pudding

The whole Christmas season thing really hit me today, and I suddenly realised, hey, there's a lot of shit that needs to get done. Phil is likely on holiday until January, although he might have to work a couple of days next week, and once he's off for the year, it starts to really feel like oops, yeah, here's Christmas.

I went downtown and faced the gruesome crowds; for all the papers are screaming about sales being off, you'd never have known it from our shopping precinct today, because it was absolutely heaving. I managed to get one gift and scout out a couple others, so the trip wasn't totally wasted, but after about an hour, I'd had enough and went to Sainsbury's to buy the stuff to make the Christmas pudding. Last year I did a whole (stupid) photo essay about making the pudding, but it, like oh, FIVE YEARS OF MY LIFE, went poof with Diary-X, so I kind of had to wing it. I used Delia Smith's recipe as a guide, but because I sort of loathe dried currants, I reduced the amount to five ounces, and made up the difference with dried cranberries and cherries. I'm not exactly sure why I bothered, since all the dried and candied fruit in a Christmas pudding sort of melds into one big, sticky, yet oddly tasty indistinguishable mass of enamel-scorching stodge, but it will make me feel better about the whole thing to know I'm eating fewer nasty dried currants than I might otherwise. And since I'm the one making the pudding, it's all about me. I also cannot imagine what the hell I'd do with a bottle of barley wine minus 75ml needed for the pudding, so I bought green ginger wine instead, because that I can use.

So that stuff is glopping away peacefully on the kitchen counter overnight, and tomorrow I will put it in a greased basin and steam it for eight hours, then stick it out in the conservatory until Christmas Day, when we will steam it again, cover it with brandy, set the fucker alight, and then slather it in brandy butter and cream in order to eat it. It's way better than I make it sound, honest.

After mixing up the pudding, I baked a loaf of bread, wrapped some gifts, and considered starting on the cookies, but frankly, I'm not quite ready to start the major baking yet. I may mix up the cookie dough while the pudding steams tomorrow, and then stash it in the freezer for a few days, but that, too, might be a bit ambitious. It's not panic time quite yet on the cookie front, but it is getting damn close to panic time on the knitting and other gifting fronts, so I'm not being lazy, I am prioritizing. In fact, I am going to prioritize my way into a comfy chair with a glass of wine and my current knitting project right now.