Christmas comings and goings on

I am rather tired but it's a pleasant type of weariness after everything is over.  Dieter came home for good on Christmas Eve.  His smile and happiness on hearing that was to be at the family group meeting on Tuesday was a joy to behold.  He had been led to believe it may only be leave for a night and a day.

We had our first visitors half an hour after he got home, my nephew and his wife, so he didn't get time to adjust really.  It is only today that things are "normal" again and I will be taking some time out to cosset myself too.  

Eli came on Christmas Eve for our celebratory Christmas meal, along with good friend Pamela. 

Eli gave us a wonderful book Tangata whenua an illustrated Maori history which I had been going to buy as well and made a special trip to the Woman's Bookshop on Wednesday morning to do so but for some reason didn't. Just as well.  

He was not up to going to Mass on Christmas Day so I got a taxi down with Kerry from the gym who had wanted to go to the Cathedral at 11 too, and left him with some trepidation to put the dinner in the oven. However it was me who burnt the carrots later on while trying to multitask. I quickly rinsed them and cooked some frozen peas to mix with them to mask any residual smokiness! 

Used all my special China for the meal - Meissen I hadn't used for years and another lovely blue and white dish for the strawberries plus a nice Christmas cloth and it was most enjoyable and having company too was nice.  Christmas tea of cold turkey roll, ham and salad for just the two of us was also very nice.

Tonight Eli is coming for dinner which I will concoct out of leftovers, though I think as I am trifled out I may serve a little Christmas pudding which has a whole candied clementine in the middle from Nosh for our dessert.  

Not sure if we will get to the island.  Certainly not today and will see what tomorrow brings as the upheaval of carting food etc over is something I find too daunting to contemplate.  Maybe an evening trip involving just breakfast and lunch the next day would be less of a hassle. 

Thanks to friends and family for your support when the going got tough over the 7 weeks. Looking forward to 2015 in the hope that it will be a more memorable year than 2014. Arohanui.

Christmas Cookery

Started off by making some lemon honey to give away as  gifts.  Good friend Sue gave me some lemons recently which need using up and this is a good way to do so.  I picked up a little book of Christmas cooking by Alison Holst recently and decided to use these recipes on the whole this year and not waste time trolling through my folders of recipe clippings looking for other options.  

Next on the list was a pineapple Christmas cake. It got a bit dark around the edges but I have cut the burnt bits off and the cake itself is moist and  tasty.

Made a new type of pastry with sour cream in it and thought I would use it for my little Christmas mince tarts.  It turned out to be more of a puff pastry so I'll make another batch later with some proper shortcrust pastry.  I made the fruit mince myself from that little book too.  It is made in the food processor and has Apple in it too so it is not so dark and strong-tasting as the bought stuff is.

Last but not least I made some Spekulatius cookies this morning from my old Dr Oetker cookbook I got when I first went to Germany all those years ago.  

Out and About

It is that time of the year when everybody wants to meet one more time before Christmas.  Met up with a friend for coffee in a cafe in one of the high-rise towers down the bottom of town .  There were two big cruise ships in town, dwarfing the ferry and old ferry building edifices, so quaint in comparison.

Another day I went with some friends to a Parnell cafe in an old villa in Brighton Rd and from there to the Rose Gardens, lovely as always.