MADE OF IRON

Christmas Eve is a day for cooking. For preparing foods. For working in the kitchen. For making grub. For composing cuisine. And so on. Also, for visiting the coolest person I know while waiting for the bread to rise.

I cooked pretty much from the time I woke up until around 6:30pm when I dished up. And the day was so involved only because of everything being made from scratch. I chose the theme of humbly simple for the three course meal and I think I nailed it, if not everyone's taste.

The pre dinner cheese board included ash brie, red square and New Zealand blue. And a few glasses of egg nog to liven things up.

The entrée was a tomato-less ratatouille, served with oven baked baby roma tomatoes on the side and a crispy onion & goats cheese garnish. Severed with a loaf of herbed bread, which also was made from scratch.

The main meal was a double mushroom pie with thick butter flake pastry and vegetable stock gravy. Served with a helping of boiled green beans.

Finally after a short movie interlude of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, which had interrupted A Very Specky Christmas, we brought out the dessert.

A Christmas Pudding Ice-Cream Bomb with brandied caramel sauce layers and custard butter cream. Which turned out richer than I had imagined. I thought when everything got mixed together, it looked really runny and I feared it wouldn't set in time. But the 12 hours It waited in the freezer did it well.

Shame that through all the preparation and labour and hard work, the magic of Christmas Eve sort of dispersed when my Nana was picked up. And given that the conversation fell pretty much flat on all rounds, and that Dad complained to no end about there not being any meat, and Louise being sick from lunch, and that I was up and down every three shakes of the hand... it wasn't the evening of positivity that it should have been.

I guess i'm in for a lot of this in 2011. As I have painted the town beige with my lack of enthusiasm recently, I'm sure that bitch Karma will be seeing to that anything positive coming my way will be repaid in kind.

Fruit of the Moment: gingerbread house