“‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.”~ Clement Clark Moore.
As I hung the Christmas wreath on my front door this year, I tallied up the number of years I have done so. This will be our seventeenth Christmas in our homeand we have continued our families Christmas traditionsthroughout the years.
Some may find family traditions boring; I find them comforting and familiar and I look forward to repeating our old traditions each year and adding new ideas into our mix of celebrations when the fancy hits us.
One tradition that my mother repeated annually was to make her famous and much-loved-by-her-family Mince Pies every year.
I have continued making mince pies myself every Christmas myself, although I have always made the pastry using butter; Mum used lard.
This year I opted for a change and made my mince pies “justa lika Mumma use to make”, (as they say in the spaghetti sauce advert, however, my Mum wasn’t Italian, so perhaps that line isn’t appropriately used in this case!)
My Mum was a Cheshire born girl, with a Manchester born Mum whose entire family were Yorkshire born and bred. Mum’s very broad northern English accent was hard to understand at times (even for me, her own daughter!)I’m uncertain whether it is my maternal families trait, or a Yorkshire family trait, to religiously follow family traditions the way we do. Either way, it’s traditional, so we do it!
Being true to old tradition, this year I made my mince pies using lard, just as Mum always had. It’s such a simple recipe – 2 cups of flour, 1 teaspoon of salt, 125 grams (4 oz) lard and 1/4 pint of water.
Mince Pies
In previous years I have been known to make my own fruit mince, (Mum called it “mince meat”) although this year, as time did not permit, I bought a very reliable, traditionally English brand of mince, which is almost a good as home-made.
There’s nothing like a mince pie made with pastry using lard to bring back memories of Christmases long gone, but not forgotten. And the best part of it all is that the new (old) version of lard pastry seems to be a hit with my family too!
Christmas Eve
Now, with food for tomorrow prepared, kitchen tidied, decorations hung and everyone in bed, in the words of Clement Clark Moore, I will bid you a “Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.”
Christmas is only just over one week away (really?…what happened to 2011 !!) and with that in mind, I will be making my family favourite Ice Cream Christmas Pudding this week.
I first posted this recipe here way back in December, 2009, when my blog was a brand new baby, just starting out in the Big Wide World of the Web. In fact, it was the sixth post ever added!
Over the last two to three weeks, this post has been up there at the top of the list of most viewed posts. Time for a repost….
“Living in a warm climate at Christmas time can have some definite disadvantages, the most obvious for me being that I have never experienced a white Christmas!
However, on the bonus side, how many people in the northern hemisphere would have ever have had the inclination to experience the pure joy of finishing off their Christmas dinner with a sumptuously divine Ice-Cream Christmas Pudding? This is but one of advantages of life in Australia!
It was only about ten years ago that I first made this summer Christmas pudding. It has become such a tradition since then that Christmas just wouldn’t be the same without it. (Mind you, I also make a traditional pudding, which can be eaten with hot custard).”
Ice-Cream Christmas Pudding
Ice Cream Christmas Pudding
1/2 cup chopped raisins
1/2 cup sultanas
1/2 cup currants
1/4 cup glacé cherries, chopped or whole
1/4 cup mixed peel
1/4 cup chopped dried apricots
1/4 cup brandy, rum or fruit juice
1 litre softened chocolate ice-cream
1/2 cup blanched almonds, toasted & chopped
1/2 cup cream
Thickened cream to serve
Combine all the dried fruits in a bowl, add the brandy, rum or fruit juice. Stir the liquid through the fruit & leave to stand, covered, over night. (Don’t be tempted to add extra alcohol as the pudding will not freeze successfully with any addition to the specified amount!)
The next day, mix together the soaked fruit, softened ice-cream, almonds & cream. Stir well to combine, and pour into a 5 litre pudding bowl. Cover & freeze overnight, or until required.
To remove the pudding from the bowl, immerse the bowl for a few seconds in some hot water. Turn the bowl over onto a serving plate. Serve with thickened cream or cold custard.
I’ve been parousing my photos this afternoon, looking for a particular series taken in May of this year, to add to Facebook.
