Saturday 28 December 2002
Festival of Light '02
I trust you all had a fun, jolly, merry, enjoyable and safe Festival of Light (I prefer the pagan pre-Christianity name and meaning of this festival). I had a great one; Tuxedo and I had decided to buy presents just for each other, as we didn't have the funds to splash out on everybody, and the present-buying spree always balloons - at least this way there was a definite check/limit on items. So what'd we get? Well, being the geeky gadget whores we are, we'd been saving up over the last few months to get each other a Sony Net MD Walkman each (mine's silver, Tux's a slightly irridescent midnight blue) and may I say they are the grooviest? Too too groovy though I have certain gripes regarding the software ... grrr. Then we had a couple of "little" gifts each; I gave Tuxedo a PC CD Rom game and a CD (Best of Smashing Pumpkins) and he gave me the whiz-bang extra-special enhanced edition of The Two Towers soundtrack. Wheeeeee!
For dinner (dinner is in the evening every other day of the year; this day the meal is served at 14:00 and called dinner, go figure) we went to Nicholas and Alexandra's, as per last year. This year I'd offered to make the stuffing and gravy for the turkey - partly out of self interest it's true, because I always miss out on those aspects of Big Dinners due to the gluten content, and this way I could control that, and I really did want to help out - and my now-famous Lemon Delicious Pudding with double pouring cream for dessert. Mmm mmm and did they all ever turn out divinely. I made the stuffing with gluten-free bread crumbs, chopped dried apricots and walnuts, grated apple, a load of butter and herbs and mmmmm good. I made enough to stuff the "sparrow" (more like a fucking moa) plus I baked a small loaf tin-worth for extras. The gravy I made from scratch, buying an enormous turkey leg and roasting it in my beloved French Professional Roaster (anodised aluminium! with riveted handles!), then using all the yummy browned bits and juices (I'd taken the skin off the said limb so there was very little fat), concentrated homemade chicken stock, some cornflour paste (tbspn each cold water and cornflour mixed together) and a little white wine. Oh wow is all I can say! The pudding was heavenly, as per usual, and everybody chose to have a serving of that for dessert, all foregoing Nicholas' trifle. Heh.
It was a very pleasant, enjoyable day (no snow this year though) but Tuxedo and I had to go home at about 19:00 hrs because my neck and shoulders were playing silly buggers and I was in considerable pain. We spent a relaxing cuddly evening together, and all was good.
I must say that just dropping out of the Christmas hype and commercialism is a bloody good idea; it certainly saved us our wallets and sanities. Christmas - and all the other Hallmark Festivals - get more insanely commercial every year; and every year the first airing of a Christmas carol and the stocking of supermarket shelves with Christmas-related items gets earlier and earlier. Tesco was selling Christmas crackers and decorations from mid-October, which is psycho-scary to say the least.
I think more and more people are creating new traditions, just like we are, to avoid the Christmas hysteria. The Clan back in Perth do a "Kris Kingle" now where sometime in November all immediate family put a slip of paper with their name on it in a hat, then everybody draws a slip of paper and buys only for that person to a value of x (x being decided by family committee). Then everyone draws up a wish list (no prizes for who started that one, hee) which is stuck to the fridge so that people can nonchalantly wander past the fridge to get an idea as to what their person wants, and then purchases correctly. It's a great new tradition, as is the seafood BBQ for lunch (feck cooking turkey and plum pudding when its 35C in the shade - you'd have to be nuts).