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Christmas Traditions,
23 Dec 2004 10:24 pmWell I'm feeling remarkably calm and organized! I seem to be fairly sorted festively. I guess this is because we have fairly simple Christmas traditions. But isn't it interesting how we all develop these traditions over time - we might have many that are the same as our parents, and grandparents, but we change them subtly and add new ones.
Tonight I made apple and cranberry sauce - this is a me thing - cranberries only made it to the UK in the last 20 years or so, and I only started to make my own stuff recently - the mixture means it goes with turkey and then also with the goose my Mum brings with her for lunch at New Year. Then I made the red cabbage ready for Christmas lunch - this is a me thing as well - my parents and grandparents always had brussel sprouts, but whilst S2C will eat them, he doesn't really like them much, and daughter and I hate them, but we love red cabbage, so I started doing it for Christmas - and now we spend much of the week before desperately trying to find a red cabbage - because other people also seem to have adopted this same Northern European tradition in recent years, and they are getting hard to find.
Why am I cooking it tonight? Because it tastes better if cooked for a long time, and even better when warmed up - and all the chopping takes ages, so do it when there's time. This is a very trad. way of cooking it - slowly, with apple, onion, cider vinegar, cinnamon, but then in crept a few spare cranberries because Hey, they're in the fridge, and they are red and shiny, so what's not to like about adding them? It can sit in the pot now until Christmas lunch.
Then I've wrapped daughter's Stocking presents, because she is out at a party in a village about ten miles away. Once again I realise that it's a good thing that her paternal Grandma gave her an enormous knitted stocking for her gifts when she was tiny, and it has stretched bigger and bigger every year, because I seem to have secreted an awful lot of nice bits and pieces for her in the bottom of my wardrobe over the last couple of months! I admit it - she is just a tiny bit spoilt at Christmas.
Tonight I made apple and cranberry sauce - this is a me thing - cranberries only made it to the UK in the last 20 years or so, and I only started to make my own stuff recently - the mixture means it goes with turkey and then also with the goose my Mum brings with her for lunch at New Year. Then I made the red cabbage ready for Christmas lunch - this is a me thing as well - my parents and grandparents always had brussel sprouts, but whilst S2C will eat them, he doesn't really like them much, and daughter and I hate them, but we love red cabbage, so I started doing it for Christmas - and now we spend much of the week before desperately trying to find a red cabbage - because other people also seem to have adopted this same Northern European tradition in recent years, and they are getting hard to find.
Why am I cooking it tonight? Because it tastes better if cooked for a long time, and even better when warmed up - and all the chopping takes ages, so do it when there's time. This is a very trad. way of cooking it - slowly, with apple, onion, cider vinegar, cinnamon, but then in crept a few spare cranberries because Hey, they're in the fridge, and they are red and shiny, so what's not to like about adding them? It can sit in the pot now until Christmas lunch.
Then I've wrapped daughter's Stocking presents, because she is out at a party in a village about ten miles away. Once again I realise that it's a good thing that her paternal Grandma gave her an enormous knitted stocking for her gifts when she was tiny, and it has stretched bigger and bigger every year, because I seem to have secreted an awful lot of nice bits and pieces for her in the bottom of my wardrobe over the last couple of months! I admit it - she is just a tiny bit spoilt at Christmas.
