Happy Christmas

I’m going to take a little blogging break while I enjoy Christmas with my family. The Forest Maker has arrived, after some airport complications, and I am loving spending time with him. I am reading, making stuff with my kids, wrapping presents, planning desserts for various parties, sipping red wine in the evenings with my husband, watching DVDs and relaxing.

Happy Christmas to all of you. I leave you with an image of Christmas in Germany:

Gingerbread in the window

Alcoholic Christmas Muffins

Has anyone else noticed how much fun Christmas is for the children? They’re the ones getting stockings filled with treats, presents under the Christmas tree, and, if they live in Germany, daily mini-treats in their Advent calendars. Children get to decorate the gingerbread men, decorate and eat the Christmas cookies and in our house, they even get to decorate the tree. The grown-ups don’t get a look-in.

Here’s a German muffin recipe to console the grown-ups and bring them a little Christmas cheer. It contains amaretto and dark chocolate and is not for children, unless they have very sophisticated palates.

Amaretto and Chocolate Muffins:*

Ingredients:
150g flour
100g ground almonds
2 tsps baking powder
1 pinch salt
2 tsps vanilla extract (or if you live in Germany, one packet vanilla sugar)
2 eggs
120g sugar
150g softened butter
2 tbsps amaretto (I doubled this)
60g dark chocolate shavings

Method:
Heat the oven to 180°c.
Prepare a muffin tray with 12 muffin cases.
Pour yourself a generous glass of red wine and commence sipping.
Sift the flour, baking powder, salt.
Have another large sip of red wine.
Beat the eggs with the vanilla extract, sugar and amaretto till it’s creamy.
Slowly beat in the softened butter.
Mix the wet and dry ingredients.
Taste, with bare finger.
Taste again, to ensure it’s adequately alcoholic. If not, add more amaretto.
Mix in the chocolate shavings.
Eat the leftover 40g of chocolate.
Fill each muffin case two-thirds full.
Bake in the oven for 20 to 25 minutes.
While you wait, eat any remaining muffin dough and sip your red wine. If necessary, pour yourself a second glass.
Remove the muffins from the oven. Allow to cool (about a minute will do) and then eat with your red wine.

I had one for breakfast this morning with coffee. I think I have a hangover.

* Apologies for the metric measures.

December Planning

Much as I like to subscribe to a spontaneous, seat-of-the-pants style of operating that would allow me to take up an invitation to go trekking in Patagonia with five hours’ notice, I actually have to be fairly organised. I’m divided. The real me is a dreamy, peripatetic traveller armed with a notebook and some chocolate, but the current me is a busy mother of three, with a job, lots of friends, a husband who would occasionally like my attention and three lunches to pack. Reality is that I vacillate between the two poles, being either relatively organised or utterly forgetful.

I have friends who are really organised, who get their tax returns back in January, who have colour-coded wardrobes, and who have a place for everything in their homes. I admire them, but try not to compare myself. Some of those friends don’t have children (which opens up many gazillions of free hours), others have live-in help (ditto) and others don’t work. When I’m beating myself up for not being perfectly organised, I have to remind myself that everyone’s situation is unique. My strategy is always people over things, so my children get more attention than the kitchen cupboards, my friends get more attention than the laundry and my husband, when he’s here, gets more attention than, say, the mop.

So, bearing in mind that people come first, and that Christmas is no fun when Mummy’s running around in increasingly small circles emitting a high-pitched shrieking noise, here is my answer to BlogLily’s request to share my planning for December:

1. To hand in my last two pieces of freelance work on 14 December, and to not work again until after New Year.

2. To use some of those free hours to work on my new collection of short stories (one in the writing, another six in the planning).

3. To enjoy and relish the week of 17 to 21 December, during which time I must bake and prepare for Daisy’s home birthday, Daisy’s kindergarten birthday and a joint birthday party I am hosting for myself and two friends (potential guest list 50-100?).

