An Australian Christmas

This year Christmas was a little different. My sister and her family unexpectedly ended up in India for a family wedding, so we had a much quieter day than usual. My parents are both in the Cathedral choir so I offered to cook the food while they were singing at church in the morning. This gave me a lovely morning of peaceful contemplation while I sliced and basted (actually, I didn't baste anything, but I did do some slicing). A friend of theirs joined us, so we had a grand total of four people for lunch. We had prawns, ham and home-made bread for starters, with lashings of Pimms and lemonade. This was followed by a roast lamb with a Greek salad, roast veggies and steamed greens. We like our vegetables here. For dessert we had Christmas pudding and homemade strawberry-blueberry icecream. All was successful, surprisingly - I expected just one thing to not be quite as I'd hoped, but it all turned out delicious (even if I say so myself). We opened presents in the evening, ate some leftovers, watched The Hobbit (in preparation for seeing The Desolation of Smaug on Boxing Day), and generally just enjoyed a nice day.

Utterly appropriate to have a peaceful day to celebrate the birth of the King of Peace.