Most of the week consistent of either getting ready for Christmas, doing Christmas stuff, or recovering from Christmas and eating leftovers. At least all the indigestion is a distraction from the increasingly fascist turn of politics abroad and at home.

I spent Christmas Eve preparing food for the next day, which made the actual production of lunch very little effort: final assembly of the mushroom wellington and throwing everything in the oven/microwave/air fryer.

A couple of friends came round for lunch on Christmas Day. They brought a pudding (trifle) and some drinks, and we worked through some of the prosecco that has been filling up both our respective fridges. It’s not that I don’t like sparkling wine, but you do have to commit to drinking a whole bottle if you don’t want it to go flat, so it tends to accumulate.

I still haven’t had any Christmas pudding. Maybe we’ll have some for the new year.

On Boxing Day, while L— worked on a few crafty projects, I watched classic English folk horror film Satan’s Skin (1971) aka The Blood on Satan’s Claw. Is that festive? There is a longstanding connection of ghost stories with Christmas (see Dickens or M R James for example). It stands up reasonably well for something made on a low budget 55 years ago.

I used the combination microwave/fan oven mode in our fancy microwave for the first time to reheat leftovers. It’s perfect for heating things up where you also want them to be crispy on the outside. I had to read the manual, but now that I have I’m more confident about using all the extra cooking modes beyond just being a microwave.

I also discovered that the builders didn’t actually screw in our microwave or oven when they fitted our kitchen, and you can just pull them straight out.

I shall fix this. I hope they didn’t forget anything else significant (beyond the condenser pipe from the boiler which they left pouring into the cupboard).

While talking about Christmas food I made a couple of observations about foods that are now considered “traditional” but which I don’t remember from childhood.

We did a bit of sleuthing and concluded that both pigs in blankets and red cabbage were popularised by TV chef and former Norwich City Football Club owner Delia Smith in the 90s, placing them somewhere between Kwanzaa (1966) and creepy festive narc Elf on the Shelf (2005) in novelty.

All traditions are made up, in the sense that they all have to start somewhere, but I find it fascinating how quickly they can become established. Our tradition is mushroom wellington. This is only our seventh year of cooking it, but it’s already hard to imagine serving anything else.

Just a few links this week: