Christmas is coming
Our first Christmas for many years without any family visiting is rapidly approaching, so it’ll be interesting to see how that goes. Will we all enjoy endless rounds of monopoly and card games, christmas crackers and turkey? Hmm I wouldn’t bet on it yet but we’ll find out soon enough.
I expect in reality the children will skulk off to watch a DVD and I’ll write a miserable blog entry while eating a whole box of Belgian chocolates, but I can’t be sure. Mrs B says we are going to do lots of things together as a family so that will be nice. Well, different.
As part of the run up to Christmas (and also related to one of many little projects I tend to work on) I have needed to track down recipes on the internet. What a lot there are. But the most striking thing is the number of recipes from the US that use, well, unexpected ingredients.
As often as not the recipes will have ‘one box of cake mix powder’ or ‘one tin of cheddar cheese soup’ as a typical ingredient. I kid you not. Now cooking for me involves getting your hands, if not dirty, then at least a little bit dusted in flour. It sometimes even involves handling real meat and vegetables.
As an example, one dessert I found included the following ingredients: 2 store-bought angel food cakes; 3 cans cherry pie filling; 1 family sized packet of Jell-O Instant Vanilla pudding; 1 container sour cream; milk.
Now this might make the most delicious dessert in the world for all I know - sadly not all the ingredients are available in France so I can never know for sure - but I can confirm that it will not be part of our Christmas fare this year.
On a brighter note our attempt in the easy french recipes section of this site to bring real French food to the wider world is proving quite successful and we are now on page two of google for the phrase ‘easy French recipes’. It would be interesting to know how many people then go off and make a nice tarte aux pommes or cassoulet with these recipes, and how many search further for a recipe that involves ‘one ready prepared tin of microwave cassoulet, one frozen apple tart, and a canister of squirty cream’.
I suppose it’s possible that some of our American readers even call their husbands and children over to the computer, for a good laugh at the primitive Europeans who still enjoy boiling chicken carcasses and chopping onions when all these things can just be bought pre-made in the supermarket.
I understand that our own family preparations for Christmas are going quite well. There has certainly been a lot of driving too and forth and general panic, which is probably a good sign. Not that I involve myself in the money-spending present-buying side of things too much, since both spending money and going shopping have an unpleasant effect on me and bring me out in irrational rages.
I am occasionally asked for a pile of bank notes by the children so that they can buy each other presents, which is a bit of a worry, and sometimes I am told to look the other way when they get back from shopping, ostensibly so I don’t catch a glimpse of the presents they have bought for me, but in reality so that I don’t see what they have bought for each other. Ah well, I’m sure it’ll be fun.
Late edit: I subsequently came across an even better recipe, for chicken simmered in coca-cola. It also involved using half of the ‘coca-cola stock’ to cook the accompanying rice. Yummee.
