See you in the New Year!
xoxox
Showing posts with label christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label christmas. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Happy Christmas...
See you in the New Year!
xoxox
Friday, December 25, 2009
I'm dreaming of some White Christmas...
Christmas is all about family, right? It goes without saying. But being back for my first family Christmas in 6 long years, it's the little things I've noticed that take me right back the Christmas days of my childhood. It's the punchbowl on the bench, the handmade stockings stuffed with Wizz Fizz and sherbies, the hilariously OTT Disney Christmas album playing on the record player, the crappy decorations we made in Primary School that mum still puts up, and White Christmas.
I'm so glad I decided to spend Christmas at home this year.
1 cup icing sugar
1 cup dessicated coconut
1 cup rice bubbles
1 cup skim milk powder
1 cup dried fruit (I used mostly sultanas with a few festive glaced cherries and candied orange peel pieces thrown in)
250gm copha (solidified coconut oil, hard to find outside of Australia)
100gm white chocolate to melt and drizzle on top, if you so desire (I don't)
Melt the copha in a saucepan on the stove. Mix all the other ingredients well and add melted copha to combine. When it is thoroughly mixed and there are no dry pockets, press it into a baking tray lined with foil/baking paper. Set in the fridge and cut into squares to serve. So simple, but so good - and it's very pretty piled in a bowl.
Happy Christms, everyone! I have spent the day in thongs (my brother's, hijacked), wearing an Australia flag t-shirt (a gift) while throwing prawns on the barbie (highly unusual). Yep, I'm reclaming my inner Aussie.
I'm so glad I decided to spend Christmas at home this year.
1 cup icing sugar
1 cup dessicated coconut
1 cup rice bubbles
1 cup skim milk powder
1 cup dried fruit (I used mostly sultanas with a few festive glaced cherries and candied orange peel pieces thrown in)
250gm copha (solidified coconut oil, hard to find outside of Australia)
100gm white chocolate to melt and drizzle on top, if you so desire (I don't)
Melt the copha in a saucepan on the stove. Mix all the other ingredients well and add melted copha to combine. When it is thoroughly mixed and there are no dry pockets, press it into a baking tray lined with foil/baking paper. Set in the fridge and cut into squares to serve. So simple, but so good - and it's very pretty piled in a bowl.
Happy Christms, everyone! I have spent the day in thongs (my brother's, hijacked), wearing an Australia flag t-shirt (a gift) while throwing prawns on the barbie (highly unusual). Yep, I'm reclaming my inner Aussie.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Happy Mithras!* (or something)
I do love this time of year. I am not religious at all, mind you. I just like the idea of a celebration at the end of the year where you get to spend time with loved ones, eat lots of rich food, sing along to Mariah Carey and give lots of presents. I'm not so hot on the idea of celebrating the birth of Jesus. I prefer to think of the festive period as an extension of an ancient, ritual-filled Pagan festival.
It always makes me cock a skeptical eyebrow when Western religious leaders lament the loss of the "true meaning of Christmas" each year. Long before Christ popularised Jesus sandals, the ancient Babylonians celebrated the feast of the Son of Isis (Goddess of Nature) on December 25; involving wild partying, gorging on food and drink, the giving of gifts etc. There was Saturnalia in ancient Rome and Yuletide in Northern Europe, both of which are Winter Solstice festivals.
Certainly in this part of the world, there is never a greater need for a hearty celebration than on the shortest day of the year, just as the cold and gloom and overbearing darkness are becoming seriously oppressive. Just imagine what it would have been like before the invention of central heating, fairy lights and bad telly.
