Christmas food success stories...

en god jul...a merry christmas

I'm doing this primarily so I have a place to come back to again to get these recipes, I know I will use them again for Sunday roasts, for entertaining moments etc.

BACON, MACADAMIA AND PRUNE STUFFING

80grams of goose fat

(Can use 60g of butter and 60mls of olive oil combined, I prefer using goose fat instead)

1 large brown onion, finely chopped

1 tsp of crushed garlic

350 grams bacon, chopped

3/4 cup chopped pitted prunes

5 cups sour dough breadcrumbs, made from day-old bread

1 cup macadamia nuts, roasted, chopped

salt and pepper (or herbamere) and dried sage to taste

Using a large frying pan, heat goose fat over medium heat. Add onions, garlic and bacon. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes or until onions are soft. Add prunes and cook another 3 minutes. Combine breadcrumbs and nuts in a large bowl and add bacon mixture. Season with salt and pepper and sage. Mix until combined (use your hands rather than a spoon or other utensil). Ready to stuff into your favourite meat. (Pork Loin Roll!...though it was lovely in the roast chicken too.) With that mix I was able to stuff two pork loin rolls and one chicken.

PINEAPPLE AND GINGER PUNCH

Ginger beer and unsweetened pinapple juice 2 to 1

(It’s nice to half freeze the ginger beer so that it pours in like a crush.)
Chopped oranges, pineapple and strawberries.
Cherries, whole.

GRAVY

Pour all the pan fat from the pork or chicken (or both) into a saucepan
Add freshly made chicken stock
Add arrowroot powder to thicken.

COB LOAF

500 grams of philadephia cream cheese
½ a diced, red onion
2 tomatoes diced
250 grams of bacon, diced and fried
Herbamere (salt and pepper) to taste
Fresh parsley, finely chopped and mixed to taste
Grated tasty cheese 1 cup
2 Tablespoons sour cream
1 sour dough cobb loaf

Cut the top off the cobb loaf and scoop out the bread, until it is only a shell.

(I used the inside bread for the stuffing)

Preheat the oven to 150 – 180 degrees celcius.

Mash the softened cream cheese with a fork and add finely diced onion, tomatoes, cheese, sour cream and parsley.
Fry bacon in pan and dice finely, add to the whole mix and stir through.
Place cobb loaf and cobb lid into the oven for 5 - 10 mins until crispy.
Pack the cream cheese mix into the empty cavity and place extra chopped parsley on top for decoration. Ready to serve.

O Holy Night.....

Christmas Eve. It was storming tonight after a hot day. Our french doors were open letting in the delicious breeze from the sea. All the lights were off. Waiting. For the Christ Child to come.

Dd 9, has the Christ Child in arms. Wrapped in a blanket (reminding us of the beautiful story, The Legend of the Poinsettia). Ready to process by advent candlelight, to the crib.

The beautiful, handmade Christ Child blanket.

Dear Boy (4) has the Christ Child from the nativity, wrapped in soft, white tissue. In darkness. Waiting for candlelight and music.

All in darkness. Except for advent candles. And christmas lights. Three stars behind the nativity scene. The Christmas Star, behind the crib. Now waiting for the Christ Child.

The hymns begin, all the beautiful Christmas carols. With only twinkling lights around us.

Wishing everyone a most blessed Christmas. May the Christ Child bestow upon you His most choicest blessings and graces in the Christmas season!

Love to all, Anne.

Christmas crib and cooking

This year I spent 'Stir Up Sunday' weekend in bed, sick. I've had another bout of sickness since then and so all the usual Christmas cooking was pushed back, till now.

I've made my usual Christmas cake - Port and Dark Chocolate cake, two 28cm sized cakes and a smaller one.

Then onto the puddings as you can see above hanging from my kitchen utensil hanger. This year I decided to start a new tradition....the adding of a sterling silver medal (rather than the tradition use of a coin)

I searched through my medal stock and found these four that would be suitable and then finally decided upon the top two - the cross was placed in one pudding, the scapular medal into the other. Next year I will give more thought and planning to this endevour and order the medal below - "Gloria Deo"

Gloria Deo Medal

I was chatting to my aunty last night and said to her that the medal can be looked after for the year by the person who received it in their slice of pudding, when the following Christmas comes around the medal can be handed back to be put in again, most likely going onto another family member....

I have vivid memories of visiting relatives and been given a slice of pudding, to which a silver sixpence and had placed into - as a child I was SO excited!

It is a tradition that has faded since modern coins are unsuitable for this, the old sixpence had been perfect in it's day but replacing coins with religious sterling silver pieces I think will work really well and give it a more religious dimension to an old tradition.

