Christmas is a-coming

[nineveh_uk]

And the goose is nowhere to be seen, which is fine by me. However I am going to have a go at hare over the holidays. My mother, who suffered a traumatic hare cooking incident more than 40 years ago, the reason that neither of my parents has cooked one since, has stipulated that it will be ordered fully prepared and jointed. Apparently there is a reason that they are cheaper to buy with the skin still on. On a less meaty culinary subject I have made mince pies, as last year I didn't have enough.

The Christmas tree is up - actually, it has been up for a week, which is too early,* but if I only put it up this weekend I'd only have it for a week before going away. The tinsel on the stairs is less successful, and needs another attempt. I have five more days left at work before the break, which is both good and terrifying. I was off for two days with a cold this week, which was not great timing. I suppose it is better than having a cold over Christmas, and hopefully it will be mostly gone by then. I have done almost all of my Christmas shopping, so I can relax about that.

Anyway, here (on LJ...) is the Christmas tree by special request of azdak so she feels less premature with hers!


*I have to say it is too early in case people think I don't realise this.

Comments

[tree_and_leaf]

The picture doesn't seem to be on LJ, either.

too early

Not blatantly too early, though. You'd got well past the first Sunday of Advent, for one thing!

[nineveh_uk]

Oh dear, cross-posting fail! It is there now.

It was very nearly a whole week into December!

[tree_and_leaf]

That is a very pretty tree!

We haven't got ours yet, though for various reasons I think we will have to cave and have a fake one this year (among other things, I've developed contact dermatitis from pine needles, much to my disgust).

[perennialanna]

I also have that. I can just about cope with a Nordmann fir, but lesser trees set it off.

We are going fake because I am taking the children to my parents the day after Boxing Day for an indeterminate length of time, as long as I am back to read the Epistle on the 3rd of January*, and we are not putting a tree up until next weekend (I used to do Christmas Eve because it was when work finished, but these days I do the first full day of the school holidays. The children were decorating the tree at their father's house today, but they seem to be coping with "different families have different traditions and you have two families now").

*New church deals with "Marriage went bang and am coming out" by saying "Great! Which rotas would you like to be on?". We have just acquired an honorary priest who is coming out in his 70s after the end of a very long marriage. He is rather magnificent, although his sermons tend to be startling.

[tree_and_leaf]

Glad that the children are coping and that new church is being good.

[nineveh_uk]

Being away does make real ones tricky. I'm away myself for 12 days and really intended to buy an artificial one, but weakened. Also I can store the growing one in the garden, where there is more space than I have to store things in the house!

New church sounds good!

[antisoppist]

We always did Christmas Eve but under protest from children I went to last day of term. This year, however, I had promised this weekend because eldest child is all about the build-up and "being like everyone else". But moving a tree down the hill as well as moving house would have been ridiculous so I asked their father if he would do his this weekend instead and he did. But now his is all Christmassy, and exactly like it used to be, and mine is all boring still and I have got to reinvent my own Christmas decorations. But it is only a week...

[nineveh_uk]

It is only a week. And then you will have a BETTER tree. She says, in unhelpful competetive parenting mode.

I like the icon tree. Is that the John Lewis one?

[antisoppist]

It is very like the John Lewis one that I wanted last year but they had sold out of, but it is made by someone local and I bought it at the street fair in September with my birthday money from my sisters (which I should have been spending on domestic equipment but I wanted one cheering thing as well). I think this makes it even better than one from John Lewis. It is in my window and I have hung my earrings on it, which means my earrings are decorative even when I am not wearing them and I get to look at them, which I can't when I am wearing them.

For Christmas I bought it a tree decoration house from Waitrose because I felt in need of a house, even if it was a very very small one. And if it was a symbolic, gods-placating, omen-ous, wish-fulfillment bid, it seems to have worked.

[nineveh_uk]

It looks like an excellent use of birthday money, and I like the little house in it's Lawrie Marlowe-esque glory. Local "artisan" Christmas trees are better even than JL.

It is a sad truth of earrings that most of the time one doesn't get to look at it. I seem to prefer studs to dangly ones, which means options for displaying them are less decorative, and they end up living in boxes (or wherever I take them off until I remember to put them away).

[perennialanna]

Their father put his tree up on Saturday, because they helped decorate it (there is no such thing as a domestic secret when small children are moving between two houses. For example, I know that "Daddy and J have some very odd jam". Which turned out to mean strawberry and black pepper).

