I've started to think about Christmas food.
What to make myself, what to outsource to mum, grandma and auntie, what to buy ready made and what to skip this year.
This weekend the girls spent the night at their grandparents' and R and I got ahead on the Christmas shopping.
We bought the girls' presents and their new Christmas underwear. I got a cute top for Christmas Eve.
After that we went grocery shopping and I found a ham for Christmas. Usually they only sell the precooked hams that you glaze yourself, but I prefer to bake my ham.
My grandmother is making the lemon flavoured herring and I'll ask mum to make her curried herring and I'll make a roe herring.
There are cabbage dishes to make - I have red cabbage from last year in the freezer, grandma is making brown cabbage, and I'll do up a Savoy cabbage dish with cream and mustard that I've made a few times and love.
Dad made liver sausage that my parents and grandmother like, I'm not overly fond of it. Red beets to go with that.
I'll be making a Janson's Temptation which is a potato gratin with anchovies and onions and cream.
We are making a batch of meatballs this weekend and I'll get some mini sausages from the supermarket.
What else - a few kinds of bread. A large hunk of cheese. A vegetable egg dish - probably broccoli or sprouts. Boiled eggs. Gravlax perhaps or smoked salmon with mustard dressing.
My mum makes delicious eggs with anchovies and a cheese sauce - but I think we'll skip that this year.
For dessert we'll have rice porridge with raspberry sauce, and I plan to make a large batch of porridge so I can serve it plain (for dad) or mixed with yoghurt and cream as Rice a la Malta with vanilla infused Clementine wedges.
We usually gather around 3 pm for mulled wine or coffee and cookies to watch Donald Duck wish us all a Merry Christmas.
The Donald Duck thing was huge for me as a child since we rarely saw cartoons on tv during the rest of the year. That hour on Christmas Eve was sacred. I still really want to watch it.
It's short clips from various Disney-movies, Cinderella's dress is made by the mice and birds, Snow White and the Dwarves sing and dance, Lady and the Tramp eat spaghetti and meatballs. They also include a clip from a recent Disney or Pixar movie - last year it was from Tangled.
After it's finished at 4 pm we put out the food and eat all evening. Then it's time to do the dishes and then we open presents, usually some time after 6 pm.
I think it's doable. 19 days left.
