Christmas in July

It’s a Southern Hemisphere thing. A feeling that Roast Turkey, stuffing, bread sauce and roast potatoes should be feasted upon when the weather is appropriately cold and blustery. We get short-changed with having Christmas in the summer – our Christmas holidays and our summer holidays are one and the same and then a whole long year to wait for the next one. So we’ve invented yet another reason for a family feast, for over-indulgence and sumptious flavours. One Sunday in July we get together and produce a traditional Christmas lunch, complete with all the trimmings (minus the crackers and presents - this is about the food)

This year we were celebrating my husband’s birthday at the same time, inviting friends as well as family – 12 adults and 11 children. Requiring not only our large oven but my two sisters in law’s ovens to be going full blast all morning: three chickens, with sausage stuffing and herb stuffing, two small hams cooked in apple juice, two huge trays of roast potatoes (which went too quickly, we could have done with more), baked butternut, chipolata sausages wrapped in bacon and roasted, extra stuffing, peas, brussels sprouts, bread sauce and gravy. Add to that the making of puddings and birthday cake the previous day, the finishing off of the children’s presents for Dad, involving last minute sewing and wrapping and the compiling of a grown up treasure hunt and you will arrive at the compelling reason for me not having posted anything for a while.

It was delicious .Well worth the manic morning in the kitchen, leaving my husband to clear up the house...on his birthday too...ag shame! The weather was suitably cool and overcast, the winter coughs and colds creeping up on our family, so just the right Christmas atmosphere. The mutterings of ‘next time we’ll be more organised in advance’ dusted off again for re-use.

Some of our friends brought music, violins to add to our piano, and our post-prandial lethargy was soothed by a sweet seranade, which added an element of culture to our gluttony, so we’ve resolved to add that to out list of get-togethers – musical soirees or apres-midis rather, to learn more songs and ballads, bring more music into our everyday lives for our children (my piano practising has been seriously challenged by the blogging – need to find a balance). The treasure hunt was fine too with the adults strolling round the circuit, children doing the running to find the next clue, only I hadn’t prepared a story to set the theme, as I do with the kids’ birthday party ones..so next time I have to get cleverer, maybe more cryptic clues too – better start planning now!

We heard today that our good friends in England had their baby on my husband’s birthday, as we were feasting. So welcome Charlie! An auspicious day to choose to enter this funny old world.