I'm not an avowed atheist, but I went to see a secular-humanist Christmas show Sunday night. It was brilliant - Stuart Lee impressed me with his wry delivery - "..when I look at something as complex and intricate and detailed as Professor Dawkins I think, 'Surely that can’t just have happened by chance.’" Jarvis Cocker sang beautifully about fate. Ricky Gervais tried out some (pretty crappy) new material. Robin Ince was charming as the geek in his element running the whole thing. Richard Dawkins did some surprisingly moving readings from Unweaving the Rainbow, and fellow Aussie Tim Minchin ended the night with a searing 9 minute beat poem in which he rips a New Age bimbo to shreds.
Anyway, whatever your beliefs, I implore you all to hold your loved ones close this Festivus - hug them and tell them you love them, hold their hands, ignore their short-comings for one day. Stuff your faces and give thanks for all the good things in your life. Wonder at the beautiful world around you - even in London in the middle of Winter, the bare branches make a beautiful pattern against a moody grey sky; mud squelches deliciously underfoot, and there is a hint of bonfire smoke in the cold air. There are so many tiny, simple, wonderous things to enjoy if you stop and notice your surroundings.
See you in the New Year!
*Pagan sun-god. Winter Solstice was the celebration of his birth - as the seasons change he grows stronger and warmer and brighter. Makes more sense than that whole "virgin birth" story, you have to admit.
It always makes me cock a skeptical eyebrow when Western religious leaders lament the loss of the "true meaning of Christmas" each year. Long before Christ popularised Jesus sandals, the ancient Babylonians celebrated the feast of the Son of Isis (Goddess of Nature) on December 25; involving wild partying, gorging on food and drink, the giving of gifts etc. There was Saturnalia in ancient Rome and Yuletide in Northern Europe, both of which are Winter Solstice festivals.
Certainly in this part of the world, there is never a greater need for a hearty celebration than on the shortest day of the year, just as the cold and gloom and overbearing darkness are becoming seriously oppressive. Just imagine what it would have been like before the invention of central heating, fairy lights and bad telly.
I'm not an avowed atheist, but I went to see a secular-humanist Christmas show Sunday night. It was brilliant - Stuart Lee impressed me with his wry delivery - "..when I look at something as complex and intricate and detailed as Professor Dawkins I think, 'Surely that can’t just have happened by chance.’" Jarvis Cocker sang beautifully about fate. Ricky Gervais tried out some (pretty crappy) new material. Robin Ince was charming as the geek in his element running the whole thing. Richard Dawkins did some surprisingly moving readings from Unweaving the Rainbow, and fellow Aussie Tim Minchin ended the night with a searing 9 minute beat poem in which he rips a New Age bimbo to shreds.
Anyway, whatever your beliefs, I implore you all to hold your loved ones close this Festivus - hug them and tell them you love them, hold their hands, ignore their short-comings for one day. Stuff your faces and give thanks for all the good things in your life. Wonder at the beautiful world around you - even in London in the middle of Winter, the bare branches make a beautiful pattern against a moody grey sky; mud squelches deliciously underfoot, and there is a hint of bonfire smoke in the cold air. There are so many tiny, simple, wonderous things to enjoy if you stop and notice your surroundings.
See you in the New Year!
*Pagan sun-god. Winter Solstice was the celebration of his birth - as the seasons change he grows stronger and warmer and brighter. Makes more sense than that whole "virgin birth" story, you have to admit.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Trying to count my blessings
Bad things:
Being sick for a week, thinking you're recovered, then relapsing even worse than you were before.
Missing your family and feeling lonely and sorry for yourself at Christmas.
About 4 measly hours of dull daylight per day.
Christmas television.
No appetite! At Christmas! The foodliest time of the year...
The ladybug infestation which is taking over the flat (true).
No flatmate to distract me from the bad tv and ladybugs.
Good things:
Spending Christmas Day with friends and a big group of lovely new people.
Playing sick scrabble (and winning!)
Sleeping about 11 hours a night.
A proper Wintry-Pine-smelling-Christmassy-Christmas tree.
Looking forward to New York in 2008!
Christmas television. It really isn't that bad. I have watched Monsters Inc, and Crocodile Dundee, and about a million old episodes of Friends.
