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Christmas Lunch?

They're very tasty, one of my favourite foods. But they're also incredibly dumb. They don't have trails or tracks that they follow so when they are startled they just pick a random direction and run. On the roads there's about a 25% chance that they will run straight in to your car.

They're not very big and usually only weigh about 15 Kg, no problem to a car. A Badoob doob noise and you think nothing of it. But they are very solidly muscled for their size.
 
This year I'm boycotting the traditional Christmas turkey for a fish dinner--I bought frozen swordfish steaks. I have never tried cooking swordfish before but I have Google, so I'll be fine. (I'm going for gourmet.)

We'll also have an apple & red pear crisp, highlighted with cranberries. (Made cranberry sauce today.) I also have two pie pumpkins that I really should think about turning into a pie. (You can see what's important to me as a cook--desert! Which is sad, because I'm going to try the ADHD elimination diet at the start of the year.) I'll also do some sort of sauteed or roasted vegetable dish (I have a parsnip around here somewhere that will be a nice addition), and I think I have an acorn squash left. Oh--and I promised I'd make rice pudding. I've also been wanting to try making rugelach cookies again this year. (We don't actually eat a lot of deserts. I just like to make them around the holidays.)

What I grew up with as a traditional Christmas dinner looked more like this: Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, candied yams, and a whole bunch of stuff I'm forgetting. (It's been a while.)
 
Outdated said:
They're very tasty, one of my favourite foods. But they're also incredibly dumb. They don't have trails or tracks that they follow so when they are startled they just pick a random direction and run. On the roads there's about a 25% chance that they will run straight in to your car.

They're not very big and usually only weigh about 15 Kg, no problem to a car. A Badoob doob noise and you think nothing of it. But they are very solidly muscled for their size.
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I am trying so hard not to laugh hysterically... We have kamikaze robins around here. They never seem to make contact with your windshield but the doves do. (Poof! the feathers hang in the air for an indeterminably long time.) Then there are the suicide squirrels. And the geese, well, you're not going to hit a goose because it's illegal. Instead, they will just stand in the road and block traffic. You just have to wait for them to move (or for the guy behind you to start blowing his horn). I mean, cars are like critter magnets. I can only dodge so many critters without the odds at some point being against me. (I hate hitting critters!) But the scariest thing I've seen flying at my windshield (and this should be seen as linking to the Christmas theme) was a flying turkey. In the wild, on the ground, they're lovely birds. (We have them in our neighborhood.) But in the air? They look like a flying brick! They don't fly well.

Around here, if you hit a deer you get to take it home and eat it. Where I grew up, we had a guy (worked for the county?) who would go around daily first thing in the morning and scrape up the night's roadkill, skin and prep it, and deliver it to the homeless shelters. It was good meat! I'm happy it went to a good cause. I doubt most people knew what happened to the roadkill but when I heard that, I was kind of impressed.
 
We have the same problem with kangaroos that the northern Americas have with moose, a much bigger animal and a car killer, but wallabies are fine until they set off your airbags. When I travel long distances I always stay up close behind a big truck for safety, we have a lot of regions with open grazing lands for cattle too. Some people think I'm strange for this but I've also had my car splattered with bits of fresh meat, if the truck wasn't in front of me...
 
It annoys the truck drivers, they keep flashing their indicators to let me know it's safe to pass but I stay sitting behind them. :)
 
Will be our usual BBQ fish (snapper) for main, with some prawn/tofu and zucchini for starter. Was 26deg c today (xmas eve) so was just sat on deck having a deli cheeseboard for my birthday lunch. The leftovers from that will be evening snack tomorrow (xmas day) night.
 
Duncan74 said:
Will be our usual BBQ fish (snapper) for main, with some prawn/tofu and zucchini for starter. Was 26deg c today (xmas eve) so was just sat on deck having a deli cheeseboard for my birthday lunch. The leftovers from that will be evening snack tomorrow (xmas day) night.
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Happy birthday. And I'm glad winter has finally broken. Your lunch sounds delightful.
 
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I'm ex UK but when there found the whole roast turkey thing a bit of a mare. Just too much food and always seemed a whole lot of work for what most people didn't really seem to enjoy. So even there we used to do some awesome alternate dinners by gong to the supermarket 30 mins before closing on xmas eve, and just buying a selection of those ready dish things. Store was always deserted, there was always a great range of things left on shelf and if you weren't looking for something specific was always a great way to get some good food, normally discounted, stop it being wasted, and also 15 mins prep time and not the entire morning chopping/slicing/baking, etc.

