Oh dear, it’s been a week since I last checked in. I really have been so incredibly busy with Christmas pudding making, tree decorating, and work. Mostly work.
But enough with the excuses! Here’s what I’ve been up to this week (in bullet point form because I have to rush off to Aldi in 10 minutes to buy ALL the festive party food).
Christmas Puddings
On Saturday I ventured off to Clapham, cheap bottle of Chianti in hand, to partake in some Christmas pudding making and mulled wine drinking fun. Gavin, our lovely host, is a fellow student on the Anthropology of Food course and an ex-Fat Duck sous chef. He’d already been busy dousing a crateful of fruit in very expensive booze so all we had to do was roll up our sleeves and mix everything together. I’m not going to lie, plied with alcohol and braised pork belly, it was not a difficult job.
Surprise Dinosaur Parties
A few hours later and I was battling my way through Oxford Street to get to my best friend’s surprise birthday party in Mayfair. A surprise dinosaur party at that. Yes, she is 25 and yes, it was very fun.
Christmas Tree Decorating
We hadn’t planned to decorate our tree on Sunday. Dom has a very strict rule about not putting up a Christmas tree before the 9th December (and an even stricter rule regarding tinsel, but that’s a different story). But we needed to at least order it to arrive in time for our Christmas Extravaganza this weekend.
So we trundled off to a greengrocer in a nearby village, promptly fell in love with one majestic tree, and an hour later it was in our house. And as nothing puts a dampener on Christmas quite like a nude tree, we set to work throwing as many candy canes and baubles at it as possible. All while listening to Carols from King’s and sipping more mulled wine. It really was quite delightful and I, for one, have no regrets.
And that was my weekend. The past few days has seen me turning out copy like a machine. Tomorrow it’s off to London and on Friday eight people descend on our house for a weekend of festive fun. We have a fridge full of cheese and a globe bar full of booze, so we should have a grand old time. Hangover and workload permitting, I’ll pop back on Sunday to tell you all about it.
To The Table 