Midwinter Challenge - Holy Supper Part IV

Yes, this is it: the very last bit of our Midwinter Magic/Holy Supper challenge. From Ms G D’s original challenge here, and my Part I, Part II and Part III. This is the end, I promise!

Originally we were planning to wassail the apple tree the evening after our Holy Supper, but frankly we were all utterly exhausted (not to mention stuffed to the gills with serious amounts of yummy food). So we planned to do it on Christmas Eve, but that kinda went by the wayside as I had a LOT of cooking to do for a gathering of the husbands family the following day (eighteen of the in-laws all in one place? Yes, folks, and I survived without any inappropriate comments, bursting into tears or wanting to turn people into toads, which we can count as a complete success!) so we delayed it until New Year’s Eve…. And failed. Hubby’s work, a tantrum melt-down by two over-excited, over-chocolated Witchlets caused Witch Mother to shelve plans and strop about the kitchen muttering obscenities under her breath.

So what day did we do it on? Twelfth Night. The day it’s traditionally done. The day I originally dismissed as “Oh yeah, that’s the proper day, but I know better and we are going to do it when I want.” (Slap me round the head with the ancestor stick; I should know better by now not to try and do things AT THE WRONG FRIGGIN’ TIME.)

Our apple tree was grown from a pip the year I conceived Witchlet One, and it’s never flowered. It’s about nine feet tall now, and is happy enough, but I would love to see it flower (and be even more delighted to see it fruit!) and that would be BIG MAGIC MOJO APPLES.

Traditions of Apple Wassail

"In Southern England a...set of customs...was grouped under the name of wassailing. They consisted, in essence, of wishing health to crops and animals much as people passing the wassail bowl wished it to each other. Most are well recorded in the early modern period, and they may quite easily have descended directly from pagan practices, although it is also possible that they developed outwards from the domestic wassail. The most widespread, famous, and enduring concerned fruit trees. It is first mentioned at Fordwich, Kent, in 1585, by which time it was already in part the preserve of groups of young men who went between orchards performing the rite for a reward. Robert Herrick, almost certainly writing about Devon and in the 1630s, spoke of 'wassailing' the fruit-bearing trees in order to assure good yields, and in the 1660s and 1670s a Sussex clergyman gave money to boys who came to 'howl' his orchard (being the enduring local term). John Aubrey, describing West Country customs in the same period, said that on Twelfth Eve men 'go with their wassel-bowl into the orchard and go about the trees to bless them, and put a piece of toast upon the roots, in order to it.'" - From The Stations of the Sun by Ronald Hutton

　

I baked soda bread for toasting, and then I made Lamb’s Wool, a traditional drink to toast the orchard trees with:

Recipe Ingredients:
1.5 Litres (3 x 500ml bottles) of traditional real ale – or traditional cider (I used an organic Devon cider)
6 small apples, cored (I used British Cox apples)
1 nutmeg freshly grated (I only used about half a nutmeg, which seemed plenty)
1 tsp ground ginger
150g brown sugar
　
Recipe Method:

Preheat the oven 120 deg C.

Prepare the apples in advance: time it so they are ready when you want to put them into the lambswool to serve.

Core the 6 apples fully, getting rid of the pips. Lightly grease the baking tray. Place the apples on the baking tray about 6cm (2 inches) apart – they will swell up a little. Bake the apples at 120 deg C for about an hour or so until they become soft and pulpy and the skins are easy to peel away.

　

Make the Lamb’s wool:

In a large thick bottomed saucepan (which is quite tall to avoid splashes when whisking) add the sugar. Cover the sugar in a small amount of the ale (or cider) and heat gently. Stir continuously until the sugar has dissolved. Then add in the ground ginger and grate in the whole (or half, in my case!) of the nutmeg. Stir, and keeping the pan on a gentle simmer, slowly add in all the rest of the ale (or cider). Leave for 10 minutes on a gentle heat as you deal with the apples.

