Christmas

On Saturday,  Christmas eve,  Anne was staying home to make last minute preparations for going down the coast to join her family on Christmas day.  So I emailed Jenny on Friday to see what she was doing on Christmas eve.  She had nothing planned so offered to cook me a Christmas eve dinner, which I accepted with alacrity.  Jenny makes very good dinners.  I took over my usual Tyrrells Verdelho.

Jenny in fact cooked me one of my favourites:  real Wiener Schnitzel -- veal Schnitzel.  You mostly see chicken Schnitzel these days.  So that went down well with salad etc.  As I do, Jenny puts feta cheese in her salads and I noted how well Feta went with the Schnitzel.  Something to remember.

And on Christmas day Jenny drove herself, Nanna and me down to Suz's place for the family get-together.  We arrived about 11am, with heaps of presents. Jenny had been a very busy shopper.

An interesting pre-dinner feature was a big box of prawns that Timmy had brought over.  The only seafood I eat is fish'n chips but a lot of the others bogged in.

The main feature of the dinner was a big ham cooked masterfully by Russ on his big BBQ.  With salad and various odds and ends, of course.  Suz had made us some bread rolls in her bread-making machine that came out like damper.  So we had a bit of a laugh with Suz over her insistence that they were bread rolls.  They went down anyway.

Tracy, Simon, their children and their dogs were in attendance.  It was nice to meet Ted, a big Labradoodle with cream-coloured curls for hair.  He looked like a sheep and was very good-natured.  He had come all the way from Woomera with Tracy and Simon in their car.  Dogs love cars but I thought the doggy smell might get a big much on such a long trip.  Ted looked beautiful but he smelt like a dog.

I talked mainly with Simon and Ken.  And what did we talk about?   A worldwide topic of conversation at the moment:  Mr Trump!  Mr Trump is a risky topic these days  as there are many criticisms of him.  But we managed to have a congenial conversation about him nonetheless, probably because we are all on the conservative side of the fence.

Simon was fairly critical of Mr Trump at first but I pointed out some of the things Trump has going for him and Simon did end up conceding that Trump would probably do some good.  I asked Ken what did he think of the claim that Trump is a misogynist? Ken said:  "No more than any other man" -- which was pretty realistic answer, I think.

We had our usual mystery presents game, which got everybody involved.  I ended up with a dashboard camera, which is probably a good thing, but I do so little driving these days that I will probably give it to Joe.  Not that he does a lot of driving.  He WALKS amazing distances.

A few people were drinking beer but no-one got noticeably affected by it.  We are a pretty sober lot.  I avoid drinking during the day because I drink a fair bit at night.

Then on Christmas night, Anne came over and we had ham and mustard sandwiches at about 8pm -- using leftover ham from the lunchtime ham.  It's always the best ham of the year.

Monday was of course Boxing day so Anne stayed over at my place all day.  For breakfast we jointly cooked up some bacon and eggs for breakfast, with some savoury mince thrown in.  I had the mince already cooked and in the fridge.  So it helped make a good breakfast.

Then for dinner Anne cooked up some good sausages I had in the freezer -- beef and pork sausages.  They cooked up very well, a humble but most enjoyable dinner.  And we had some very small Christmas puddings with cream as a dessert.

And on Tuesday morning, we had the last of the Christmas ham for breakfast -- as ham and mustard sandwiches.  Anne then left to prepare for a trip to Stanthorpe with some friends.