My Family and Other Christmases

My family is revving up for Christmas. I know this because Heather is in the kitchen making Christmas biscuits in the shapes of angels, snowmen, holly leaves, bells, Daleks etc, and I have just returned from a yomp into town (in yet MORE rain) at the behest of Andy who requires ingredients for making Christmas sausages and Christmas beer. (Cinnamon sticks, raisins, glucose -1kg, pork shoulder -1kg, eye cream, oops, no, that's for me because I've noticed a couple of creases that won't go away in the morning and although I'm going to be a granny in 3 months' time, I'm not intending to look like one.)

Ah, Christmas beer. Now, in the eight years Andy and I have been together I have only once seen him drink a pint of beer and that was at a wedding reception after he'd been on the wine for most of the evening and if you gave him a pint of puddle water, he probably would have drunk that too. It was odd seeing him drink a pint of beer. He's not a pint-of-beer-in-yer-hand man at all, not in my eyes. But he's decided, on the advice of 'The Home Farmer Magazine for Dreamers and Realists', that Christmas beer is going to be an essential part of Much Malarkey Manor Christmas '09.

The kit that arrived in the post yesterday will make 40 pints of beer. 40 pints?!!?? Please bear in mind that I am teetotal and cannot help Andy out in the consumption of this 40 pints. Besides, my plan for this Christmas involves much fruit cake, a trifle made with jaffa cakes and maltesers, and a variety of novelty cheeses (with biscuits). So Andy's going to be on his own vis a vis the consumption of the 40 pints. Unless Chris helps him. But then Chris is starting a fitness kick because he has decided he is going to apply to join the police force and as yet is unable to run the required distance in the required time in order, presumably, to be able to catch crooks or dash from police car to dough-nut shop whilst waiting at a red traffic light. He isn't far off the mark, but has decided to take up running to improve his bleep test. Apparently.

More sausage kit arrived yesterday, too. After the debacle of the ninety feet of beef intestine from the previous sausage making escapade that proved incompatible with the sausage machine nozzle so languished in the fridge until I crept it into the bin, we have reverted to dried collagen skins, which do fit the nozzle and fold up into nice dry parcels that nestle neatly into a drawer. So we are all ready to make Christmas sausage. I don't know how a Christmas sausage differs from a day-to-day sausage (Holly? Cranberries? Frosty the Snowman?), but I'm sure it'll be interesting finding out.

And it's always fun to write a blog about sausages!