Food

Thinking about Christmas fare

We all think about food every day. And here I’m assuming, possibly falsely, that those of us who have time and inclination to muck about happily on Substack are among the luckiest who aren’t in food poverty and aren’t thinking about food because we are actually starving and can’t think about anything else. So here we are, going about our day and thinking about what we have planned to eat. What we’ve forgotten to plan to eat. What leftovers are in the fridge and should be eaten up. How bare the fridge is if a shopping trip is looming. What we have in the fridge but simply doesn’t tempt us today, just because (oh, the luxury). What we fancy eating even though we don’t have the ingredients for it. What we fancy eating but have put aside for one reason or another whether it be health or habit or hope. And with the holidays getting closer and ever closer, we’re thinking about food in a different way. What we HAVE to cook, what we HAVE to buy, what we HAVE to provide to meet expectations.

That all sounds so unbearably dreary, and I have seen multiple posts on social media lately from folk who are walking away from the Thanksgiving or Christmas meal expectations. Fed up of being taken for granted that they will slave away and therefore not gain any direct benefit other than vicarious that their family will be stuffed to the gills on the back of their labour. This is not celebrating, it is indentured servitude. We need to bring the joy. Part of that is ignoring requests and demands for eating at a certain time. Sod that. We eat when it’s ready and determining that is the cook’s prerogative. 5pm works well for us, the birds having been put to bed and the pigs and cattle fed and bedded up. But if it’s later? So what? Have a clementine. A quick shower, a change of clothes from farm to sparkle, and we’re off.

The farming or smallholding life should differ from the drudgery if you are canny, even if you set a goal that everything, for that one meal, will be home grown (and everyone present plays a useful role). Lots of things grown in the veg bed can be frozen and simply pepped up on the day – bacon and chestnuts are rather good pepper-uppers. We have a bag marked Xmas peas that contains the smallest and sweetest of the summer’s petits pois. There’s enough red cabbage casserole in the freezers to feed the five thousand. The turkey and the streaky bacon and the sausagemeat are all our own and to be honest, stuffing a turkey, latticing the top with bacon and shoving it in the oven is the work of minutes. Life is too short for brining or soaking hams in cola (I love Nigella but why would I immerse my gorgeous meat in that noxious enamel-eating stuff?). The sprouts are picked the night before as are the carrots and parsnips which will be par-boiled ready to sit trivet-style under the turkey, the bread sauce made in advance from a little white loaf Andrew has made for the occasion and the chestnuts (from a packet) and apricots (from a tin) for the stuffing = the most minor of cheats. From a Norfolk Black turkey there will be much lush juice to add to the giblet stock that I don’t need to make a separate Fanny Adams of stuff for gravy; the gravy will be amazing without that.

And then the joy begins. I make far, far more than can be devoured at one sitting so that several days of extraordinarily delicious leftovers that take bugger all time to prepare embrace us. Fancy a pie? Well, someone has to make pastry – or have some readymade in the freezer – but either way, the work of moments. Fancy a curry? Ditto. Fancy a great heap of leftovers heated up with that amazing gravy? Also ditto. Boxing Day meals have always been my favourite thing. A slice of this, a lump of that, a spoon of the other, a dob or three of the thing you like best. And leftover trifle. Personally, I can leave the Christmas pud and cake to others, but there will be CHEESE! Wonderful, wonderful cheese. And as others tire of the turkey, I will continue to say “pah” and use it in salads and every which way until there is a carcase worthy of making into soup around New Year’s eve.