Christmas.

After spending last Christmas in a hotel room in Vienna watching Jeff argue with a doctor about having a lumbar puncture, I thought I'd take the opportunity to fracture a few family habits.

Like the habit of putting in 6-8 weeks of work, just for one meal.

Fair enough it's a spectacular meal, but seriously.

The people 2 doors down from us are German, and I first figured this out when I saw them washing their windows with extreme prejudice exactly 6 weeks before Christmas.

Exactly 6 weeks.
Exactly.

I like to do Christmas Eve though, mostly for Dad's sake.

I bake all the traditional things his mother used to bake and prepare pretty much everything my 2 aunts and my mother used to do altogether.
But that's because I'm an idiot rather than because anyone expects it of me.

It is so much work that I have a standard work schedule prepared.
I won't be posting that, I'm too ashamed.

The last Xmas Eve I did, the menu was as follows.
Bear in mind that everything is home made except the pate and the drinks..

On Arrival:

Champagne, beer, soft drinks.
Hummous
Pate
Baked thyme fetta with crisped Lebanese bread
Olives and semi-dried tomatoes

Main Buffet:

Schnitzel - veal, pork (and chicken for those with the boring palate ie Adrian)
Baked leg of ham with fresh cranberries, garnished with oranges and cloves
Garlic marinated octopus (Vivien)
Fresh Tiger prawns
Sydney Rock Oysters
Smoked salmon
Watermelon, fetta and hazelnut salad
German potato salad
Slovenian cucumber salad
Roma tomato, bocconcini and basil salad
Fresh rocket lettuce salad with pomegranate.

Afters:

Apple strudel (fucking hate making this shit)
Vanilla Kipferl
Gingerbread
Anise Bogen (extra flat for irritation purposes)
Brandied chocolate cherries
Fruit platter
Fruit Mince Pies
Christmas Nut Wreath (as the centre piece)
Stollen
White Xmas (for Clair)

Tea and coffee.

So between the cooking, which takes me weeks, the general preparations, the shopping, the cleaning, the biggest time sponge is actually the table decorating.

I get bored and change my colour scheme each year, even though I promise myself I won't.

This year is lime green and gold to make the most of my new Henry VIII and his wives decorations Jeff bought me at Westminster Abbey last year.

Polishing the silver, checking the glassware, setting up trestles, finding exactly the right candles and centre piece, trying to fit everything in the fridge, making the perfect tablecloths - I lose the plot each and every year.

So, after last year's experience, I find myself comparatively relaxed about Xmas this year.
So far anyway.

We decided to take advantage of this and make the decision to go out for Xmas Eve instead.

To a German restaurant that does goose and pretzels. And has oom pah-pah bands.

You know that slapping dance that Chevvy Chase does in European Vacation?
Yoga boy can do it properly- learnt during his Munich days - they take it very seriously indeed.

woot woot

And then back to ours for presents and my very ridiculous dessert menu.
Dad calls it zuker bakerei.

If I don't bake Xmas goodies 2 years in a row, I think something in me will break.

Oh fuck, that means I have to make strudel, doesn't it?

Dammit.

Anyway, that will all start in the next 2 weeks.
I have already amassed most of the ingredients - need more glace fruit though. And brazil nuts. And brandy.

Naturally I need to make double or triple batches of everything so that I can take it with me to Jeff's family the next day for Xmas as well as down to Aunty Kit's beach house when we visit the next week.

Anyway, today I finished the last of the fiddly Xmas shopping - every stocking is stuffed to the point that they cannot take so much as even one more Mintie.

I spent today making an advent calenar for Bronte and Laura, my unGodchildren.

It awesome.
It's out of 24 large matchboxes, which you cover with nice paper, and then stick them together to look like a tree.
Then you fill the drawers with lollies and little toys, and they open one drawer each day for the month of December as a countdown to Xmas.
I changed the colour scheme to pink, green and brown so that they can use it for occasions other than Xmas too.
The girls are at just 5 and 6, so the perfect age to enjoy this I think.

So, I have less to do than usual, but still a great deal to get through.

Oh, and I'm not making a gingerbread house this year either.

So there.