Saturday 21st December - O Oriens

On the shortest day, this is the O antiphon

O come, thou dayspring, come and cheer thy people by thine advent here Dispel the gloomy clouds of night and death's dark shadow put to flight.

Today the gloomy clouds came and went, interspersing heavy rain - and it was heavy, too, landing like a series of heavy blows on my shoulders as I took the peelings out to the compost bin - with clear skies and cold winter brightness.

We did The Big Christmas Grocery Shopping Trip today. The shelves were absolutely full of turkeys of every size and style and price at about half past eight in the morning, which was incredibly annoying, as we have reserved our turkey and half paid for it, and now have to go and collect it tomorrow afternoon when we could have been - for example - not going out and collecting it. Next year....

The deal was that I would take over cooking from today.

So far, so good;

We had sausage rolls and a little salad of grated carrot, lettuce and pickles for lunch, some chilli prawns as 'a little smackerel of something' at tea time,

"Nearly eleven o'clock," said Pooh happily. "You're just in time for a little smackerel of something."

and then cheesy baked potatoes and a lamb and vegetable stewish kind of thing for supper. The lamb stewish thing assembled itself gradually. I started by sweating some onion and garlic, thinking I would mix that into the baked potato with some cheese, and then cooked some frozen peas with a half carrot that was cluttering up the bottom of the fridge. It wasn't looking too promising, so I added half a tin of tomatoes - still not looking wonderful.

Then I remembered that we had retrieved all the portions of pureed slow-cooked lamb we had made for my godmother and delivered to her freezer - so added that to the vegetable-soupish mixture, turning it into a rather good stewish mixture. Good to know I haven't lost the skills accumulated over thirty-something years.

The remaining portions of lamb, some in chunks, some finely chopped, some pureed, will be combined with the portions of pureed potato also in the freezer to make cottage pie at some stage between now and New Year. I'm looking forward to it - and if you are coming round here for a meal in that period you had better be looking forward to it too!