Also on Saturday the children made cardboard figures out of Ikea bookshelf boxes while there, and brought them home to finish off here. Which I suppose is the kind of easy interchange we were all aiming for, but it still feels damn odd to me.

[antisoppist]

It is all damn odd to get used to. To avoid me being nitpickily possessive about bloody Christmas tree ornaments, I suggested the children pick me out some for my tree while they were decorating his. They have picked all the wooden ones which I do like but they think are boring, and only about six. I am grown-up. I can cope. On Saturday we will all go and pick some new ones. But I am annoyed that he is the one that doesn't care about stuff and sentimental value and history and atmosphere and he is the one who has got all of it.

[perennialanna]

The thing that is making me most sad is that I won't have any presents under the tree (the children have never got us presents, obviously he won't be getting me anything, and instead of posting her presents as usual my mother is saving them until the children and I go there on the 27th. Just as well, given that she is giving me a complete set of Wainwright to replace my granny's copies that I didn't claim when the house was sorted out because I couldn't quite believe that this really was the last time I'd ever be there). Which is a really stupid thing to be sad about in the general scheme of things, especially when I have any number of unread books and unknitted wool I could perfectly well wrap up as a present to myself of a project to start on Christmas Day.

The autumn term is always at least a week too long. We are all shattered, our tempers are suffering accordingly, and my bloodstream is at least 85% black coffee this week.

[clanwilliam]

Having read The Picts and the Martyrs, my sympathies are entirely with your mother re hares, which I assume are even worse than rabbits.

[antisoppist]

My current recipe translation project has just reached hares and recommends getting your butcher to prepare it for you.

[nineveh_uk]

Clearly a wise recipe book.

[nineveh_uk]

"Never buy an unprepared rabbit" is definitely valuable life information I learned from The Picts and the Martyrs. I think that is my favourite scene in the whole book.

[antisoppist]

That reminds me of the scene in Hilary McKay's The Exiles in Love, where they see rabbits in cages in a French market and are horrified and decide to buy one to liberate it. The stallholder says "shall I prepare it for you?" and Rachel imagines him getting it a nice box and some straw only then he gets out a big knife and there is horror all round. I don't remember what happens to the rabbit. I don't think they end up with it back with Big Grandma at the cottage owned by the Frenchman she knows from her distant past and his unaccountably furious wife.

[nineveh_uk]

*adds Hilary McKay tolist of books to be read*

[clanwilliam]

The best bit of that scene is that Dick's nausea is presented as perfectly reasonable and Dot is sympathetic (I suspect she'd have coped a lot better doing it, having mental resources that Dick lacks). And that's also the point everyone went "spot the future theoretical physicist!"

Although my money is on Dot at Bletchley, rather than Dick.

ETA; oh good grief, am now imagining Dot as M, having got her Damehood long before Dick gets his knighthood. And a patronising comment along the lines of "I didn't get it for *typing*" as someone interviews the siblings on the eve of Dick visiting the Queen. Meanwhile Dick is looking blank and going (genuinely): "I never asked. If Dot wanted to tell me, she'd have told me. No, why would I be jealous? I'm the scientist; she's the smart one."

Crap, may need to write.

[nineveh_uk]

I think that writing that fic would be an excellent idea!

I really like the way that Ransome writes sympathetically about people being upset or feeling ill, and that these are ordinary things that people feel. Peggy's being scared of thunder is presented as a bit silly, but in a sympathetic way - we see that she tries to get over it, even though she can't, and the narrative thinks that Nancy getting into her bed is the nice sisterly thing to do. The Great-Aunt is awful because she says hurtful things to people and doesn't care - the people she hurts aren't at fault for being sensitive.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

In the US lots of people put them up at Thanksgiving (end of November). *I* thought the tradition was to put up the tree on Christmas Eve and take it down on Epiphany, but I'm not Christian so have no dog in the fight.

[azdak.livejournal.com]

They do the putting it up on Christmas Eve thing in Austria, too. In fact, Bexy had to give an English lesson to two little boys in my office on Friday so that they wouldn't be startled into losing faith in the Christkind by the sight of our fully decorated tree-plus-presents in the sitting room.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Obviously you have a Platinum Christkind Card, so you get visited in the first pass.

[azdak.livejournal.com]

The perfect explanation for modern youth!

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

My ideal is to put it up a week before Christmas, and take it down just after new year - Twelfth night feels too late. But that's probably because that's what my Mum does...

[azdak.livejournal.com]

That is a ridiculously cute little Christmas tree. And the pot is gorgeous.