4. To have enough, but not too much food, in the house for the week of 22 to 28 December. We won’t starve, even if we don’t have immediate access to stem ginger, mince pies and rum-dipped dates.

5. To relax and enjoy the company of my darling family, especially that of my lovely brother who is making his first-ever journey to Europe to Christmas with us.

6. To buy less stuff.

It’s all about the fun, the love, about some - but not too much - gorgeous food and, if possible, much less stuff.

The Forest Maker

I have this little brother, Andy. He is big and quite funny. He is also kind, dreamy, hard-working, full of empathy, sporty, outdoorsy, loyal and committed. For a living, he makes forests.

When he was growing up and in his early twenties, it was never clear what Andy was going to do for a job. He tried his hand at insurance and while his boss liked him, Andy found the relentless daily grind of office work unbearable. He also became bogged down by office politics - as a non-political animal, he just couldn’t understand it and was often hurt by people standing on his head to climb onto the next rung of the ladder.

He knew it was not for him and he left. He began making my mother’s smoked trout pate and selling it at local markets. This work suited him better: he was his own boss, he could work at his own pace and it allowed him more time to be outdoors. Andy’s smoked trout pate became very popular in KwaZulu-Natal and he even started selling it to a few shops, but it still wasn’t The Thing he wanted to be doing with his life. The family, as you can imagine, were wringing their hands. What was he going to do? Who was he going to be?

What nobody knew was that, in his heart, Andy knew what he was going to be. In his time off from the smoked trout pate business, Andy took his beloved black Lab Billy for walks in the indigenous forests of KZN. While there, he would collect seeds off the forest floor, take them home and nurture them. Achingly slowly, over a period of years, Andy developed a nursery of 4000 trees in his garden. He found he was spending more time looking after his trees than making trout pate. He joined local environmental groups, made contacts and began to be known as someone who knew a lot about indigenous trees.

Going indigenous is a big trend amongst South African gardeners because plants that are local to the area attract more birds and insects, whereas exotics leach the soil of precious nutrients and can be destructive. Andy began to sell a few trees from his home nursery, started to advise the lady gardeners of Pietermaritzburg on replacing exotics with indigenous and participating in drives to replace exotics in public spaces with beautiful indigenous trees.

And then his miracle happened. He was offered tenancy at the nursery of the local Botanical Gardens. He carefully transported his 4000 trees from the garden at home to the Gardens, where he now has a shop, staff and a public venue for his skills and knowledge. He is also involved in wholesale indigenous tree sales, participates in tree fairs and has become known as one of KZN’s top tree people. He still landscapes for lady gardeners, but he has also worked on golf courses and larger projects, removing hillsides of exotics and replacing them with indigenous. He is the forest maker.

My brother inspires me because he didn’t take the traditional route into the working world, but followed his heart. He ignored all the naysayers and did what he had to do. When he found his true calling and began to live it, his miracle happened. He is not an arrogant boss; he labours with his team, digging and hacking and hauling. He speaks brilliant Zulu. His employees love him. His employers love him. He is the gentle tree-man of KwaZulu-Natal. I am so proud of him.

And the best news of all, selfish sister that I am, that he is finally earning enough money to buy himself a ticket to come and spend Christmas with me and my family. This is his first visit to us ever and the best possible Christmas present I could have.

Towards the End of the Season, Limply

In the novels of Jane Austen there is usually some reference to The Season - where the gentry head to Town, attend balls, horse-races, the ballet, parties and dinners, and try, to the best of their ability to marry off their marriagable daughters to young men of good fortune and pleasant personality. Today the season still exists, and, according to Wikipedia lasts from April to August, and includes events such as Glyndebourne, Royal Ascot, Chelsea Flower Show, Henley Royal Regatta and Wimbledon. Afterwards, today’s gentry head back to their country piles or to France while their children go to Ibiza, where they club senselessly, get photographed for Heat magazine with no knickers on or topless on the beach, and try to return without a husband.

