Artichokes from Dowbiggin via flickr CC
Christmas Day here was always going to be pretty quiet. This year, it was the kids’ turn to spend Christmas Day at their dad’s – so we have just deferred everything to Boxing Day and treated Christmas Day as an extra day off. I was determined that this year, I wouldn’t waste the day moping about the fact that the kids weren’t with me. Instead, I would enjoy the day for itself and enjoy having my children around when they could be here.
We spent Christmas Eve with my partner’s family at his sister’s place while her kids opened their presents as their dad works at the airport and was rostered on for early Christmas morning.
Earlier in the month, we had declined several generous lunch invitations and decided that we would spend Christmas Day at home, just the two of us and in order to make it a bit special, had stocked up on some prawns and some nice white wine. However, as is often the case, this evolved into a bit more.
During the week I had read a blog post with a recipe for caramelised onion and goat’s cheese tarts and decided these might be nice to go with our prawns on Christmas Day. On Christmas Eve at my sister-in-laws we scored 3 beautiful globe artichokes from their garden and rather than waste these, used another of Linda Woodrow’s recipes to cook these as well. Grilled artichokes with horseradish aioli (only we had garlic instead), are described by Linda as the ultimate party food and I think she would have to be right.
I have never even eaten fresh artichokes, let alone cooked them. It was a really nice thing to do on Christmas Day – to have time to potter around in the kitchen making something really yummy from produce I knew had literally been picked the evening before.
I wish I had taken photographs! We sat outside, in dappled shade under our giant liquid amber tree and ate this delicious food. We drank a very nice pinot grigio with it all and afterwards, napped on the trampoline in the shade of the same tree.
Now it’s a drizzly Boxing Day morning and the kids will be here very soon. We are doing a quick present exchange of those things that won’t travel well and then piling into the car to head to Canberra to have dinner with my parents tonight.
There’ll be more glorious food!
What's next? 