　

Take the baked apples out of the oven to cool slightly for 10 minutes – they should now be soft and pulpy.

Break open the apples and scoop out the baked flesh into a bowl, discarding the skin. Then take a fork and mash this apple pulp up, while it is still warm, into a smooth purée with no lumps. Add the apple puree into the ale (or cider) lamb’s wool, mixing it in with a whisk.

Let the saucepan continue to warm everything through for thirty minutes, on a very gentle heat, until ready to drink. When warmed through use the whisk again for a couple of minutes to briskly froth the drink up and mix everything together. The apple will float to the surface, and depending on how much you have whisked it, the more it looks like lamb’s wool.

I will stop and apologise here: I had some brilliant pictures of this. Fantastic ones. I transferred them to a folder on the damn ‘puter, before deleting them from the camera. I know I did. SO WHERE THE FUCK ARE THEY NOW? HMMM?

Any way, I served up the Lamb’s Wool in mugs for hubby and I, and Witchlet Two got a TINY little bit watered down with apple juice. Witchlet One took a look, and proclaimed his verdict - “Yuck.”

We went outside with our steaming mugs, and platefuls of the toasted soda bread (which Witchlet Two was already tucking into, she can’t resist a bit of toast). Out came the tambourines, the drums, the shakers and a couple of sticks, and we all yelled and made noise by the tree, shouting out any bad spirits. (By the second mug of Lamb’s Wool, I kinda got into it.) The Witchlets were in their element; after a brief glance at each other (“Mummy is ASKING us to yell, make noise and hit something? Wow!”) they joined in with gusto.

We lifted them up in our arms so they could spear slices of toast soaked in Lamb’s Wool on the tree branches. Finally I recited:

“Apple tree, apple tree, we all come to wassail thee
Apple tree, stand fast root, every little twig bear fruit
Hats full, caps full, and three score sacks full, Hip! Hip! Hurrah!”

It took a bit of time to herd two extraordinarily excited Witchlets back inside, but the promise of hot chocolate with straws AND chocolate sprinkles finally did the trick.

And so ends the Midwinter Magic. Magic it has definitely been, and it’s something that we will do every year. It added so much to the festive season for us as a family, not just for me, the Witch. And perhaps, twenty or thirty years from now, maybe the Witchlets might be doing something similar with their babes. (And I’ll be sat having a quiet cackle with the Ancestors in the corner, hogging the last of the Lamb’s Wool.)

Midwinter Challenge - Holy Supper Part III

I’ll skip over the mechanics of the day before our feast. Basically, it involved making Leek & Potato soup, chopping a variety of vegetables and playing with the Witchlets whilst all the while feeling the house is full - the presence of Nana, Uncle Roy and Aunty Midge is palpable. I keep hearing my Great-Aunt’s voice, laughing, and speaking to her “Brew” - the name she always used for my Uncle. I can’t hear their conversations, I’m just aware of the undercurrent of murmurs, the constant conversation between them. Snippets of laughter punctuate my day, and both the Witchlets turn their heads at times - do they hear them? I don’t ask; if the Witchlets want to tell me anything, they will do.

We’ve told the Witchlets that the Yule Fairy is coming tonight (the Yule Fairy started off life as a way of making sure OCD me got to do the decorations without the “help” of little hands, but she’s developed a life of her own and now has her own mythology - she’s the power behind the Santa’s throne these days) so they are busy wondering what she will bring them, and being “EVERSO GOOD” - and telling me that they are being EVERSO GOOD every five minutes or so. I distract them by teaching Witchlet Two to sing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”, and she’s soon running around singing “We Wish ‘oo a Mewwy Kissmas an’ a ‘Appy Noo Yeah” which is funny enough, but hearing her go on to sing “So bing us a piggy pudding,” has me in fits. The house is full of family. Eventually The Hubster returns from work. We’re complete, we’re whole. For the first time since I was a child, I get the anticipation and thrill I used to get when we spent Christmas at Nana’s house. She pats my shoulder. She’s pleased.

