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Sunday

Christmas celebrations

By dint of being snowed in this year Christmas has been wonderfully quiet and reclusive. The first day of serious snow we dashed into Ludlow for provisions to see us through the severe weather. The great advantage of the extreme cold is that my fridge space has increased exponentially - I now have a "lobby" fridge, 2m x 3m at 1 degree C, a "conservatory" fridge 2m x 4m at -5 degrees C, not to mention icy bathrooms and window ledges.
So having for the first time in my life planned ahead the larders were stocked good things.

We decided that this year as the temperature varies between minus 15 and minus 6 we would have a Christmas barbeque, but in the living room. I marinaded boned rolled shoulder of lamb and we heated the griddle in our woodburning stove to searing point, put on the meat, bunged it in the hot embers and shut the door. It was great fun, like being a boy scout. It was that free adventurous cooking that you could only contemplate as a child when "Mum was out". It felt just like that. The lamb was beautifully juicy, and tender. Pink in the middle and I made a yoghurt dip to go with it with toasted, infused spices, lots of fresh chilli and mint which is somehow holding out in my conservatory.

I can thoroughly recommend it and all the better for not being a traditional Christmas.