We did do 'proper' dinner when we had my wife's entire family to stay the last xmas before we moved over here (her parents, brother, sister in law, sister, brother in law, and 6 nephews/nieces). That was fun.

But here, I love that it's all about ease. Tomorrow I'll get up and go for a run, possibly by the beach. And by 9am there will be people setting up gazeebos by the free BBQs, and by middle of the day it will just be loads of people chilling out, sharing some kai (food) and generally relaxing.

Way less 'family' ringfenced here - normal for people to spend time with friends, colleagues, whoever.
 
I grew up in Adelaide which in many ways was also very English, and we followed many of the same traditions. I didn't enjoy that very much at all. When I moved up to the tropics and people were just having a picnic in local parks for Christmas I really enjoyed it.
 
I woke up to frozen water pipes this morning. Of all days for us to forget to leave the kitchen cabinets open under the sink and the water dripping last night! We have a couple gallons of bottled water but I'm not going to attempt to cook the dinner I planned for our family tonight with a jug or two of water. I can't even wash my hands after handling raw turkey or thoroughly wash the salad greens!

I'm waiting for hubby to wake up so see if he has any bright ideas about how to thaw the pipes. Otherwise, we'll be looking for a restaurant tonight!

Ho ho ho. Merry Christmas to us.
 
I’ve done the huge traditional American dinner with tons of food and lots of people. It was fun when I was younger.

Last year I did decide to make roast leg of lamb with Yorkshire pudding, but the latter did not turn out. If anyone here has a good recipe or hints, I’d be appreciative. I love Yorkshire pudding baked the traditional way.

This year the only traditional thing I’ll be making is homemade cinnamon rolls.
 
Mary Terry said:
I woke up to frozen water pipes this morning. Of all days for us to forget to leave the kitchen cabinets open under the sink and the water dripping last night! We have a couple gallons of bottled water but I'm not going to attempt to cook the dinner I planned for our family tonight with a jug or two of water. I can't even wash my hands after handling raw turkey or thoroughly wash the salad greens!

I'm waiting for hubby to wake up so see if he has any bright ideas about how to thaw the pipes. Otherwise, we'll be looking for a restaurant tonight!

Ho ho ho. Merry Christmas to us.
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Wishing for a Christmas miracle for you! Or at least some surprising cheer in this unfortunate development.
 
To make a yorkshire pudding it's probably best to ask the Brits:

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/best-yorkshire-puddings
And a related recipe, something I grew up with as a kid, is called Toad In The Hole.

Put half a cup of oil in a large baking dish and warm it in the oven a little, not hot, just warm. Then pour all of your pudding batter in to the dish. Add 6 or 8 sausages and dunk them so that they are covered by the batter, then bake it in the oven. As the sausages cook they curl up and the ends poke out the top of the batter, that's where the name came from.

It's also pretty good the next day as leftovers and quite often that's what we had for our school lunch. When I make my own I add some diced onion to the batter just to make it a little bit lighter to eat, yorkshire pudding is very heavy or dense in the stomach.
 
Outdated said:
To make a yorkshire pudding it's probably best to ask the Brits:

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/best-yorkshire-puddings
And a related recipe, something I grew up with as a kid, is called Toad In The Hole.

Put half a cup of oil in a large baking dish and warm it in the oven a little, not hot, just warm. Then pour all of your pudding batter in to the dish. Add 6 or 8 sausages and dunk them so that they are covered by the batter, then bake it in the oven. As the sausages cook they curl up and the ends poke out the top of the batter, that's where the name came from.

It's also pretty good the next day as leftovers and quite often that's what we had for our school lunch. When I make my own I add some diced onion to the batter just to make it a little bit lighter to eat, yorkshire pudding is very heavy or dense in the stomach.
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That's interesting. We cut a round hole in a slice of bread, put it in hot skillet with a little butter or oil to brown it, and crack an egg in the hole. You can either flip it over to brown the other side of the bread or just put a lid on the skillet so the egg cooks thoroughly. We call it toad in the hole.
 
Outdated said:
To make a yorkshire pudding it's probably best to ask the Brits:
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More specifically, my sort of Brit as a true Yorkshireman.

Down in southern hemisphere it is pretty hard to make good yorkshire puddings. Substsitute the flour with 'strong flour' and avoid making on humid days. As mentioned, really really hot oil is essential.

Toad in the hole for me has always been sausage and yorkshire pudding. Two variants, either a sausage in each individual 'apple' sized yorkshire pudding, or alternatively a large rectangular yorkshire designed to share with several sauasages in that. But the first is the 'original'.
 
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