Hubby baths the Witchlets, then they race downstairs in warm pyjamas, smelling of sweet clean soap and damp hair. We snuggle under two fleece blankets; the blue one is Witchlet One’s, the white one is Witchlet Two’s and I must never forget that or risk being chastised in their high-pitched loud voices. I read them a story by Starhawk: The Rebirth of the Sun. “Circle round, and I’ll tell you a story about when the sun was born again…” It’s a lovely story, and for once they sit and listen quietly, not wriggling or battling with each other.   We light (battery-powered) tealights in lanterns, and take them upstairs to keep vigil for the return of the sun.

Magic is happening, not just to me, not just to the witch. My dear gods, this is happening to all of us. I’m happy and floating, but staying busy in my role as mother, as organiser, as the pivot on which this whole thing hangs.

It takes a while before the Witchlets are calm enough to sleep. They run giggling backwards and forward to each other’s room, jumping into bed with each other, so we have to keep going upstairs and separating them or they will never settle. Eventually they sleep. The Yule Fairy/Mother Witch creeps upstairs and pulls out two wrapped presents to put under the tree. The Yule Fairy is wise; the presents are ones that will keep the Witchlets occupied while I cook in the morning.

Finally, I set the table. Ironed table cloth, new table runner, new place mats. The Yule Log is placed at the end of the table, and I finish decorating it with ivy and fir from the garden. No cutlery, because Witchlet Two delights in licking cutlery - all cutlery, I mean EVERYBODY’S cutlery - so that will be added JUST before we eat.

I’m last to bed. I sit in the silence, basking in the warmth that is the love of my ancestors. For once, I am not a failure. I’ve not disappointed anyone. Not even myself. It feels good.

The morning dawns, and I’m up first. I’m joined within a few minutes by a bouncy three-year old girl with a grin on her face, and my two men - the five year old, and the big one I married, surface next. We go downstairs, turn all the festive lights on, and then they notice the table - “Pretty!” yells Witchlet Two, scrambling up on to a chair to get a better look at the Yule Log. Hands all over it. “Sticky!” she yells, sniffing the fir resin on her hand from the cut end of the log. (That’s my baby witch, getting your hands dirty now, getting your nose, your hands, your excitement into the magic, YEAH BABY!) Finally they notice their presents, and out of a whirlwind of flying paper and ribbons comes the contented mumbles and giggles of Witchlet One with a Mario DS game, and Witchlet Two with a teapot shaped toy café . Hubby prepares to do the obligatory last minute male present shopping, and I descend on the kitchen, brew a pot of tea for me and the ancestors, light candles for The Old Man, Hekate, and the so far absent Old Hag (it’s 13 fucking degrees fucking centigrade out there; this time last year it was minus fucking four. Is she taking a year off? The slacker.) and start cooking.

I have to make bread. The bane of my fucking life, the one thing I fucking can’t fucking do - I think I’ve made about four decent loaves in my life, and too many rocks, door stops, teeth crackers, or squidgy soggy messes. Years ago I gave up and bought a bread maker. Six months of reasonable bread, then it broke. My parents bought me another one when we moved to this house, and I dropped it the first time I got it out of the box, shattering the plastic. If the universe wants me to bake bread with my own hands, I shall bake bread with my own hands. Eventually. (It’s on my to-do list for 2012.) But for now, I cheat - well, a little bit - and make soda bread. Nana chuckles; I think she’s let me off this time.

Soda Bread

Ingredients

170g/6oz wholemeal flour

170g/6oz plain flour

½ tsp salt

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

290ml/½ pint buttermilk (I didn’t use buttermilk, I used natural yoghurt instead)

Preparation method

Preheat the oven to 400F/200C/Gas 6.

Tip the flours, salt and bicarbonate of soda into a large mixing bowl and stir.

Make a well in the centre and pour in the buttermilk/yoghurt, mixing quickly with a large fork to form a soft dough. (Depending upon the absorbency of the flour, you may need to add a little milk if the dough seems too stiff but it should not be too wet or sticky.)

