Tag Archives: Christmas

Getting in the mood…

Delicious Christmas goodies…we wanted to buy them all!

I have to say, dear Reader, that I have been really suffering from Christmas malaise this year. Our first countryside Christmas and I am not quite ready to be Christmassy just yet! I AM excited but there just seems so much to get through before the 25th that pretty soon, I shall be ready to flop by the fire with a bottle of sloe gin and not surface until New Year’s eve!

Desperately trying to be organised, I did manage to get to our local farm shop’s ‘Christmas Fayre’ and it didn’t disappoint! Hung turkeys, oodles of Christmas gifts, mulled wine and mince pies…..Christmas on a platter! Newlyns Farm Shop did a jolly good job of twisting my Christmas arm and I stocked up on the essentials: meat, wine, panettone and Gentleman’s Relish! There were gifts a plenty to buy too so no family member will be without something foodie in their stocking this year. A wonderful way to start the festive season. Jerry and I enjoyed being plied with mulled wine and mince pies immensely! The Christmas feast on the day itself has its festive centrepiece as Jerry and I finally persuaded Primrose that Christmas goose is much like ‘posh chicken’. (She stills remembers me tricking her into eating Jemima Puddleduck). Rather nonchalantly, she did ask if we would be slaughtering one of our own chickens for lunch – frightening how she has become more ‘countrified’ than the rest of us so quickly! So with Primrose’s help, I shall trek over to the farm shop on Christmas Eve to pick up our bird and try to hide it from Monty’s ravenous jaws when I get home.

AMAZING to see all these oven ready birdies on show!

Don’t worry, Monty certainly won’t be going without – thanks to the lovely farm shop butchers! He will have his own Christmas gnawfest with this little number…

Fit for a Great Dane!

With festive fayre in the bag so to speak, I could turn my attentions to the buying of presents. Don’t tell anyone, dear Reader but I am afraid that I might not be able to give some of the presents I have bought to their intended recipients as they are simply too fabulous to give away. I know, I know……Christmas is ALL about the giving of presents and not the receiving part. However, I might have to sneak this little kindling set at the very back under the tree and hope that no one notices it. I would so dearly like to keep it!

Ever so tempting to forget to wrap this one! (Garden Trading)

With a huge dent made into the long list of preparations, surely dear Reader, it wouldn’t be amiss to treat myself to an early festive tipple or two?! I have been a good Margot after all…..promise.

A little Christmas punch, anyone?

(The lovely Countrywives have very kindly invited me into their country coven and I shall be adding my favourite Christmas recipes over on their website each week – do come over and take a look if you have a mo)

Margot’s Twelve Days of Christmas

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Look at the darling little boot!

On the first day of Christmas, my dear Jerry gave to me……some truly wonderful presents to kit me out for the countryside in 2013: the most delicious cashmere welly socks complete with tiny silver welly, an AMAZING box set of River Cottage handbooks and a very uncamouflaged green and white spotty bag from Cath Kidston! Dear Reader, I can assure that I was most certainly one of the nine ladies dancing! Presents done and dusted by 7:30am! That’s what I call efficient or rather very impatient! We even managed to make the wonderful nativity service where Primrose stood angelic as one of the angels by a real baby ‘Jesus’ whilst Poppy screamed for most of the service and could only be silenced by a packet of rice cakes. Crib service completed, we trudged off on our Christmas travels with our two little ‘angels’ who had been awake since 4:47am, desperate to see what St Nicholas had left under the tree. Even industrial amounts of coffee could not keep me awake on Christmas morning and there was rain of biblical proportions sloshing down as we left the Big Smoke, ruining my straightened hair and making me question whether or not the Mayans might have been on to something!Journey finally at an end, we turned our attentions to the business of Christmas lunch. Day one of the Twelve Days of Christmas and not a partridge in sight. However, I did try my first ‘turducken’. Yes that’s right, a ‘turducken’ (turkey, duck and chicken), also known as a three bird roast. A modern take on an olden day feasting dish when one served a bird in a bird in a bird (you get the idea) all neatly packaged up inside a swan, feathers, beak et al. I can see where jeggings might have evolved from. They must be the modern day equivalent of hose! Thank goodness we only had 2 days of feasting to get through rather than the full Twelve Days of Christmas. I am not sure I could have managed the swan roast or the 12 pies for a lucky 12 months that nursery rhyme Jack Horner is alleged to have consumed!

