook with some very nice looking cakes inside, written by a lady who works for NPR's All Things Considered. The first cake I've made from here was for Mark's mum's birthday this past weekend. Mark chose it - a traditional yellow layer cake with dark chocolate frosting, and it was really yummy. She uses whipped cream in her recipe, which I've never done, and it meant it was nice and fluffy.

Here is a series of photos from my big present:








It's a bread maker, which I really wanted to make my regular bagel making even easier. It's great, and I've already made bagels with it, too!

Like I mentioned on Jenny's blog, I had a giant cookie cake (which I assume is the same thing as a pizookie?)


Here's the first loaf of bread I made, on the day after my birthday:


And the next day we also played one of the games I got - a version of Ticket to Ride designed for 2-3 players, based on a map of the Nordic countries.



It's great.

Catching up: Mark's birthday.

To catch up on the last couple of months, here are some pictures from Mark's birthday.


Along with some DVDs and games and things, he got a new fleece:


We went to Longleat, which is a stately home with a drive-through animal park on its grounds. I'd never been and Mark hadn't visited since he was a kid. It's in Wiltshire county, about an hour from where we live. It's owned by the Marquess of Bath, who is a crazy guy, and we actually saw him walking into his house, wearing slippers and crazy neon patterned pants, followed by his seemingly long-suffering dog. The dog had a Gromit look about him - kind of humoring his wacky owner.

Anyway, the safari is featured on a BBC TV show, and it has lots of different animals there. The monkey area was closed though, because of an outbreak of simian herpes. The weird thing there is that only one monkey is infected, and they can't figure out how a monkey could have managed that on its own. I didn't mind because I'm not a big fan any way, and they're notorious for damaging people's cars.

Here's the first part of the park, where you can get out of your car to look at some giraffes and things:


Our favorite moment of the day probably turned out to be this giraffe which chased a rabbit around for a while:

We couldn't work out what the giraffe wanted, and it seemed the rabbit couldn't either. It kept stopping to eat but then moving along just as soon as the giraffe got close.

Our batteries ran out part way through the day, so I took a lot of pictures on my phone, but I haven't been able to get them off onto the computer yet. So here's one we took before the batteries went dead:


Besides the animals, you can tour the house, which is old, and there are lots of activities on the grounds, including this maze:



The maze was hard, and we never made it into the center, which I think was the objective. Mark would have made it, I'm sure, but we accidentally got separated, which meant that he had an unhappy, lost wife with a cell phone to deal with, so we exited before completing it.


Despite that, we had fun!