Three seasonal things #9

Marzipanning the cake; crows in the woods; church loitering

We are really getting there now. This last week, of course, we hit midwinter (and if you haven’t watched my Midwinter film yet, you can do so here. It’s very relevant to the whole midwinter period). I did two lovely things on the day. Firstly a woodland walk which started off as just ‘gah I need to take the dogs out’ until I got there and realised: this is it. This is the turning of the year. How special to be here today.

And then in the afternoon my first Christmas dinner, the full works, with turkey and crackers and flaming Christmas pudding and the lot, at my mum’s for my brother and his family, visiting from up north. I’m cooking for everyone on Christmas Day and it being so soon after has freed me up to do something different. I’m going for: slow-roast leg of lamb pulled apart and doused with mint and pomegranate molasses and seeds; saffron roast potatoes; caramelised garlicy carrots; a kind of Ottolenghi sprout thing involving allspice and maple syrup; and a couple of dips, maybe muhammara and a yoghurt-tahini sauce and maybe even some flatbreads if I get around to it. Afters is chocolate torte with spiced clementine syrup (a Jamie recipe, though I’ve added the spices bit for Christmassyness) and I also have been poaching some dried apricots in the syrup and am going to whizz them into a custard and turn it into ice cream to have with the torte.

So now you know!

Just in case you are new here, every week I write about three things I have noticed or done or eaten etc this week, and you tell me yours in the comments. I love to do a little highlights reel from your last-week comments, and here it is:

The moon bouncing off snow and lighting up the garden; walking along a busy high street with a bag full of christmas chocolates, a bunch of foliage and some candied orange peel; ice lanterns in the garden; scattering birdseed in a frozen park; a stag silhouetted on a snowy hillside (wow); making paper snowflakes and Christmas stars; a fox sleeping in a nook in the garden all day and waking up at dusk; twinkly candles and lights in the gloom; lying on a blanket in the snow and watching the Geminids (three spotted!); a carpet of ginkgo around the house; watching birds surfing the wind from a cosy indoors; picking a pot of frozen sloes; bullfinches, goldfinches and noisy sparrows on the bird feeder.

Beautiful, as ever. Thank you.

Here’s mine:

The marzipan

It is very like me to have boasted about making my cake on Stir Up Sunday and then nearly forget to ice the thing until actual Christmas. Perhaps by the time you read this it will be iced. Perhaps not. It has marzipan now though. Baby steps.

Crows in the woods

This was a fabulously gothic moment in the otherwise sunny and bright midwinter woods walk, as we turned what I should really call Crow Corner, as there is always a murder of them there hanging about and shouting at everyone down below. You can’t really see them here but somehow you get the idea anyway.

Church loitering

Like all the other heathens I find myself drawn to churches at this time of year, and in particular I begin loitering around my local parish church. The actual building is perhaps not spectacular or even very old in itself but there is something very special about it, partly the fact that it sits within a circular graveyard, which a local historian has said suggests that it may be a very old place of worship indeed. I think the attraction is something to do with continuity, reassurance, and imagining past lives, people doing the same thing here for hundreds and hundreds of years, trudging across bleak fields (as was) towards a warm, brightly lit doorway. And there’s something about all that at Christmas.

Me and a friend used to drag our kids to the Christingle service there on Christmas Eve. The first time we went it was packed with toddlers all stumbling around straw-packed mangers holding actual naked flames, which was utterly beautiful and slightly terrifying. After that they switched to glow sticks and a little of the magic was lost, but I would still go if I could drag the now-teens along. Alas.

That’s my week. Please do tell me something you did or spotted or made that marked this week of the year out as…this week of the year. And I wish you a wonderful week ahead, filled with good food, laughter and candles, plus a little time to step away, breathe and enjoy the darkness too.

Happy Christmas!