Boxing Day arrived with its post Christmas lunch slump and mad sale spendathons. Traditionally the feast of St Stephen (the patron saint of horses), farmers and horse owners alike used to take their horses to their country parishes to be blessed. It is also well known as the biggest day in the hunting calendar. The Boxing Day hunt – a time honoured country Christmas tradition which is so rarely cheered in villages these days. Dear Minty took her little babe to his inaugural Boxing Day hunt to watch riders and hounds depart from a sleepy village in Gloucestershire for the frost-covered fences and hedges of the surrounding countryside. If Minty’s husband has anything to do with it, that dear little boy will be riding, hunting, shooting and fishing before he even takes his first steps. I applaude that sentiment entirely! No local hunts around our parts so I made do with a little dress with horse and hound pattern! Embarking on the second day of our gluttonous feasting, I started to feel like the Vicar of Dibley in the episode where she is invited to all the villagers’ Christmas lunches. I wasn’t sure how much more I could fit in and wished I had saved a pair of maternity jeans! Following a considerably over indulgent lunch, I fell into a dream of turtledoves and dovecotes on my country estate and was woken somewhere around 2am by the ‘twit twoo’ of a pair of owls . I say owls…..it could merely have been the whistling of darling Jerry’s drunken snoring. Difficult to tell….

Hunting horns at the ready!

Well dear Reader, day three of Margot’s Twelve Days of Christmas and all was looking rosy as we finally returned to the familiar surroundings of our dear little cottage. Presents unpacked, fire lit and pyjamas on, I was delighted to be back. I will admit to be being a very poor house guest. I like to be in my own home. Tragic as that sounds. I also felt a little twinge of loyalty to the cottage as after all, this will be the last Christmas spent in its tiny embrace. Three French hens were not on offer….you can see I was not fully prepared for the full twelve days at all…BUT Primrose and I did make a rather charming bereted French snowman (if I do say so myself) for the top of my Christmas cake this year. Rustique.

C’est chic, non?!

As for the rest of the Twelve Days of Christmas, not really sure how I am going to manage four colly birds (apparently these are blackbirds, who would have thought?), five gold rings (oh God nothing Olympic related I promise), six geese-a-laying (might have to make do with chickens for this one and book myself on a hen-keeping course), seven swans-a-swimming (could a few trips to The Swan pub count?), eight maids-a-milking (dairy farm, perhaps?). Still it all looks promising for a good old New Year/early Twelfth Night shindig. A little visit to see Tom and Barbara in the offing and no doubt, I shall definitely see at least one of the ten lords a leaping on New Year’s Eve (can’t wait to see Tom strutting his stuff with his energetic version of Britney’s Toxic) and might even manage to do some piping for the eleven pipers piping. As for the drummers, dearest Poppy got a drum from Father Christmas so when New Year’s Day comes and inevitably, Jerry and I have sore heads, it will feel like twelve drummers drumming. Might have to hide that one…… Here’s to 2013 and Margot FINALLY making it to the countryside. Happy New Year to you, Dear Reader!

Wine and a little ‘Wes Hael’!