I think I share your mother's hare trauma - not that I've ever tried to cook hare, but your dark hints about skinning and jointing were enough to arouse my deepest sympathy with her.

You seem well set for Christmas with the pies and the tree and the thoughts of dinner. I'm trying to recapture my enthusiasm in time for the impending second Christmas, but it's proving quite hard. All I really want is the time off work part of it!

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

The time off work part is definitely one of the best parts of Christmas. I particularly like that because almost everyone is off, unlike other holidays one doesn't come back to a full inbox.

In addition to the skinning and the jointing, hares are liable to contain a lot of blood... There's a very funny scene in Arthur Ransome's "The Picts and the Martyrs" in which two children are given a rabbit, which they have to gut and skin before they can cook it.

The pot came with the tree - I was rather impressed with Homebase for that.

[elmey.livejournal.com]

That is a very elegant tree! I like the size, we always end up with something bigger than I really want.

I'm sticking with my Rosolje for Christmas Eve dinner, it's never caused trauma :)

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I deliberately went for one that I might still be able to lift in a year's time...

If Rosolje doesn't cause trauma I can only say that you're a tough lot in your neck of the woods!

[elmey.livejournal.com]

I gather shocking pink food is not a tradition at your house then...

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Only in the form of pickled beetroot on its own (and I hate picked beetroot). Or raspberry mousse.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Lovely tree :)

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

That is a perfect little tree -- I really like real trees and the pine smell, but my husband gets horrific hay fever when they're in the house, so I confine myself to a fake tree inside and real greens outside the house. We usually put ours up on the first or second weekend of December, so it doesn't strike me as excessive to want two weeks of the tree before Christmas actually arrives. We have some German friends here who do the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve and the Christkind brings the presents, which sounds lovely but incredibly stressful, especially as Christmas Eve is my older daughter's birthday and that is just too much to do in the same 24 hours.

What are the complications involved in cooking hare? I was tempted to try goose this year but I think I'll end up going with our usual stuffed beef tenderloin because it's hard to give that up. Perhaps next year we can branch out and have a Thanksgiving Goose :).

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

It is the smell I like. Though this one is a Nordmann fir so doesn't really smell, but as I'm away over Christmas is also less likely to result in my coming home to a carpet covered in needles.

Christmas Eve being your daughter's birthday does sound liable to make things rather busy!

Hares are rather bloody to prepare...

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

So you're saying hares are the animal kingdom's answer to the beet? If that's the case, I can see why your parents wouldn't be in a hurry to have another encounter. (Beets have amazing amounts of juice and if you don't cut and prepare them under running water in a sink, the kitchen will end up looking like a murder scene. Hares containing real blood would have to make that scene about a thousand times worse).

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I think they are exactly that. Which is why I only ever buy beetroots vacuum packed and pre-cooked, or in crisp form.

[bronze-ribbons.livejournal.com]

A book I sometimes regret giving away is an edition of Joy of Cooking that contained detailed instructions, with illustrations, on skinning a rabbit.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I can see why you would regret that! Not that I personally wish to skin a rabbit, but instructions of that sort are always fascinating.

[white_hart]

Pretty tree! We ended up getting ours yesterday, though the original plan had been to do it next weekend; we fancied a bit of festive cheer. It will come down as soon as I go back to work, as I find it far too depressing to come back from work in January to a house full of Christmas decorations.

My mother was put off cooking hare for many years by my grandmother's traumatic attempt at jugged hare, though she has got over that and the result was very tasty.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Yours looked very nice, and festive cheer is definitely needed. The weekend was horribly gloomy. According to the met office, the south had less than 50% of the normal sunshine amount last month, and for the country overall it was the dullest November since 1929!

I believe that it was a jugged hare incident, and it will not be being cooked like that!

[dolorous-ett.livejournal.com]

Does this mean you're going to be in God's Own Country over Xmas? I will be. If you're in the vicinity and feel like a chat, my details are all still the same.

PS I aten't dead, just a bit swamped.

PPS I can't speak for hare, but rabbit with cream, mustard and ham is a dish fit for the gods.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

My parents are in Edinburgh now, so in fact I'm going to be there from the 21st to the 2nd rather than Yorkshire! But if we overlap in the Even Further North, do let me know, if would be nice to meet up, even if briefly.

Glad to hear that you aten't dead, though very busy this day. I hope that you get some chance to relax over Christmas.

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

A pretty tree. Mine looks rather small now the Front Room is finished.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

A small and elegant tree is better than a a too-big tree! Though I admit that one year I'd love an enormous one.