Tag: Things of beauty

Art, music, whatever

Boxing Day Cheer

Food & Drink, Friends and Family

As I may have said before, we don’t have Christmas Dinner on Christmas Day itself:  Christmas Day is devoted to a Full English Breakfast with the kids (this was ours yesterday;  bangers, beans, back bacon, mushrooms. eggs and tomato all  fried in boerewors drippings and hash browns, also — not pictured — French bread toast, and cinnamon rolls made by Daughter)

I should point out that this was my plate:  the others had portions essentially double that of mine, because I can’t take that much because of gastric surgery.  I made up for it by drinking more Mimosas than everyone else.

We save the roast beef dinner till the day after Christmas:  Boxing Day (a Du Toit family tradition):

I cook the roast, New Wife does the potatoes, parsnips, asparagus and other veg., and Daughter makes the Yorkshire pud.  Dessert is generally peach cobbler and / or fruit cake with icing, but this year there’s a Yule Log like this one, compliments of Daughter.

Mostly because nobody in our family can handle a Full English and Roast Beast on a single day, we’ve turned Christmas Day into a two-day family affair.  In American terms, it’s like having two Thanksgiving meals in a row.

We like it that way.

Lockdown Partner

Beauty, Disaster, Food & Drink

Forget for a moment that we’re mostly all Old Married Pharttes, and imagine that you’re going to be in lockdown with a hottie — to be more specific, a hottie chef, because regardless of how hot she is, at some point you’re gonna have to eat, and you don’t want to be stuck in that situation with Jennifer Aniston, who can’t boil a lettuce.

So here are the contenders, in no specific order:

Nigella Lawson

Rachel Allen

Rachel Khoo

Giada De Laurentiis

Lisa Faulkner

Marcella Valladolid

Rachel Ray

Ingrid Hoffmann

Cat Cora
Okay, Cat Cora is probably disqualified because sadly, she’s a lesbianist.  In her place, therefore:

Mary Berg

(That’s for my Canucki Readers…)

As an aside, three of the above are named Rachel.  Coincidence?  I think not.

 

And for my long-suffering Lady Readers, who are always being left out of these things:

Curtis Stone(I know, Australian therefore should be disqualified.  Shuddup or I’ll add Guy Fieri.)

James Martin

Jean-Christophe Novelli

Phil Vickery

And in the interests of good taste and such, I haven’t bothered with Gordon Ramsay, because I would refuse to pay your hearing-aid bills after you’ve been in a three-week lockdown with him.

 

Feel free to add your favorite chefs in Comments.

Castles

Architecture, Beauty

Here’s yet another of those “Pick One” posts.  In this case, it’s castles.  If you had to live in one (and assuming that you could set up a decent shooting range / clay station on its extensive grounds), which one of the following would you choose?

  • West Dunbartonshire
  • Powys
  • Exeter
  • East Dunbartonshire
  • (ignore the one in Fife because it’s basically just a pile of rocks)
  • Wigtownshire
  • Aberdeenshire
  • Northumberland

Assume that all are actually habitable (not always a given in Britishland, regardless of price), and have decent insulation, electricity, hot water and so on.

As always, resist the temptation to say “I’m just happy with my lil’ ole place in Tennessee / Texas / Montana / wherever, and I don’t wanna live in Communist Britain.”

Play the game.