Christmas dinner 2018

Christmas dinner 2018 not only featured my own grown vegetables, homebrew and eggs, but fruit and nuts too!

For breakfast I served a loaf of stollen bread: the husband and I spent half an hour cracking the almonds I'd harvested off my tree (back in October) on the Saturday before Christmas, then I soaked them overnight and ground them into paste the next day, adding a little icing sugar and egg white. This was rolled into a log and the stollen dough folded around it before baking. It was wonderfully almondy.

We bought quite a lot of veg from the shop as it was cheap cheap cheap (I actually bought loads and froze, dried, and brined the extra), but we didn't neglect our own veg either. We had fresh garden Brussels sprouts, and the last big green squash, as well as our own garlic in the gravy. They were lovely and I even ended up freezing half the squash puree afterwards, as there were too many leftovers to fit in the fridge!

Alongside our dinner I served a bottle of blackberry and elderberry fizzy wine which was started in September 2018. I'd picked the berries wild at the local country park and started the main (non fizzy) batch but had a little leftover after filling the demi-john; I put this into a wine bottle, capped it tightly, and let it sit in the cupboard to ferment and go fizzy. It wasn't volcanic, but it was pleasantly refreshing and as the husband didn't much care for it, I drank most of it to myself. We also cracked open a bottle of 2017's cider to be extra merry.

For dessert, later on in the afternoon, I served my Christmas pudding. I made it very soon after Thanksgiving, and it had been maturing in the fridge since. In it was the last of our own eggs (we had to buy eggs for Christmas breakfast as none were laid for weeks) and the blackcurrant harvest, saved in the freezer since summer. Although I'd never tried making Christmas pudding with frozen berries before (it also contained the usual dried raisins and currants, both bought), the result was delicious.