Turn onto a lightly floured surface and knead briefly.

Form into a round and flatten the dough slightly before placing on a lightly floured baking sheet.

Cut a cross on the top and bake for about 30 minutes or until the loaf sounds hollow when tapped. Cool on a wire rack.

While that was baking, I prepared the duck. I followed a really nice recipe from the delectable Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall (where are your curls Hugh? Grow back the curls!)

　

Hugh's roast duck recipe

By
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall from River Cottage Autumn

Few things are more heartening than a roast. Hugh's duck recipe even takes care of gravy - gorgeous.

Hugh: "There's a bit of a knack to roasting a duck but it needn't be too anxiety provoking. Better, I think, to embrace the more old-fashioned English notion of a roast duck, with the skin nicely seasoned and crisp and the meat cooked right through. Like pork, duck meat is flavoursome enough to be appetising even when a little overcooked, and the natural covering of fat that you get with a good farmed duck keeps it lubricated. The crispy skin, of course, is priceless."

Ingredients

1 large, fresh duck, free range and preferably organic, with neck and giblets
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the giblet stock/gravy:

The neck and giblets, and wing tips

1 small onion

1 celery stick

1 carrot

A little oil

1 bay leaf

1 small glass of red wine

½ teaspoon redcurrant jelly (optional)

METHOD

How to make Hugh's roast duck

1. Preheat the oven to 220°C/Gas Mark 7. If the duck is tied up, untruss it - i.e. cut the strings and gently pull the legs apart, away from the body. This will help the heat to get at them.

2. Cut off the wing tips (the last bony segment) - there's no meat on them and they will boost the flavour of the giblet stock. Make this first: roughly chop up the neck, heart, gizzard and wing tips, plus the onion, carrot and celery. Fry these over a fair heat in a little oil until the meat is nicely browned and the vegetables slightly caramelised. Transfer to a saucepan with the bay leaf, cover with water (about 600ml) and bring to a simmer. Leave at a gentle simmer for about 1¾ hours - i.e. the time it takes to cook the duck.

3. Now tackle the duck. Remove any obvious spare fat from inside the cavity. You can, if you like, turn the duck breast-side down on a board and press hard on the middle of the backbone until you hear a crack, it means that when you turn the bird breast-side up again it sits flatter in the pan, which helps it to cook more evenly.

4. Now, using a needle, (FUCK THE NEEDLE! I sterilised the end of my fox tooth pin and used that!) prick the skin all over the fatty parts at the breast and where the breast joins the leg. Don't prick deeper than is necessary just to pierce the skin. You want the fat to run, but not the juices from the meat. Season the skin lightly with salt and pepper.

5. Put the bird in a roasting tin. Place into oven for about 20 minutes, so the fat starts to run. Then turn the oven down to 180°C/Gas Mark 4, baste the bird and return to the oven.

6. Baste the duck every 20 minutes or so. Check the bird for doneness after about 1½ hours' total cooking time. Poke a skewer into the thickest part of the leg, close to the breast. When the juices runs clear, the bird is done. Tip the bird to pour any fat or juices out of the cavity into the roasting tin and transfer it to a warmed plate or carving tray.

7. Now fix the gravy. Carefully pour off the fat from the roasting tin into a heatproof bowl or dish, leaving the brown juices in the tin. Deglaze the tin with the red wine, scraping to release any tasty browned morsels. Strain the giblet stock and the deglazed pan juices, into a clean pan and boil hard to reduce them to a rich, syrupy gravy. Taste for seasoning, and add a little redcurrant jelly for sweetness, if you like.

8. To carve the bird for 4 people, slice between the legs and breast, then prise off the whole legs, carefully pulling the thighbone away from the body of the bird. Cut each leg in half at the joint between the thigh and the drumstick. Slice each whole breast from the carcass, with the crispy skin attached, then cut each breast into 5 or 6 thick slices. Offer each guest a few slices of breast, with either a thigh or a drumstick. Serve on warmed plates, with the gravy and some roast vegetables.

