So it's Christmas. You know- that time of the year when people who usually wouldn't spend five minutes in each other's company like to squidge into overheated family living rooms, ten per three-seater-sofa, and throw challenging culinary attempts and liberal amounts of alcohol into an already potentially explosive situation in a courageous effort to maintain the appearance of goodwill and joyful festivity.
Luckily, my family doesn't have to make any particular efforts in this manner, as we like to be overinvolved in each other's lives every single day of the year. So Christmas, for us, is just like every other day but with more food. And that is probably the oddest thing about it.
This is on account of my Mum being a 'feeder'. You've seen that 300kg man on Youtube, bed-bound and still being fed buckets of KFC by his devoted wife. My Mum could be that wife; every day brings a new freshly-baked cake and pots of steaming stew and chunky casseroles. Most people greet each other with "Hi, how are you?" My Mum greets people with "Hi, would you like some cake?" It's all very nice, although my brother and I agree that she has, forever and eternally, ruined 'eating out' for us. If we are ever in a restaurant, we can survey the menu and immediately write off at least half of it, knowing that Mum could do it better. This is true for lasagne; roast dinners and all cakes and desserts.
Today then, we expected a pretty average roast dinner (average being, by all accounts, very good) with the usual trimmings. We should have known better. Instead of, say, a turkey and a couple of pigs-in-blankets, we had the following:
A roast lamb
A roast chicken
A roast partridge
A roast wood-pigeon
A beef wellington
Wild boar sausages
Pork sausages wrapped in streaky bacon
And twelve- TWELVE- different kinds of vegetables.
This, of course, was followed by Christmas pudding, waffles, Victoria sponge and a carrot cake.
How many people, you may be wondering, was this for? Ten? Fifteen? Twenty hungry adult mouths?
Five. Five people. That works out at a whole roast animal each, with a heap of sausages and veg to boot. Suffice to say, I am regretting wearing skinny jeans, and have pushed my already-tight favourite pair of shorts to the back of my mind, and indeed the wardrobe.
Merry Christmas, everyone. I hope you are having as lovely a day as I am.
Wow, too much time on her hands. Wonder how your dad amuses himself whilst she"s doing all that cooking?
ReplyDeleteThey cook together, my Dad does amazing curries and soups. And it means we never have rubbish leftovers on Boxing day! :)
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