The Christmas Chronicles by Nigel Slater. Read Along Thread 2022 PART 2

[LillianGish]

A continuation of the brilliant thread started by @Dillidilly who I hope is still lurking somewhere and reading along

Sooo behind ... just reading 7th December and ordered some Tom Smith crackers 😂

How about skipping to now, @StarDog? Thats what I did. There's just a little chunk of Dec I've not got back to yet.

Re homemade marzipan, given that it goes under icing and over strongly flavoured cake, I wouldn't bother. I'd do it for marzipan fruits or something else where the marzipan is the star!

We're finally having the sausage leek and bean dish tonight.

I've been scouting ahead, looking for stuffing recipes. Forewarning- there are a couple of really chunky chapters to come. Might be worth allocating a couple of days to them.

I'm going to see if I can buy some marzipan in the shops tomorrow but it's not always easy to find so I might have to make it! I love carols do. I did some carolling around the town centre last week for the first time ever - it was fun!

Thank you pickle - tip much appreciated! I'm up to 12th and have put the tree up. Going to try and power through to catch up with book and all other Xmas jobs!

I do Nigel's sage and onion stuffing, but its not in this book, I copied it out of a magazine many years ago. I prefer it to any of the ones with fruit in.

I can't say any of his stuffing recipes have filled me with excitement. They just look like meatballs of various kinds.

I'm going to resort to an old trick, and add a combination of sausage meat, orange peel, cranberry/redcurrant jam and chestnuts to a packet of sage and onion. If I mix the meat and basic stuffing first, I can divide it and make two different kinds by adding the other bits. Probably in oven dishes, for ease.

I wish to issue a warning.

Salted pretzels in milk chocolate (for DS1's stocking) are absolutely amazeballs delicious. If you are interested and have better self control than me, stick a broken up bar of chocolate in a lined brownie tin with some salty pretzels. Leave it in the oven after you've been cooking, then nip back and prod it to mix the pretzels in slightly. Pop it in the fridge. When it's set, pop it free of the tin, break it up and now the tricky bit....

Bag it up and put it away. There's significantly less than there should have been, and I'm not very hungry for my sausage leek and bean!

19 December
Sour pickles. Sweet comfort
The next entry is for 21 December by which time I shall be back in the UK so I'm wondering if @picklemewalnuts would be able to take on the task of putting up the titles again? I'm seriously considering taking Nigel with me, but it's such a heavy tome and we already have Christmas cases stuffed with gifts and packages that I just don't think it's going to be possible. I was planning to treat myself to a read ahead once all the preparations are done. I half wish I had it on my Kindle, but it's such a lovely book with all the illustrations and the string bookmark that part of the pleasure is turning the pages. I can just imagine DH's face if I get out on the Eurostar when we're supposed to be travelling light...

I certainly can, though it won't be as good because I won't be coloured as OP, or able to do bold.

However, you could photo the pages on your phone, to allow you to continue to read along?

Welcome back to Blighty! Have a lovely trip, hope the travelling goes well!

@LillianGish Surely your DH wouldn’t really mind? You must have a tote bag big enough to fit it in...would be such a shame to not have the book with you to finish! It’s the Christmas law according to Nigel, you know...🎄🎄🎄

I will catch up on the last few chapters today, hopefully. Was a very busy day yesterday!

I made today's dish a couple of weeks ago, due to excess carrots and cauliflower! It went down well, though my crowd tend to ask where the meat is. I'll definitely make chickpea and root veg purée again. I think a few juicy sausage plonked on top would help!

I was sad to read about his mum. Do we hear more later? He said a few days ago that it was the last Christmas they were all together, but I didn't know what was coming.

We finally decorated (trimmed) our tree. I sent DH, who is distinctly Not Nigel, down the road for new fairy lights. Warm white, I said. 30 m of coloured lights later and we have a retro disco tree 🤦‍♀️ I don’t know what Nigel would say

@picklemewalnuts she died when he was a teenager. His memoir ‘toast’ is worth reading.

Also, I walked past a greengrocer today and sadly there were no trays of figs, cheap or otherwise. I do like the look of the pickled figs. But it is probably for the best as I was already carrying two panettones and a large amount of dairy milk which is surprisingly heavy

There's an answer to the problem of the dairy milk
And the tree looks fab. I'm really pleased with the lights on hours this year, so need to label them up when we take it down!

Your tree looks great @bigbadbarry

I’ll join you in the NVN tree club @bigbadbarry

Beautiful trees, @EspeciallyD and @bigbadbarry!

Here’s ours.

Wow love all your trees! They're beautiful! I also love the dragon wearing a Santa hat @bigbadbarry @picklemewalnuts I think Nigel was 9 when she died and he had a very fraught relationship with his Stepmother. His autobiography 'Toast' is worth a read but you'll see him in a very different light compared to CCs.

Reading the Carols chapter again and writing out memories of Morfar (grandfather) leading us all in singing hymns/carols and dancing ‘round the tree...got me all emotional! So very nostalgic.

How lovely, Tangled! My Christmas childhood memories are not that great, to be honest. Nothing awful, but discomfort and tension.

I do remember my Grandad having a tin of quality street he would pass around, and all of us squeezing into my Nana's back room for Boxing Day food, as the front room was for best. I think maybe the grownups went in there? It was very much the room you sat still and made polite conversation in! It had a stiff sofa, and those chrysanthemum cushion covers, made by my aunt. That was the happier side of the family!

Awww, it's lovely though! We have retro coloured lights also. I'm not allowed golden lights by order of DS1 (DS2 does not give a shiny shit as far as I can tell, though I put up coloured lights round the window to enhance his birthday today) and secretly, DH feels golden lights aren't Christmassy enough. I'm pining for a classy Nigelesesque pine!

but do like ours, it's sort of Mad Victorian, if they had candles that burned in multicolour. It has a distinct Lurch to one side this year.

It’s lovely @GlomOfNit and happy birthday DS2 from my DD3! I now have a house of teens

I’ve had a redemptive night here trying Nige’s Black Pudding and Celeriac mash (with baked apple)! After the disastrous cranberry toad in the hole I was worried, but this turned out to be delicious and easy! Feel free to judge my efforts 😁

Oh I forgot that recipe!

Where would you recommend for buying black pudding? Will Tesco do? It's not something I usually get.