Speaking of - friends looking after you when you're sick.
NYE in Bordeaux. Please God let me be recovered in time to appreciate all that wine.
Hope everybody has had a lovely Christmas and wishing you all a 2008 that is filled with love, bagels and adventure. Onwards and upwards, people.
Being sick for a week, thinking you're recovered, then relapsing even worse than you were before.
Missing your family and feeling lonely and sorry for yourself at Christmas.
About 4 measly hours of dull daylight per day.
Christmas television.
No appetite! At Christmas! The foodliest time of the year...
The ladybug infestation which is taking over the flat (true).
No flatmate to distract me from the bad tv and ladybugs.
Good things:
Spending Christmas Day with friends and a big group of lovely new people.
Playing sick scrabble (and winning!)
Sleeping about 11 hours a night.
A proper Wintry-Pine-smelling-Christmassy-Christmas tree.
Looking forward to New York in 2008!
Christmas television. It really isn't that bad. I have watched Monsters Inc, and Crocodile Dundee, and about a million old episodes of Friends.
Speaking of - friends looking after you when you're sick.
NYE in Bordeaux. Please God let me be recovered in time to appreciate all that wine.
Hope everybody has had a lovely Christmas and wishing you all a 2008 that is filled with love, bagels and adventure. Onwards and upwards, people.
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Infected with the spirit of Christms
Man, this is turning out to be the least Christmassy Christmas ever. Not only is my boyfriend grieving and therefore NOT in the mood for festivities, but the office has also been infected with an outbreak of Deadly Chicken Pox for Grown-Ups (and the people who weren't sure whether they had had the Pox as a kid, now know for sure). All this, and the dessert we had for our Christmas dinner last night was bread-and-butter pudding. Let me tell you, bread-and-butter pudding is the most lame-ass dessert ever invented - I know it was a war-time staple, and a lot of British people have very fond memories of stale bread with egg and sultanas, but it really is disgusting. I really cannot convey the full extent of my disappointment.
In order to generate a little Christmas spirit within my soul, I was trying to remember the best Christmas ever. After much thought, I decided it was a toss-up between The One Where I Got My Red & White Roller-skates (why walk when you can roll? was my credo that year), and The One Where We All Got A Trampoline. How my parents managed to keep that one quiet, I will never know. All I remember is the sheer excitement we all experienced on being taken outside and shown our most excellent new present, and the fights that ensued over whose turn it was next. That trampoline was loved to death, all the way through Primary and High school. I did my homework on it, zapped my brothers with static built up on it, sunbathed on it over Summer, and made up crazy-fun games involving the sprinkler shooting up through the trampoline meshing. Ahhh, Christmas in sunny Melbourne.
This morning there was a twinkly layer of frost on everything though, and the holly looked so pretty with the little red berries winking through the bushes, and the sharp little leaves coated in ice. It almost makes up for the fact that my ears have snapped clean off my head with cold.
In order to generate a little Christmas spirit within my soul, I was trying to remember the best Christmas ever. After much thought, I decided it was a toss-up between The One Where I Got My Red & White Roller-skates (why walk when you can roll? was my credo that year), and The One Where We All Got A Trampoline. How my parents managed to keep that one quiet, I will never know. All I remember is the sheer excitement we all experienced on being taken outside and shown our most excellent new present, and the fights that ensued over whose turn it was next. That trampoline was loved to death, all the way through Primary and High school. I did my homework on it, zapped my brothers with static built up on it, sunbathed on it over Summer, and made up crazy-fun games involving the sprinkler shooting up through the trampoline meshing. Ahhh, Christmas in sunny Melbourne.
This morning there was a twinkly layer of frost on everything though, and the holly looked so pretty with the little red berries winking through the bushes, and the sharp little leaves coated in ice. It almost makes up for the fact that my ears have snapped clean off my head with cold.
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