Quick Catch up

Things have been a tad hectic round here this last week or so and in the past day or so I have started grocery shopping for ingredients not ready made things. I object to paying through the nose for items that I can quite easily make myself.  I love cooking and I am not one of these ladies who cannot cook.  Granted I am a plain cook but the more you practice something the better you get at it.  Bit like riding a bicycle you fall off your perch once or twice until you find your way around it and then its free wheeling all the way.

I am no different to many other ladies and gents doing the shopping but I do not drive and this year I have not had the services of the OH to run around to either come and collect shopping from town or to run me down into town; due mainly to the shift pattern he has been rostered on to so I have to walk everywhere.  The walking does me good, but when you have some extremly heavy bags and you live over a mile from town (without going round town) I am slightly knackered and I have got drenched a couple of times in the process.  (drowned rat syndrome).

It takes me longer to do the shopping as I buy the ingredients not a finished product and I don't overdo things we have the choice of a couple of things but I do a batch bake and then those items that a more volatile/fragile I make as we need that way we do not over-complicate matters or waste anything unnecessarily.  To tell the truth I tend to just buy basic items as I need them so it has been a bit of shock on the price front and I have not gone overboard.  The shopping I have done is not just for the Christmas period it also has to take me through to the end of the month.

I went back into town this evening about 6:30 p.m and it was wonderful so different to earlier on when we were playing bash a shopping trolley and so I was able to do Marks and Spencers and Waitrose.  I still have a couple of more items  to get from both shops but I just could not carry them tonight.

Christmas Eve is by tradition my family's baking day. I remember as a little girl watching my mother bring through a big meat platter (which was a blue and white print plate) stacked full of mince pies, jam tarts, coconut cheesecakes and lemon curd tarts as well as all the preparation for the Christmas feast;  The Turkey used to be cooked overnight on Christmas Eve (after all the baking had been done) and mum had a gas copper in which the Christmas Pudding used to be cooked.  I still have to go up town again tomorrow and on Christmas Eve to finish present and food shopping.

I have the cranberries for the fresh cranberry sauce/relish that has Cointreau added, the bread sauce, the pastry, the shortbread, the tiffin, the regrigerator cake, the almond clementine cake, the Yule log etc.  and I have a batch of Tiger rolls to make on Christmas day so that I have fresh rolls for when mum comes to dinner on Boxing Day (for tea).  I have puff pastry in the freezer to make sausage rolls with and some savouries and I may well have a go at doing some home made Danish Pastries and also some Stollen.

Right I am going to wend my way upstairs to Bedfordshire as I have an early start in the morning.  OH has tomorrow off so he is taking me to the Butchers to collect the Turkey and then off to Sainsburys.

Take care

Pattypan

xx