sweet nothings...

Every year Norway sends Edinburgh a beautiful christmas tree. http://www.edinburghschristmas.com/content/Edinburgh%E2%80%99sChristmasTree/2476/ It is displayed on the hill leading up to the old town and the castle, overlooking the German market and all the fun christmasy things going on in princes street gardens (which I will hopefully get round to blogging soon!)

skeleton stampede!

elephant skeleton!

I made this for dinner tonight, it was really good! I whizzed together in the blender two roasted romano sweet red peppers, a clove or two of garlic, 30g of ground almonds, 30g of parmesan, 2 tbsp of olive oil, 2 tsp of balsamic vinegar, 1 tsp of lemon juice, and some salt and pepper. It was so easy!

Last night the christmas cake was finally finished! It was made about two months ago, in the middle of October... http://my.opera.com/kirstycat/blog/2009/10/15/christmas-cake we have been feeding it with brandy every week http://my.opera.com/kirstycat/blog/feeding-the-xmas-cake

On Saturday night I put the marzipan layer on it, and on Sunday night my boyfriend added the final layer of royal icing We couldn't afford to add any plastic decorations to the top (the nice ones were about £15 each!), so it was decided that it should be kept nice and simple. It is now sitting in its box, patiently waiting to be eaten

I brushed the cake with warm apricot jam before rolling out the marzipan and sticking it to the cake. The icing was then added, and fluffed up a bit to make it look like snow, and should soon set into a nice crispy crust of icing. I can't wait to cut the cake and see how it turned out!!








fa la la la la, la la la la!

We put our little christmas tree up tonight! The christmas lights were turned on in Edinburgh town centre this evening, we were going to see this happen, but because it started raining and was cold and dark, we decided to just go home and put our own tree up instead, the street lights can wait for another night

Cheesy christmas music was played in the background as we wrestled with assembling the various fiddly parts of the tree, and hung as many decorations as we could each before they all ran out (it was done very quickly!)

This year we have much nicer decorations on the tree than when we were in Salisbury, we even have solid lindt chocolate decorations! Some lights were put up around the kitchen window too

My boyfriend ordered a batch of twelve pies from the 'pie minister' shop down in Bristol/Oxford, and after much excited anticipation they finally arrived today. He staggered down the hill from work this afternoon, clutching his precious box of meat pies to his chest with a big happy grin on his face

They have now been lovingly installed in the freezer, filling up an entire drawer Tonight dinner was pie and mashed potato...I had a vegetarian mushroom one, he had his favourite minty lamb one. I can't understand why he insists on plonking his pie on top of the mash and drowning it in gravy though, I much prefer it just the way it is! Much less messy!

I'm not normally much of a pie person, but I make an exception for this lovely wild mushroom and asparagus one. It reminds me of my occasional day trips to Oxford when I lived down in Salisbury! Nostalgic pie




this is actually how they serve the pies in the pie minister restaurants!

I have been wearing last year's gloves until now, they were all full of holes and with half the fingers hanging off. I finally found a pair I liked today though! A magnificent purple and red striped pair with bright orange fingers I fell in love with them immediately, and pounced upon them with a squeal, despite the strange 'finger flap' fashion that I have ben stubbornly refusing to give in to until now!
I thought this fashion was just a bit silly, and that when they were covering my fingers mitten-style I felt like I was wearing socks on my hands. But these ones were extra woolly, and just so colourful and lovely I couldn't resist