The only season event I ever attended was the Henley Royal Regatta, to which I was invited by my totally lovely and rather posh cousins. I was doing my gap year of waitressing and partying and having inappropriate relationships in London and they took me under their wing, allowing me to arrive at their beautiful Surrey home, where I would warm my bottom on the Aga, be cossetted, fed and then sent back for another few weeks’ wildness in the capital. Thanks to them I am a whizz at croquet. These were the same people who took me to the ballet at Covent Garden (which I would never have been able to afford), and, despite having had a theatre supper beforehand, produced a picnic hamper full of delicious salmon sandwiches and champagne for afterwards, which we sat down and enjoyed at midnight on the Covent Garden cobblestones. They liked to do things in style. Henley was just the same - we cruised there in their Bentley with its cream leather and walnut interior. I was outfitted in a borrowed dress and a small and very cheap hat that I bought at Brick Lane (dress and hat being the appropriate outfit for ladies at the Regatta) and enjoyed an excess of champagne and watching strong men row boats in the rain.

Less glamorous, but equally demanding, is the Charlotte’s Web Family Season. It is six months long, and lasts from October to the end of March. I am relieved to announce that it is now drawing to a close. Since October we have celebrated the following:

• One wedding anniversary
  • Cleverly planned for 1 October, so that’s it hard to forget. Thus far, we haven’t done so. We don’t go large but the occasion is marked and thusly the season opened.
• Five birthdays
  • Two of these require full parties, with guests, cake, games, crafts and dressing-up. Since it is winter they are always, regrettably, indoors. The grown-up birthdays usually also require a party but we bailed this season and gave dinner parties instead.
• Sundry German festivals, requiring the crafting of objects, the sourcing of costumes, the turning-up at and participating in parades, the eating of festival related baked goods, the singing of festival songs and the smiling and conversing with other festival participants. These include the Laternefest and Fasching (Carnival).
• Sankt Nicolaustag
• Christmas: the usual insane cookfest and eatfest and giftfest, plus assorted houseguests
• New Year: ditto except minus the gifts
• A week of skiing. One of the reasons we are in Europe is to offer our children chances to do things we which didn’t do growing up in Africa. Hence skiing. Last year, I found this such an exhausting experience, that I have avoided it this time, but my saint of a husband has taken his daughters off with a bunch of friends and they are turning into ski bunnies. Less of the snow eating this year, which is a good thing, both for their digestive systems and for the ski resorts. They need all the snow they can get.
• Easter - two years ago, Ollie was born on 27 March, which was an Easter Sunday, so we include it in our Season. We celebrated his first birthday while skiing (ie he had a cake) but this year we will have to mark it with a party, a home-made cake and by inviting some of his little friends around. If we are very, very lucky they could play outside.

After Ollie’s birthday, we have six months off. No birthdays, no parties, no festivals for which we are required to craft anything. There will be no need to fashion pirate or Thomas the Tank Engine birthday cakes and no requirements for eyepatches or spangly crowns at the eleventh hour. I am looking forward to it - and summer - enormously. If you are looking for me in the six months starting April, this is where I hope you will find me, physically, spiritually, emotionally. Gin and tonic, anyone?

Pomegranate Pavlova Takes The Cake

One may cook one’s goose on Christmas Day, render sprouts edible, time an array of vegetables to be hot all at the same time, or lie gibbering on the couch sipping another glass of champagne, whatever takes one’s fancy, but really the only important part of the festive meal is the dessert. I care not particularly about the bird - I prefer to pass it over to my husband as if it were a rugby ball, saying “Catch this, darling, it’s all yours”. And he obliges by trussing it down, tending it, nursing it and finally carving it up.

It is the pudding that obsesses me (I use the word pudding generically, to mean “the interesting sweet stuff that follows all the other stuff”). I start some weeks before, researching, re-reading all the well-thumbed “dessert” sections of my favourite cookbooks. I don’t bother going the traditional route - no-one, or hardly anyone, likes an old-fashioned Christmas pudding (here I use the word specifically to mean “a pudding cooked in a basin with lots of fruit and nasty stuff”). I rather like mince pies, but no-one else in my family does, and they can only be eaten with tons of brandy butter, so I eschew those too. This year, I narrowed down the favourites to:

Nigella’s Raspberry and Lemongrass Trifle (with vodka)
Nigella’s Chestnut Cheesecake (with rum)
Nigella’s Festive Pavlova (with no added alcohol)

I’ve made the first three times now, and it’s always a raging success, but this year I needed to chart new territory. In a raging fit of domestic goddess-hood, I decided to make both the latter puddings. Now, given that there were three adults for Christmas Eve supper and four for Christmas lunch, this was completely OTT. But I allowed myself the excuse of Christmas excess and sold myself on the plan by justifying that the egg whites could be used for the Pavlova and the egg yolks for the cheesecake. Saving eggs! Saving money!

The pavlova was easy: those aforementioned egg whites, whipped up with caster sugar, cornflour, vanilla extract, splash of vinegar and pinch of salt and tossed into the oven for a slow cook at 150 degrees. After it had cooled down completely - be attentive, here comes the really clever bit - I turned it upside down. This is Nigella’s tip and it ensures that the moist, spongy bit of the meringue amalgamates nicely with the cream. I then layered thickly whipped cream, lemon curd, cream again, and then scattered the pomegranate seeds on top. It looked extremely pretty, as you can see, and tasted light and delicious. Father-in-law and husband were suitably impressed.

The chestnut cheesecake has thus far proved itself to be extraneous. I am the only person who has sampled it. It is subtle and lovely and standing in lonely splendour in the fridge, being elbowed by goose and sprout remains. I shall have to try and foist it on the children tomorrow - cheesecake for breakfast, anyone?

My Christmas Present to You

I wanted to write a post about the absence of snow, the environmental consequences of global warming, how the SUV drivers of Europe won’t be able to ski this winter because it’s not cold enough to snow, but I’m not going to. You can read the NY Times article for yourself if you want to.

Instead, I’m going to give you a present. I beg you to do this with your children. If you don’t have children, try it yourself. It’s the most fun you can have on your computer apart from blogging. You come away feeling like a genius, having created masterpieces, but it’s really easy. And I should know.

Friends, bloggers, webwaifs, I give you … your very own snow-maker. Copy and paste the URL and enjoy:

Your very own snow-maker

And I wish you all a happy, peaceful Christmas season, filled with lots of presents, feasting and naps on the sofa. And for the lucky ones, some snow.

This Christmas Week

Thirty-eight years ago today, a baby was born in a humid, provincial African town. It was 4pm on one of the hottest days in living memory. Her mother laboured in an open labour ward, with two other women. Their three husbands were in the room. There was no air conditioning. She was dimly aware of Christmas beetles singing their interminable song, and cars on the town’s main road outside. The labour was long and painful. Eventually, she was taken to the delivery theatre where she endured an episeotomy without pain relief. The baby was born safely, and the young parents were delighted with the arrival of their daughter.

The mother and her baby spent six days in hospital, with the baby being taken away and bottle-fed by the nursing staff whenever the mother needed to sleep. She struggled to breast-feed, but was eventually persuaded that bottle-feeding would be easier and more convenient. She complied. On the sixth day in hospital, she made a special request to be allowed to leave so as to attend the family’s Christmas celebrations. The staff considered - usually women spent ten days in hospital, it would be untoward to let them go early. However, it was Christmas, and apart from the usual post-birth discomfort the mother doing well.

Her eager young husband collected his wife and new baby, and took them home for a quick feed and change of clothing. The mother put on a cotton pants-suit - a flowered top and tapered trousers - and within an hour they were driving to the Christmas party. They drove up to a gracious red-brick house, surrounded by large gardens, and, bursting with pride, took their new daughter in to meet their family. The baby’s grandparents - well-coiffed, elegant, warm - welcomed their third grandchild into their house for the first time. Her aunts and uncles cooed and kissed her, and her two little cousins, only a couple of years older than her - peered at her with interest.

Despite the heat, they sat down to a large, hearty, English-style Christmas lunch: a turkey, a ham, stuffing, roast potatoes, various vegetables, followed by Christmas pudding with coins inside, mince-pies and brandy butter. There was jollity: crackers and silly hats. The new baby slept in her carry-cot, unaware that she was attending her first party. Her mother sat at the table, but her heart was with her baby, whose tiny hands fluttered as she slept.

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It’s completely fitting that the first place I went to after leaving hospital was a Christmas feast. Feasts are the way I like to celebrate. I’ve just finished a weekend of birthday celebrations and the focus for me was the food. We had a dinner party for some friends rich with north African and Spanish cuisine. The menu was: hummus, basil and goat’s cheese dip, and baba ghanoush with delicious bread, followed by harissa roast chickens with potatas bravas and three salads: tabbouleh, carrot and cumin salad and pomegranates with cucumber. Dessert was walnut, lemon and cardamom cake with creme fraiche. There were dates and membrillo on the table for picking. The next day, we had a German-style Kaffee und Kuchen nachmittag with an almond cake, gingerbread muffins and a chocolate cake courtesy of friends. After the coffee, we had a restorative sherry, put on some African music and danced with our kids.

This Christmas week is not only about feasts and fests, but also about births. Having just finished the washing up (but not all the cakes), the next celebration on the cards is my daughter’s birthday. Daisy was born at home, and the thrill and excitement of her birth completely matches the joy of parenting her. We celebrate her birthday reminding ourselves of the blinding surprise she gave us by arriving at home before we could leave for hospital.

So it’s a big day for Daisy, with her kindergarten and home parties on the same day. She will require two sets of cakes and yummy things to eat - probably a plain sponge cake baked in the teddy bear cake tin and chocolate muffins for kindergarten, and maybe a chocolate cake and lemon muffins for the home birthday. There will have to be party games, some crafting action, definitely a bit of wild and noisy play, and then some supper - possibly mini pizzas and sausages - before her little friends are collected and we can put one tired, sugar-wired birthday girl to bed.

Almost as soon as we finish with Daisy’s birthday, our Christmas plans step into higher gear. If you came to my house for Christmas, you’d be served goose, not turkey, and red cabbage with apple. I can’t live without roast potatoes and my husband needs brussels sprouts, but we spruce them up with pancetta and chestnuts. There’d be no mince-pies, Christmas pudding or brandy butter, but there might be a lemongrass and raspberry trifle or a chestnut cheesecake.

The traditions that I grew up with are English, but my own little family is making its new traditions - a serving from our German environment, a slice from our English heritage, a large proportion from the land of our hearts, South Africa. I like to think we’re becoming citizens of the world.

TechnoPeasant Uploads …

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… some heaving boots and a lantern. Sadly for Ollie, his boot is very small so Sankt Nicolaus the First (aka Mummy) wasn’t able to get much into it. However, Sankt Nicolaus the Second came home very late from Birmingham and added a small red London bus and a Postman Pat book to his stash. He was mightily impressed, as were his two sisters. Our fridge is still full of their St Nic chocolate, which was kindly added to by our lovely Frau M and the local Schlecker. The temptations, they do not go away, and it is only the 9th of December. I am visibly swelling and am actually looking forward to the privations of January.

And now to thank my agents …

This is a result of my first foray into Flickr, which I achieved after some kind encouragement from Megan. Her blog is worth a browse for its combination of lovely photos, beautiful writing and gorgeous crafts (after reading it, I said to St Nic II, “I think I want a sewing machine” and he said, “Write your novel first and then you can buy your own!”).

