Parsnips and memories.

 I am so glad I double checked my final online shopping order just now. I know they are a bargain due to the supermarket wars but I seriously would have been flummoxed with 20 bags of the things! I must have pressed the  add button extra hard - that or one of the dogs must have done it! Anyway I cancelled the whole lot because I bought some big fat organic more expensive ones because I like a big fat parsnip! 

Parsnips are lovely but one of the veg I detested when I was a child. I hated them. Also

I love to watch James Martin of a Saturday morning or when I fancy it off the planner and he made bread sauce. This is an unknown phenomenon to me. It's something we never had on the Christmas table when I was a lass. If we had cranberry sauce it was a small jar that my Mum used to get in the Park Hamper she used to get. I thought it was jam and could not understand why people would want jam on their Christmas dinner. I have made my own from scratch now as a grown up but I don't always make it. Haven't this year. I do like the sweetness on a sandwich but I can live without. We always had homemade apple sauce on the table in a certain pyrex white dish with a brown pattern on the sides. I may make apple sauce this year - infact I think I will do it tomorrow. Again, I like it on a cold turkey sandwich. Although after being bread free now for three full week I am doubtful I will be sandwiching at all! It sounds very strange but if I eat bread, my joints hurt. It's not strange really - lots of research in this. I'm trying to avoid sugar and have totally given up anything with artificial sweeteners in it. I am digressing here. Suzanne at No 38 made me chuckle when she talks of her Mum having to get the ingredients for a BFG out of the housekeeping for her cookery lessons at school. I have no idea why, but at Grammar I rather think the DS teacher thought she was Miss Jean Brodie or we were at her own personal French finishing school. The first dish we made was a mixed grill. And like Suzanne's mum, MY mum looked incredulous as she muttered 'where the bloody hell am I going to get watercress from?? I think it was expensive and she had to buy a whole bunch - and it was ONLY FOR THE GARNISH hahahahahah

Other dishes we made were Stuffed brown trout. I had to make do with a rainbow trout because my Dad had caught it fishing! Because none of us ate fish, my nextdoor neighbour's Dad had it for his tea! I made a Lemon Chiffon pie too which was a bit like a cheesecake but with a proper egg based lemon curd. The bus journey home was rough and by the time I got home, the lemon curd and poured out of the case all over my basket!  I was proud of that basket. A great big wicker one with a fancy split plastic cover when it rained, but we made do with a tea towel tucked in it when not. We all had them back in the day! We made duchess potatoes, swiss jelly ( The sorcery - carnation milk whisked into jelly before it sets! ), wild west scones - scones but with bits of bacon snipped in and mixed herbs hahaha. 

Anyway

Christmas dinner as a child was always turkey, stuffing ( paxo ), pigs in blankets but a big sausage, not a cocktail sized one, carrot n swede mash, mashed potatoes, roast potatoes, sprouts, parsnips ( only at Christmas ) and gravy. Followed by Christmas pudding ( I hated that too - not now! ) and custard. 

Then, and I don't know how we fit it in, a few hours later it was a big high tea - buffet style but sat at the table. Always a bowl of Nanna salad, a large pork pie, cold turkey, ham, celery sticks in a class, pickled beetroot that made my plain crisps go pink on my plate, pickled onions, deltas - these were a potato snack from Marks and Spencers, they were hard, ready salted potato crisp snacks in a triangle shape. There's nothing equivalent that I have found as an adult. Brown bread and butter in triangles, sometimes open topped egg mayonnaise finger buns.  There'd be cheese and crackers but never blue cheese or stilton.In later years there's be coleslaw and garlic bread and a dish of cold batchelors savoury rice. Sometimes Mum would do vol au vents - prawn ones were my favourite, but she'd make a white sauce and then make it pink and put the prawns in whilst the sauce was warm! 

Puddings - Black Forest Gateaux from the freezer in later years but prior it would be a ready made sponge flan base ( from the hamper ) filled with tinned mandarins arranged in circles and topped with orange quick jel. or sherry trifle. Mince pies. And a Home made Christmas cake usually baked by my Aunty Pat and decorated by my mum - always royal icing peaks of snow and a little Father Christmas nestled on the top. 

Happy days. I have probably missed lots off so I may get my sister to have a look see. 

What did you hate as a child but have now? Does your Christmas Dinner resemble that of your childhood? 

Ho ho ho Merry Rachmas!( Stone cold sober actually - saving the Baileys for the 25th. I SO sO wanted the Aldi version of the salted caramel one but there's NONE to be had! NONE.