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Wine! Wassailing to follow…

I write this week’s installment, Dear Reader, with a slightly (understatement of the year) sore head. Christmas party season arrived and Margot’s Christmas simply wouldn’t be complete without a little glug of wine or two. In the case of Margot’s more recent past, rather a few too many gin fizzes and a smoking bishop! More on that in a mo….. This year, I threw in some wassailing for good measure too! An old custom associated with Christmas and in particular Twelfth Night, wassailing has been around since the 15th century. ‘Wes Hael’ (‘be well’ or ‘be healthy’ in Anglo Saxon I believe) is a way of wishing good health to family and friends. Definitely something Margot would be interested in at this time of year! It is also an ancient ritual that includes a good old shout at some trees (usually apple trees to be a touch more precise). It was believed that wassailing the trees in one’s orchard thanked the trees for the year’s crop and ensured a bountiful crop for the year to come. A ceremonial slosh of mulled cider was poured on to the roots of the tree and a wassailing song was sung to keep evil spirits from harming the tree until a good harvest was brought in the following year. In the spirit of old things country, I did my bit and wassailed my ‘orchard’ of 1 pear, 1 cherry (this year’s crop was used in a new gin recipe) and 1 fig tree. I donned a green scarf (a nod to the Greene man, usually the master of wassailing ceremonies) and enjoyed a little sing song of a few Cole Porter numbers. Goodness only knows what the neighbours thought of the crazy woman singing in the garden, dousing a libation of sloe gin fizz on a piddly tree with a green scarf over her head (it was raining, Dear Reader, and I had just had my hair blow dried). Let’s hope I get a good crop of cherries and pears next year. I fancy trying my hand at making some perry! I love the thought that all over the cider making countiesof England, country folk are still keeping this amazing tradition alive! I shall continue to do my bit and ‘wassail’ throughout the 12 days of Christmas…what a fabulous excuse for a little tipple! If you should manage a little wassailing of your own, do have a go at one of my sloe gin fizzes. Wassailing won’t seem silly at all once you have had a few of these!

Sloe Gin Fizz

1 part sloe gin (homemade of course)

3 parts Prosecco or English Sparkling wine (no need to use your best Bolly for this one)

a handful of pomegranate seeds

Gin in first, then top up with fizz. Sprinkle in the seeds. Delish!

or perhaps an old fashioned take on Mulled Wine found in Anne Cobbett’s The English Housekeeper (1842)

‘Boil cinnamon, grated nutmeg, cloves or mace in a quarter of a pint of water. Add a pint of port and some sugar to taste.’ Boil for a few minutes.

Until Christmas Day itself, I have imposed prohibition on myself as I imbibed rather a lot with some dear festive chums, Holly and Ivy. It must have been a good party as my head still hurts days later. Apparently, the hostess was on top form dishing out cocktails, donning a fur coat, having a little dance before an awful incident with the kitchen sink, going up to bed (very worse for wear) leaving guests to fend for themselves, blow out candles, turn off lights etc before letting themselves out……. Most certainly NOT Margot’s finest hour I don’t mind telling you, Dear Reader! Dearest Holly and lovely Ivy, a BIG thank you to you for saving the cottage from fire and for very generously forgiving a drunken old Christmas bird for seriously bad hostessing! I promise to be the last man standing on our next ‘Wes Hael’ jaunt. In the meantime dear Reader, I shall stick to a festive cuppa until my aching head subsides! Have a wonderfully fabulous Christmas and ‘Wes Hael’ to all of you and yours!

Dear Barbara's festive pot - I just couldn't resist!

Dear Barbara’s festive pot – exceptionally restorative!

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree

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Mr Tree!

Poppy turned 1 last week despite all of us muttering disbelief of how the time has flown by! Our little seedling has grown up and is blossoming into quite a feisty young flower! (Dear Reader, it would be quite unfair of you to even mutter quietly that perhaps she takes after her mother. A ridiculous notion! It is all down to her auburn locks)! With birthday festivities over, Jerry finally allowed me to open the doors to Christmas. Until now, it had been incredibly hard to resist eating mince pies and glugging back the mulled wine but with all the crumbs from the second birthday cake gone (carrot – and not too much of a disaster this time, although, I did burn my hand whilst pouring over the hot honey) we could turn our attentions to the most important job of all. The Tree! In celebration of our ‘better late than never’ embracing of Christmas, we all traipsed off to our greengrocer which doubles up as a provider of Nordman firs this time of year. I will confess, dear Reader, that I adore Christmas trees. The smell, the lights, the drinking of sloe gin whilst dressing it with decorations… What could be more festive than the smell of the dear old fir tree! Evergreens are part of the fabric of Christmas as we know it now but it wasn’t always so. Made fashionable by Queen Victoria, it was good old Albert who introduced the idea from his native Germany. The Germans had been decorating trees for years before we started! Our traditional English Christmas staple, the kissing bush, was the fir’s precursor and was created with mistletoe and decorated with lit candles. Of course, the ever faithful holly and ivy also adorned the balustrades of country homes long before the humble Christmas tree ever became a la mode. With this image of country house Christmases in mind, I set to work on creating the perfect Mr Tree! A darling little tree chosen, paved the way for the age old debate of the lights, which dear Reader, you may remember that I have already mentioned: flashing coloured lights (Jerry’s particular tacky penchant) or tasteful tiny white globes twinkling in the low level light of the cottage (Margot’s choice). Needless to say I actually won the battle this year! Ha! My success all came down to Primrose, who was desperate to take over the reins of the delicate art of tree dressing. I soon realised that there could only be one master of Mr Tree! I had to physically restrain myself as Primrose set about lavishing baubles and trinkets on the tree with no particular theme in mind, other than MORE is MORE. Usually, I decorate the tree with fascisti tendencies, approving the placement of each one. Not this year…Primrose bulldozed right through my control freak decoration placement and even added her own homemade touches so that Mr Tree was complete with a homemade bell made from a sawn off litre bottle (I struggled with the tastefulness of that one). I noticed, with some glee I might add, that my tree decorating fascism had definitely not skipped a generation as I listened to Primrose berating Poppy for moving one of her carefully placed birds! I love rediscovering all the boxes with neatly packed trinkets. 1 new decoration each year ensures that we have always have a story to impart about how it was found and that particular Christmas. Primrose and I love our Christmas quest. My old favourite is a little boy with a bobbled hat (press the bobble and he pokes out his tongue)! He belongs to a Christmas in the ’80s spent in Cologne and is on loan from my Mamma. This year’s additions are a rather wonderful couple, the Sugar Plum Fairy and Soldier doll from the Nutcracker. I found them hiding in a corner of the Royal Ballet’s shop when my lovely friend, Jasper, and I were at the Opera and I simply couldn’t resist!

