Christmas Dinner!

Yes, you DID read the title of this picture correctly! Today, Scharwenka and I had our Christmas dinner, which was postponed from a couple of days before Christmas - on the original date we couldn't manage to meet up because of the snow preventing travel!

However, we were determined to have our dinner, and so we did today, complete with crackers and Christmas music - definitely the last outing for Hely Hutchinson's Carol Symphony and the Christmas carols! Bach's Christmas Oratorio might see the light of day again sooner than other festive music though!

It was a splendid lunch, with splendid drink, as you can see. To start we had smoked salmon and prawns, for main course (seen here) we had roast pheasant (from the Blenheim estate, as is traditional - we've been doing this for around 15 years now), potatoes, beans & mangetout, and gravy made by Scharwenka, and then we finished with a chocolate pudding with cream and brandy! The cooking is always a joint effort - he deals with the birds (we always cook a brace) and starter and I do vegetables and pudding!

It did feel a tad eccentric sitting there with hats on in mid-January, and I'm not sure what anyone would have thought had they come to the door, but it was a jolly lovely day! Oh, and it WILL look a bit bad on the food diary, but it was an exceptional day!

Happy Christmas everyone!