I can't believe that it's been almost a month since I last wrote anything on my blog, but monthly changes may be in the offing, so I'll keep the surprises until next month.
Today I felt that I just had to share our Aussie Christmas with you, especially if you live in the cold, cold, North. North of anywhere really. North of Watford seems to be the usual boundary, but North of the Hawkesbury is another. If you don't recognise that town near London or that river near Sydney, then congratulations, you don't live north of anywhere, but you are an Eastie or a Westie. Sydney Westies have an undeserved reputation - for anything dodgy really and so we'll say that they come from the flatlands close to the Blue Mountains. Easties, who come from the seaside suburbs of Sydney, mostly ARE dodgy, but as they only deal in large sums in their dodginess, they can afford the sea views and they can afford successful lawyers.
In fact, most of them are successful lawyers!
But to get back to the Sidebothams, who live north of Sydney and are thus jolly nice bucolic folk.
The run up to Christmas has been more of a stagger this year, with Mrs S spending the last three days before Christmas in hospital. Thanks must go to so many people who helped me out during her absence, Reinhard and Sylvia taking me visiting and feeding me, and Jenny taking and bringing home the patient. This involved 5 am starts.
So, mea culpa, or maybe I should say nostrae culpae, we FORGOT to get each other a gift or a card. Oh well, the sales start tomorrow!
For the last two nights M and I have averaged four hours sleep, whereas last night, we both averaged three hours sleep, so to say we are tired is something of an understatement. We are VERY tired.
This year I baked a cake and used my grandmother's wooden spoon dating back to her marriage in 1913, for the final stir and wish. I wished the marzipan had not been dried out quite so much (it was flaking off) and I wish that I thought of icing it before yesterday. I didn't realise it was so complicated. I used Delia Smith's recipe. Her recipes are very reliable. It called for four egg whites.
Unfortunately, Australian eggs are slightly larger than English eggs, and so my four Australian egg whites had slightly more volume than four anglowhites. I beat the aussiewhites to within a centimetre of their albumen before adding the icing sugar slowly. It peaked (we are the country of the pavlova, after all) just as it should, and the first coat went on beautifully. It was then that I noticed I was supposed to allow three days for it to dry before putting on a second coat, and then three days later a third coat.
So this morning, I iced the cake for the second time with the hope that it will dry out sufficiently to have a slice tonight. But before I did that I had to go into the kitchen.
My bare feet started paddling across the floor through icy water. It took ten minutes to mop it up and dry the floor with towels. Words were said. Fortunately there was no water underneath any of the kitchen appliances. The source of the icy torrent was a five kilo glacier that we had bought from the servo/gas station/service station/garage and which we had just enough room for in our esky/insulated ice box (keep up!) because there wash't room in the freezer. The ice was for medicinal purposes. To reduce the swelling on Marg's neck, and to provide a couple of coldies before Christmas Dinner.
Unfortunately, guess who forgot to close the drainage tap on the esky. Clue: it wasn't Marg. and 5 kg of ice forms quite a lot of water when it's spread over the floor. Fortunately none went under the furniture either.
We have a lovely couple next door with four well behaved and bright children. I do wish Father Christmas hadn't woken them up quite so early. Just as I was about to go into the shower at 9.30 am, there was a knock on the door and two of them stood there with a present for us. We were in our night clothes.
We still have our Christmas dinner to cook. Duck with Morello Cherry Sauce. We shall toast each other and make our Christmas wishes, which are always the same. To spend Christmas next year somewhere where someone else does the catering!
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