Mutti and Judith raise a glass to your health (three times three and with a heave-ho rumblelow). Joseph not shown, because he was taking the photograph.
25 December 2012
Greetings to You All!
Mutti and Judith raise a glass to your health (three times three and with a heave-ho rumblelow). Joseph not shown, because he was taking the photograph.
We have Cut the Cake
....and positioned the two figurines which had to be removed to guard the gap we left:
Then We Went for a Walk....
....and, boy, was it damp. There is an old saying that when it rains in Muswell Hill, it floods in Tottenham, or (more succinctly) that “Highgate's rain is Tottenham's pain”. The former Broadwater Farm (when it was a working farm) was named because it stood in the area where the Moselle Brook, which carried away the rain which fell on the higher ground to the west, would routinely overflow during storms; even though the Moselle was later culverted to prevent flooding, the ground through which it ran would still become waterlogged after heavy rains.
Lordship Recreation Ground (popularly known as the Rec) occupies much of the former farmland and was recently restored after many years of neglect. As part of the restoration, the stretch of the Moselle which passes through the Rec was deculverted and landscaped to form a natural water feature. But far too much rain has fallen in the past few days for it to completely drain the ground, as these photographs taken on a walk around the area this afternoon show -- the lake is so full that it has overflowed into the adjacent woodland, the field drain which is supposed to carry away water from the football pitch is working overtime to achieve not very much, and the footballers have given up because playing in a puddle isn't much fun.
The bottom photograph shows a back view of Judith and Mutti at the entrance to the Rec's Model Traffic Area, opened in 1938 to teach children about the rules of the road. A comparison of my photograph with the one on the linked webpage shows how decayed it had become compared to how it is now.
Lordship Recreation Ground (popularly known as the Rec) occupies much of the former farmland and was recently restored after many years of neglect. As part of the restoration, the stretch of the Moselle which passes through the Rec was deculverted and landscaped to form a natural water feature. But far too much rain has fallen in the past few days for it to completely drain the ground, as these photographs taken on a walk around the area this afternoon show -- the lake is so full that it has overflowed into the adjacent woodland, the field drain which is supposed to carry away water from the football pitch is working overtime to achieve not very much, and the footballers have given up because playing in a puddle isn't much fun.
The bottom photograph shows a back view of Judith and Mutti at the entrance to the Rec's Model Traffic Area, opened in 1938 to teach children about the rules of the road. A comparison of my photograph with the one on the linked webpage shows how decayed it had become compared to how it is now.
Cooking the Goose
Three stages in the cooking of the goose for our dinner today: firstly weighing the bird, after its extraction from the freezer yesterday, to calculate the cooking time:
....putting in the home-made stuffing (breadcrumbs, apricots, onions, eggs, Vietnamese coriander) after breakfast this morning, once the bird had completely thawed out:
....piercing the bird with a skewer after a few hours in the oven, to check that it was cooking correctly (the blurred hand of the Judith shows that this was an activity captured in real-time, not posed):
....putting in the home-made stuffing (breadcrumbs, apricots, onions, eggs, Vietnamese coriander) after breakfast this morning, once the bird had completely thawed out:
....piercing the bird with a skewer after a few hours in the oven, to check that it was cooking correctly (the blurred hand of the Judith shows that this was an activity captured in real-time, not posed):
24 December 2012
Decorating the Cake
Today we did a bit of last-minute food shopping (including the all-important gin-and-tonic for pre-dinner drinks), then went to the allotment to dig up some parsnips to go with our goose tomorrow. Then the Wugster and Mutti got stuck into icing and decorating the cake -- apart from the decoration added by myself, being a tableau of painted lead fantasy figurines (as once used in Dungeons & Dragons role-playing games and not looked at or even taken out of their box for getting on for thirty years) surrounding a sleeping pottery dragon which otherwise gathers dust on one of the shelves on Judith's side of the bed. (It is, in fact, a recreation of a tableau made for a Christmas cake when we were still living in Pimlico, in the 1980s. What goes around must, clearly, come around again.)
Below are photographs of (a) the freshly-washed parsnips, (b) a view of the allotment in its rather forlorn-looking winter state (with its crop of plastic milk bottles on the ends of poles and, thanks to the heavy rain of the past couple of days, a very full pond), and (c) the completed cake. The rather wonky pale green trees around the edges of the cake are its sole seasonal gesture.
Below are photographs of (a) the freshly-washed parsnips, (b) a view of the allotment in its rather forlorn-looking winter state (with its crop of plastic milk bottles on the ends of poles and, thanks to the heavy rain of the past couple of days, a very full pond), and (c) the completed cake. The rather wonky pale green trees around the edges of the cake are its sole seasonal gesture.
23 December 2012
Making a Christmas Cake (revisited)
Mutti arrived this afternoon, to stay with us for the holiday period; so today was the day to start finishing off the cake made last month. This entailed first applying jam to the surface of the cake, to provide a substrate to which the (bought-in, ready-made) marzipan could be attached; then discovering, once it had been rolled out, that we didn't have enough marzipan to completely cover the cake. Oh well!
The cake now has to be left for 24 hours, for the marzipan to dry; then the icing can be applied. In the meantime, here are some photographs of the cake-makers at work: the Wugster rolling out the marzipan; the Wugster applying the jam; and the Wugster and Mutti applying the marzipan.
The cake now has to be left for 24 hours, for the marzipan to dry; then the icing can be applied. In the meantime, here are some photographs of the cake-makers at work: the Wugster rolling out the marzipan; the Wugster applying the jam; and the Wugster and Mutti applying the marzipan.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)