Loose Connections!
Previous Christmases have seen my mother and I prepare the Christmas meal, table, presents etc together, with liberal helpings of wine and snacks, this Christmas was obviously going to be difficult for me. I hadn't realised quite how loose those connections of lists of 'obvious things to do' had become. Christmas morning saw me making the crackers, failing to find a Christmas pud - so making a fresh one. Thank goodness I had the ingredients in the house! The afternoon was spent fetching Livvy and Ru, then icing the cake. Last July I smugly made three Christmas cakes, two were initially meant as presents, however, I took one down to feed people after mum's cremation service, so I kept the other two - one for Christmas and one for something special in the new year, I don't know what yet! So you can see that Christmas day was extremely busy on a catch-up basis, oh and I forgot to own up to not having even bought my daughter's present! We had chosen it and then I had failed to do anything about it.
Dire? I think so, but we laughed a lot, toasted my mother in her absence and I made my new year's resolution to take note of the poem I read at her service, which so far I have singularly failed to live up to.
The first part of that resolution was prompted by Rupert pointing out that my kitchen cupboards could do with a sort out. He was so right! Even just a glimpse of the Best Before Dates was shaming, the mustard powder was my original tin of mustard bought - I don't know when! So meals will now have no musty hints of flavour, it will be salt pepper and whatever herbs are available from the garden. I shall sprout the coriander seeds and eat them in a stir fry. And the most valuable piece of housewifery I found out? If you have a blocked sink, throw in combinations of old sauces- Hoi Sin and Chile sauces do a wonderful job of clearing the blocked drain!
Every cloud has a silver lining and I have got on and done something positive today.Yeah!!!!!