Hubby came home in the middle of this with a couple of bags of stocking fillers. He popped open the bubbly, made me, Nana and Aunty Midge a glass of Bucks Fizz each and poured Uncle Roy a Whiskey Mac (oh, they were so effusive in their praise of him - hang on, he’s just fixed you a bloody drink, who’s cooking the FUCKING DINNER?)

Eventually, food was served. A plate was left for the ancestors, with the best bits of the duck, the best Yorkshire Pud, and a candle was lit. We lit the candles on the Yule log and settled down to our wonderful Holy Supper (oh ok, Holy Lunch!). We laughed, we ate our soup, then hubby and I had our paté on toasted soda bread while the Witchlets finished mopping up their soup with hunks of bread they delightedly pulled off the loaf themselves. We ate our roast dinner, and then pulled crackers to the delight of wiggly Witchlets, and finally - and by this time, Witchlet One could barely contain himself - THE YULE LOG.

I’ve never been so full in my entire life. I retired to the sofa with a sleepy Witchlet Two, and we both fell asleep. I dreamt of the house being full, not just of Nana and Aunty Midge and Uncle Roy, but lots of family - somehow I knew they were family - all stood around, laughing, talking, gesticulating, drinking and eating. Somewhere in the background, by the back door, a woman stood, not talking to anyone, just watching. I know she’s the one we don’t talk about. I know she’s my great-grandmother, the one who we were told had abandoned my Nana - although she hadn’t, she was sectioned, and then - from what I’ve managed to find out - committed suicide. She makes me uneasy at first, but then I just realise that she’s not sure how she will be received. I pour her a glass of port, and leave it on the side. She’ll know it’s for her.

Witchlet One bursts into tears, and wakes me up. He doesn’t want the day to end, and he wants me to get up and play, which I do, after gently easing Witchlet Two down onto the sofa from my lap. The dream is still clear as day, so much so that I glance at the back door, looking for her. She’s not there, of course.

We decide that we are all far too exhausted to Wassail the apple tree today. We shall leave that for another day, when we can give it our full (and unexhausted) attention.

Before I go to bed, I leave out a glass of port for Great Grandmother. I think I have to reconcile her with Nana. I’m overwhelmed, so I’m shelving the prospect for a while.

Midwinter Challenge - Holy Supper Part II

If you've not caught up already (where have you BEEN?) here's the link to part one of this epic blog post. 

Two days before the solstice found me scrubbing the kitchen. Well, I’m not inviting guests to a house that is anything less than spotless, am I? Magic chore whore that I am, everything was cleaned with my own mixture of lemon juice, rose-water, alcohol with lavender (and a couple of drops of cinnamon oil) blended and charged with being a spiritual cleaner as well as a bloody good ‘get-rid-of-dirt-and-grease’ one. The floor was washed with this too, followed by a wipe over with my Four Witch Vinegar (scroll down a bit on the link for details!) for added oomph. The doorway and step was swept and scrubbed this way too. I smudged the entire house with a home-made sage and rosemary smudge-stick, and did my usual protection at the entrance to our property (yes, in the dead of night; I want to stay on speaking terms with the rest of the street thanks), to make sure that the guests I invited were the ones I WANTED, rather than any nasties or freeloaders.

Finally I was set to get on with calling up the Dearly Departed. Hekate was petitioned to bring them forth, and I lit my ancestor incense and did some rather nifty off the cuff invitation chanting. Nana was there like a shot, of course (but she’s never that far away), and close on behind her I was pleased to realise my Great-Aunt and Great-Uncle turned up and made themselves at home with a glass of Strawberry and Elderflower wine (Nana stuck with a cup of tea; never a big drinker she wouldn’t accept the wine.)

Time to get on with the cooking. Paté first.

Duck and Chicken Liver Paté with Wild Woodland Mix ