This is what actually happened, as opposed to what I'd do next year. Most of the main timings would probably be the same, though. This is for an 11lb Bronze free-range turkey, and very nice it was, too.

Day before Christmas Eve:
( Short list of Things To Do )

I occasionally browse through the list of things that Amazon seems so keen to recommend to me, although I have yet to buy something based on Amazon's recommendation alone. The strangest one so far this year is a DVD of Outnumbered, Series 1 (a BBC TV Comedy series), which is apparently based on my purchase of a CD of Roxana Panufnik's choral work ( Read more... )

( Christmas Day menu )

I've been meaning to read some Calvino for years - since a very interesting lecture in the first term of my first year at university, in fact - but have never quite got round to it. Since I have a little Christmas money to spend on books, I've decided to start now. The question is what to read first: Invisible Cities or If on a Winter's Night a ( Read more... )

Christmas 2008 was, on the whole, a success. Everyone seemed to like most, if not all, of their presents (the home-made scarves, in particular, went down a treat), Christmas dinner was delicious and more or less as planned, and although I did get pretty tired I had enough energy for all the important bits. I have several new books to read, ( Read more... )

I never know how to start the first post of the year. I generally think of things I want to say during the offline period over Christmas, then forget them or fail to make time to say them, or something catastrophic happens and it all sounds pretty trivial. I have seen the news, about Gaza and Bangkok and the Russian gas and the continuing rumble ( Read more... )

Well, I'm about to leave work for the last time this year. Hooray!

I'm not sure how much I'll be online over the next week or so, so: a very happy Christmas to all who celebrate it, and best wishes for a joyful New Year to everyone.

I haven't done as much cleaning as I'd hoped to, or made the almost-past-their-best eating apples into compote, but on the other hand, almost all of the presents are wrapped, the house is decorated, the bolognaise sauce for the lasagne is in a tupperware box in the fridge, and I've iced the cake ( Read more... )

Thought of something I wanted to ask (and apologies for being scatterbrained and spamming my flist):

Has anyone tried making eggless royal icing, to this this recipe from the bbc or any other? Do you think that recipe would work ( Read more... )

My work laptop has developed a mysterious hardware fault. This means that:

• I have had to cycle into work on a day on which I was supposed to be working from home (although I was still around to receive a parcel, which was handy)
• My morning's work is toast
• I'm spending an exciting afternoon installing Microsoft Visual Studio onto an old consultant ( Read more... )