A snippet of Christmas 2020

Happy New Year, in a year that certainly hasn't had the best start. So it can only get better I feel. The vaccinations seem to be storming along. My stepfather in law, and my neighbour have had both their jabs. My mum in law today and my sister as an NHS worker having hers as I type this, my mum on Saturday, so thats all positive. My very good friend who is without a doubt the cleverest guy I know said January will be an absolutely dreadful month for the virus, the worst yet, then things will start to improve. Way back last January before we had any idea of the enormity of this virus, he said while on a lovely weekend away with a group of friends, "I think this is going to be big, really big". We couldn't have imagined then how big a mess the world would be in, but we ordered masks there and then because he is right about everything. So a year later and a year like we have never experienced we are still here. My kids have had the virus, most of their friends at university too, my nephew and niece were ill over Christmas, and some friends elderly parents have sadly died. So let's hope for some return to normality by Easter and stay positive.

Christmas was so quiet for me compared to usual, I cooked a turkey crown and I think we all agreed that for all the effort we could quite happily cooked a chicken and had all the accompaniments and enjoyed it as much. So I will definitely rethink cooking turkey again. Having the kids home has meant having to cook so much more and trying to please everyone. My son who wants to put weight on and my daughter who wants to keep weight off. We seem to have shops delivered every few days and still theres not enough food in the fridge. My efforts of keeping the weight I lost off have diminished somewhat. My goodness if I can't have the food I want in this time, life would feel even sadder, so I have eaten what I want and that has consequences, but that's ok.

Here's a few photos of Christmas, I did try to make the day as special as possible and it was a really lovely day with my family. I made four Christmas cakes this year, three of them were for gifts and were my usual trusty fuss free Christmas cake. For my cake I tried a new recipe from Nigel Slater, packed full of fruit including figs and prunes, it is absolutely delicious. I will post the recipe at some point.

Thank you for still visiting my blog, it's what keeps me going with it. I have a couple of recipes to post in the next few days and hope to continue trying new recipes regularly and sharing them.