Our Sugar Plum fairy

The family tree dressing ceremony over, I set off to find some holly for the cottage staircase. Countryside tradition dictates that holly is hung in farmhouses and cowsheds alike to bring good luck. An age old tradition, the Romans used to give sprigs to signify lasting friendship and blessings for the year to come. You can just imagine the face of the Roman nobleman who received a prickly offering as his Secret Santa rather than an amphora of wine at the Forum’s annual Saturnalia shindig. One of the best countryside traditions I stumbled across this week, was indeed about the marriage of holly and ivy. Holly with its prickly edges and robust berries was thought to be a sign of masculinity and ivy with its ability to entwine other plants and cling to things was thought to represent femininity. Together they were brought into a farmhouse on Christmas Eve (and not before) to symbolise the coming together of kin and to ensure a happy family life for the new year. All the earlier talk of Sugar Plum fairies had given me an idea on how best to welcome in the good luck with touches of evergreen. Thumbing through some old culinary tomes, I found an excellent way to give those prickly leaves that snowy Christmas look for our Christmas cake! Ever resourceful Mrs Beeton (Book of Household Management, 1851) suggests that one ‘frosts’ the leaves: dry out any moisture, coat with ‘oiled butter’ (I used a smattering of melted butter for this one) and ‘coarse powdered sugar’ (granulated will do. Although caster did look better). Leave to dry by the fire.

Adding one last touch to our beautifully dressed fir, Primrose made me promise that I would leave a shoe under Mr Tree. She told me that Father Christmas will see my shoe, know I am a girl and leave the right presents behind. So…..never one to part with tradition, I followed her instructions to the letter and have placed a festive green velvet number from LK Bennett under the tree. Father Christmas will definitely make his judgement on what sort of girl I am with that one! That in mind, he may just leave me the keys to my very own Georgian rectory complete with holly adorned balustrades and a 12 ft Christmas tree in the Hall. Wishful thinking I know, dear Reader but I had had a large snip of sloe gin by that point and had been pouring over the glossy pages of this year’s Christmas double issue of Country Life. I may also have been just a wee bit tinky tonk too…..but don’t tell Father Christmas!

Please leave something fabulous Father Christmas! Margot has been very good this year.

A bag of Allsorts….

