Don’t take this to mean that I have any issues with anyone who puts their decorations up early, but for me, I love to wait until the 1st December before doing anything Christmas-related. I think it adds to the excitement knowing that I can’t watch a Christmas film or get the decorations out until this date has arrived.
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it, but we’re renovating our house. Oh, I THINK I may have bought it up once or twice… Anyway, this weekend is a big ‘un. We’ve pretty much fitted our kitchen, added part of the worktop (it’s made up of two pieces as it’s pretty huge), but now we are just waiting for appliances – the oven, hob and fridge – and they are arriving this Saturday! I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am to get the oven in, especially as we’ve been cooking on a camping stove since October. There’s only so much fajitas and soup a girl can eat.
We’ve ended up going for a Beko split and cook oven – this is because we don’t have the room for a double oven (and nor do we need one really), but this oven offers the functionality of splitting the oven in half and cooking dishes at two different temperatures without the smells intermingling. I didn’t even know you could get ovens that did this, so I was pretty impressed. It’s also got an 80 litre capacity, so we shouldn’t have any issues getting the turkey in – fingers crossed I can manage to work it properly to cook my Christmas cake in!
I’m late to the party in relation to cooking my Christmas cake for obvious reasons; I usually follow a rather similar recipe to this one, and use rum to feed the cake but it’s always much more than the quantity in the recipe. Don’t judge. I’m no marzipan fan either, so I decorate my cake with whole almonds once the cake has been cooked and they add a lovely crunch when you have a slice.
I’m so looking forward this weekend to getting some of the decorations up (if I can find them), lighting the fire, watching a Christmas film, mulling some cider on the hob and getting even more into the festive spirit.
I hope whatever your tradition or your plans that you enjoy your first weekend of December.
A x
Abi in the Garden 