Happy New Year!

We spent the holidays in Cambridge as I had some work to do. My partner's parents came down for Christmas and Boxing Day and we had the planned Italian Xmas meal on the 26th. This year I sent a lot of ecards and reserved homemade cards for loved ones who didn't have access to the internet. Last year I made lots of them and I still had plenty of leftovers. In fact there are still some left for next year.

My mother in law brought a very festive homemade Christmas cake, complete with snowman, which was quite suitable since it had snowed more than usual during December.

The Italian meal went well, here is a picture of the festive table with the cooked meat, courtesy of Aldi. The menu was slightly different from my previous post.

We still had salmon and sliced cooked meats for starters, then fresh pasta with ragu sauce, roast beef with fried carrot sticks and tiramisu for dessert. We were too full to eat the cheeses and there was no room for panettone either.

I haven't made any New Year's resolutions but I'm hoping we can find a house and stop renting!

Our cheap and cheerful Xmas

 
Here is what we are planning for our own Christmas. As we are in rental (again), we have not unpacked all the decorations, so it's down to a smallish artificial tree and other random bits and pieces scattered all over the kitchen diner and hung on the banister of the staircase (a wooden nativity, a soft Santa with fake pine reindeers, sundry candles, tinsel garlands and ceramic festive figurines).

I got a tiny tree from a charity shop to sit on the huge TV (my partner is hoping it will die soon so he can buy an ultra slim one, but it's still working well so we are stuck with the 45kg monster).

Some decorations are hanging in the lounge, partially hiding the mound of boxes we cannot squeeze in the garage (click here for photo of our wall of shame).

As mentioned previously we are going for an Italian menu. We are finalising it but these are the options:

STARTERS
Smoked salmon
Affettati (slices of Parma ham, Bresaola and salami)
Duck pate' served with toasted chunks of bread

MAINS
Ravioli with ragu (meaty sauce)
Roast beef in wine sauce with fried carrots

DESSERTS
Cheeses
Tiramisu
Panettone

Other dishes that didn't make it include: Russian salad (insalata russa), cappelletti in brodo (stuffed pasta in broth), brasato al barolo (sliced roast beef with Barolo wine sauce), capon (fattened castrated cock), panettone farcito (stuffed panettone with all sort of goodies), castagnaccio (chestnut pudding), panna cotta. These are all traditional dishes in northern Italy.