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My baking walk of shame……

Dear Reader, I can only applaud you for sticking with me after last week’s empty blog post calamities! Lately, I seem to have acquired a cottage full of gremlins which has reduced me to some very unladylike language. I wondered if Debretts have a section on appropriate words to use in such circumstances. Note to self: must refer to their Guide to Etiquette and Modern Manners when dealing with broadband customer service call centres, children who won’t do as they are told and the bl***y old biddies and Chelsea tractor owners who keep pinching all the parking spaces in our road…. Anyway to add more insult to injury, a crockpot of kitchen disasters also fell upon the cottage last week. Poppy’s pre-birthday birthday party meant that I had to resort to my dreadful baking skills. Dear Reader, you may well be asking yourself why I did not buy the birthday cake. Yes…..that would be a good question. It is true that scones, biscuits, even the odd macaroon I can rustle up. Birthday cakes, I definitely cannot. Remarkably depressing when you try all sorts of recipes and even attempt to channel some Hummingbird Bakery magic (dearest Barbara bought me a HB book for my birthday and I haven’t managed a single recipe without a culinary cock up). Since I endeavour each year to make Primrose’s birthday cake, I thought that it just wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t provide Poppy with the same opportunity to ‘enjoy’ a lead-like taste experience and overambitious cake design! Primrose’s toadstool cake this year looked amazing (I had a lot of help from dear Mamma with that one) but tasted hideous. Luckily I didn’t serve it to any parents and the 4 year olds at the party were too full up with jelly boats and fairy cakes to eat any of it. Undeterred, I decided to climb Mount Everest once more and upscaled a HFW recipe for Poppy’s ‘cat’ bitrthday cake. That may have been my first mistake. I set about creating a chocolate cat and was not successful at all. My cat looked more like it had feline palsy and the head was too small for the body. Apparently, you need to measure cake tins rather more accurately than I did. With no option but to serve it, as my guests were due to arrive imminently, I simply poured yet more melted chocolate onto the top and then added a pink bow in a nod to ‘Hello Kitty’. I hid it at the back of the kitchen and told Jerry (on pain of death) that we would not be letting anyone consume any. A quick rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’, a candle blown out and then cake quickly squirreled away. Mission completed and no class action for food poisoning. All in a day’s work for Margot. I must be about the only person not to like cake which doesn’t help either as I have neither patience for the process or a desire to eat the fruits of my labour. Only last week, my dear friend Edie, had the cheek to suggest that I was a baking fraudster and that she was not entirely convinced of my inability to make cakes. I can (hand on heart) promise that if she had tried Poppy’s birthday ‘cat’ cake, she would have acquiesced and issued a damning judgement on my baking talent.

Oooh look at Margot’s Christmas Allsorts on the back row!

On a cheerier note, Edie did make a special trip to follow my Christmas chutney on its journey to stardom and dragged her hubby all the way to the WI’s Real Jam Festival 2012 at Denman College. Margot’s Christmas Allsorts (had no idea what else to call it) sat remarkably plain (less is more…) amongst some serious contenders. Well it was a WI comp after all. Jam and chutney entries were judged by the likes of Pam ‘The Jam’ Corbin, whose preserving prowess knows no bounds. She has even taught the dear HFW at River Cottage a few tricks or two. Primrose had been asking me for weeks if my chutney had cut the mustard and I am proud to announce, dear Reader, that it most certainly had! No awards this time but a none too shabby 15.5 out of 20. For a preserving and pickling virgin, I was thrilled with the score. I lost marks on the jam jar but was tickled pink that I had made it to the judging table at all. Margot’s Christmas Allsorts was commended as a ‘well cooked chutney’ with a ‘strong spicy flavour.’ Who knows what Margot’s Christmas Allsorts might have achieved if I hadn’t taken the instructions on labelling the entry etc so literally!

15.5 OUT OF 2O!!!!!!!

The success has left me wondering if I should ditch all further baking attempts in favour of churning out chutney from now on! I have certainly been bitten by the preserving bug and intend to try my hand at some more chutney challenges. (Edie, you have created a monster and you only have yourself to blame)! Tempted by a few of the courses they run, I might drop Jerry a hint or two. The purveyors of Tracklements condiments are safe for the time being but perhaps not for long. Wait until I get an industrial sized chutney pan! Now onwards to the next country challenge…..

Goats cheese anyone?!
(photo: Mr Edie)

Margot Tries the Good Life

A chronicle of the transformation from self-confessed townie to country bumpkin

Tag Archives: Christmas

Getting in the mood…

Margot’s Twelve Days of Christmas

Wine and a little ‘Wes Hael’!

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree

A bag of Allsorts….