For anyone looking for a religious medal, there is this website, open to the public - Rosary Workshop.

The Dark Chocolate and Port Christmas Cake is all done, wrapped and placed in it's tin.

This has been the first year that we have been blessed with this beautiful statue of the baby Jesus and so we were looking to start a new Advent tradition.

I have been slow off the mark, but I liked the idea of adding straw to the crib to prepare the bed for the Christ Child on Christmas Eve, each child's good deeds allow them to add another bundle of straw..

I had been greatly inspired by Erin's posting at Seven Little Australian's plus One last year. Erin's Carpenter Boy had made a lovely crib and so my ds 14, decided to do the same.

Someone gave us a lovely basket of chocolates and it had been packed in this straw you can see above. The trouble is there is so much straw to be put in the crib I decided it would be better to make the straw into little bundles. Each time a child performed a good deed, they could put one of these bundles into the crib.

I tied the bundles together by using very thin, straw coloured thread, that can't be seen but holds the bundle together firmly.

This particular Advent tradition is one that is often started at the beginning of Advent, but due to sickness in the house it was one activity that has taken a while to get going. So we are a week out, finally starting, but better late than never.

What shall we give Him, our hearts?

Marilyn has written beautifully over at Enjoy the Journey, sharing her own thoughts and those of Sally Clarkson, on the importance of our hearts being properly prepared in Advent for the Christ Child. Is our heart, truly loving?...or forgiving? In otherwords prepared for Christmas?

Please pop over and visit her post, If I Speak with Tongues of Angels.

I just loved the image above. While I know the Christ Child resting in His Blessed Mother's arms IS holding a pomegranate, don't you think it could be an image of our hearts that we give Him?

Here is the full image the first image was taken from, The Christ Child, from Sandro Botticelli's Madonna of the Pomegranate. HT Click on the little image and it will enlarge to a lovely, clear size.

An Advent Wordless Wednesday

O Antiphon Poinsettia Wreath

Today was the last day of our weekly homeschooling get-togethers, making advent crafts and reading advent books.

It is MANY thanks to Kara, for designing this O Antiphon Wreath craft for us all, which will allow each family to showcase each day's O Antiphons which starts tomorrow (17th)

The wreath I worked on with my children is meant to represent the christmas flower, the poinsettia.

Kara bought paper plates for the wreath itself and the center was cut out. (The template for the stars were made out of the cardboard from the cut-out center.)

We went internet searching for some lovely O Antiphon images and we found some that were perfect for this craft....it came from Jenn's article over at Catholic Culture, excellent!!

The images were cut out and coloured in yellow.

Then they were stuck in the center of the white circles. The circles need to fit perfectly inside the the red stars you will see below.

Here are the circles with the images now glued on.

To give the centers the look of a poinsettia center, a single hole puncher was used to create a lovely edge.

Here are the stars, for each wreath you need 7 red and 7 green- above you can see the white cardboard star stencil.

Next the green and red stars needed to pinned together and then attached to the wreath. Special pins that fold back behind to attach them securely to the wreath were used.

Here is ds (14) flattening the pin at the back, securing the poinsettia flower to the wreath.

It was getting late in the afternoon, so we went outside for bettter light where the poinsettia flowers were all pinned to the wreath.

Each center had the English and Latin Antiphon written around the image.

Then the poinsettia centers were glued in the middle of each red flower, starting with "O Wisdom" going around until....

...they were all finished with the glueing of "O Emmanuel".

All the red petals were folded into the center like so.

A bow and curling ribbon is all that is needed now to finish the craft. Punch a hole with the hole punch just to the left of your 'O Wisdom' poinsettia flower.

After making the bow, the ribbon was threaded through the back of the bow.

The ribbon with the bow attached, is then threaded through the hole and tied at the back. The two long ribbon strands are tied together at the top to make a hanging loop.

All done, the children are now eager to count down the last remaining days of Advent with the opening of each poinsettia flower, the reading of the daily antiphon verse and the singing of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.

St Lucy's Lights Night!

Tonight we visited the lights, our yearly tradition on the feast day of St Lucy. We went with dear friends and visited a Catholic Church that hosts spectacular lights each year. St Gerard Magellan's Parish.

The nativity at the church...waiting patiently for the Christ Child to come.

Then we went on to the same street we usually visit each year.

Do you remember this scene from last year?

The children enjoyed themselves immensely with friends.

Do you remember this stone wall from last year? I had posed in front of it heavily pregnant with 'dear boy' in hand and so this year I've posed with 'dear boy' again - he's grown taller, my belly's grown smaller.

But here's the cherub I was carrying in utero last year, yet unknown.....what a blessing she is!

Happy feast day, may St Lucy bless you and your family!