I’m feeling very proud of myself since I am already evincing my aim to move from technophobe to technophile. There be podcasts (admittedly, all the technical expertise there was JP’s, and I was merely the talking head). Anyway, since I’m no longer ‘phobe but not yet ‘phile, I’m taking on the moniker of techopeasant (for which I have to thank Jen), but only for a short while, mind. Soon I’m going to be scaring you with my technical wizardry.

And my final thanks go to Kerryn for the lovely swag decorating the bottom of my December posts.

Christmas in Germany: License to Swag

I’ve been shepherding a dear friend around the local Christmas markets the last few days, which explains my absence here. As a result of her great good taste, my home is now wreathed in Christmas splendour: starry, starry lights in the window, a large lantern with a Christmas candle in it on the doorstep, crystals of various hues reflecting candlelight back at us. There are swags, bows, pine cones, walnuts and angels serving as decoration and a big Stollen cake languishing in the kitchen. The Christmas tree is not up yet, but that comes later in the month, in time for Daisy’s and my birthdays.

I have learnt to love a northern hemisphere Christmas. I’ve come from a place where we barbequed our turkeys and ate them cold with salad and chilled white wine, and now I live in a place where we roast our geese and eat them hot with red cabbage and Gluehwein. It’s fantastic.

In Germany, Christmas starts in early November, with the Laternefest. This is in honour of Sankt Martin, a kindly sixth century fellow who gave part of his cloak to a beggar in order to protect him from the cold. He then went on to become a Bishop (Martin not the beggar), and we celebrate his act of kindness by making our own lanterns, lighting them and walking through the streets at dusk singing lantern and Sankt Martin songs. I still haven’t made the connection between the lanterns and the saint, but I love the festival. It’s one of my favourites. However, as Ms Yum Yum Cafe says, it does mean that Christmas has a seven-week build-up. Which if you are the parent of three small children, can be exhausting.

My strategy is to ignore Christmas until December. While my kids have been annotating the Toys R Us catalogues for some weeks, I have been pretending not to notice. But now it’s here, and I have license to swag. I started by selecting my Advent wreath at the weekly market. The wreath has four white candles and sits on the table. You light one candle for each weekend of Advent. The children each have Advent calendars - two in fact, thanks to the lovely Frau M and I not conferring and each buying a set. Every morning, they open a little window and eat the small plastic chocolate lurking there, bringing us closer to the huge chocofest that they hope their Christmas will be. Ollie, only 20 months, can actually say “chockit”. It is a mild obsession in our home.

Then it’s time to hit the Christmas markets. This weekend, we did four different ones. Our little town has a rather bijou market compared to the larger ones, but it is perfectly formed: you can buy Gluehwein, Schweinsteaks in various forms, Lebkuchen from mini to monstrous, some beautiful wooden toys, homemade candles and angels. They have a craft tent, where for a couple of euros they take your kids off your hands and teach them how to make things. This weekend, Lily (and her mother) learned how to make a wreath. This is now adorning our front door.

We also managed the Heidelberg, Schwetzingen and Speyer markets. Both the former have open-air ice rinks attached to their Christmas markets, which adds to the atmosphere. I displayed my lack of northern hemisphere nous by taking my daughters ice-skating in skirts and tights. After an hour, children were both rather wet and I was getting looks from other parents who were clever enough both to be born in Germany and to know the ice-skating mantra, “Always in trousers”. I stand re-educated. We’ll be there next week, waterproofed.

On Wednesday, 6th December, we celebrate the arrival of Sankt Nikolaus, who, confusingly, looks exactly like Father Christmas, but isn’t. My daughters have told me on clear authority that Sankt Nikolaus is in no way der Weinachtsman. Each child will put a boot out on the front doorstep, and in the morning, this will be filled with sweets (more chocolate, no doubt) and small presents. Emphasis on small, since we still have the visit of our more familiar Anglo-American Father Christmas to await on Christmas Eve. I’m pleased to report, though, that thanks to today’s swagging efforts, Sankt Nikolaus will at least be able to warm himself next to one very large lantern. And if he’s hungry, he could have a walnut.