Feathers or leaves?
However…I’m easily distracted!
Instead, I have come across another series of photos, taken not so long ago, which I think are really good. Not that I’m any kind of photographic expert, but I do believe that if you see something special in a photo, chances are, someone else out there may also appreciate it.
Norfolk Pine
So, why not share?
Down the lane
My husband and son were still hard at it, killing weeds and mowing the lawn; my contribution to their efforts was to take their photo!
Silhouettes
Don’t the leaves of the trees looks beautiful against the sky? One of my favourite photos to take is at the time of day when the sun decides to peer through the branches and leaves of the trees foliage, so sparkly and pretty.
This is the question I have asked, since the official first day of summer here in Australia, and the first day of December, when the summer season took on a very realistic impersonation of winter!
As odd as it sounds to me, with the summer months actually being my least favoured time of the year, I have to admit to a feeling of being conned.
I’ve literally spent hours, yes, hours, preparing myself for the heat. Light, cottony clothing hangs centre front in my wardrobe, jumpers and jeans now taking their rightful place in the less convenient and harder to reach areas. Quilts are neatly folded and packed away, along with heavier blankets, in the linen cupboard. Ceiling fans have been installed. The pool is clean and all ship-shape for the hottest of hot days.
Whilst I can readily admit to not feeling as poetic as Shakespeare, when asking summer as to its whereabouts, surely there must be some people who feel downright cheated out of their “fun in the sun”?
The patter of rain...
Here I live, right on the doorstep of the fabulously sunny and world-famous Gold Coast of Queensland, Australia, playground of the rich and famous. Even the not so rich and famous have been known to choose the Gold Coast as their preferred holiday destination at this time of the year.
And where, pray tell, is the warm weather? I’m sure the knowledgeable folk at the Bureau of Meteorology have all the answers. Being not so scientifically minded myself, I haven’t bothered to check. Please check out the website, if you feel so inclined yourself.
Pressure systems come and go; we can’t control them. Looking out of the window each morning is my preferred predictor of the upcoming weather.
And look out the window I have been. The above photos show what-I-have-been-seeing.
Even our usually shiny and dry, black and white magpie friends have had a problem with the cold and rain. I found three rather bedraggled magpies, wet feathers fluffed up, sitting on our back veranda.
A family of wet magpies.
And no, our veranda isn’t usually as messy as the photo shows, with paint cans, buckets, electric saws and pieces of wood everywhere. We have been renovating a room in the house, the veranda being our work area. The magpies are forgiven for thinking this area a free-for-all!
This summer I have plans. I intend teaching myself how to cope with the heat. Summer is to become my friend!
And when summer finally arrives in this part of the world, I’ll let you know how I’m doing! 🙂
“Spring makes its own statement, so loud and clear that the gardener seems to be only one of the instruments, not the composer.” ~ Geoffrey B. Charlesworth
In just a few days time we will be heading yet again into the summer months, my least favourite months of the year weather wise, due to the suffocating humidity we usually experience here in the sub-tropics of Australia.
Purple and blue
Yes, the truth of the matter is, I strongly dislike the heat, and that will be the end of my whinging, I promise. I mean, surely there has to be a positive aspect, or even two, to the summer months?
This summer I will be making an extra effort to look for the more favourable aspects of the hot weather. During spring I have already begun to do so, by looking at my garden through wide open eyes, taking photos of the beautiful new growth that has popped up out of seemingly nowhere, overnight at times, to produce the most beautiful colours imaginable!
Shades of purple
Over the past two months I have constantly carted my camera around the garden with me to capture the beauty, before the heat sizzles the pretty colours away.
Today’s photos show just a smattering of the colour show in my garden.
To enhance my photos I have (finally) found a program on my computer which improves the colour and also resizes the photos, reducing the pixels, therefore speeding up the loading process of the photos onto the computer page.
Okay, okay, I know; everyone knows how to do this already. I can hear the groans from here. What can I say? I’m a slow learner, although a rather chuffed blogger, having learned something new today!
In My World 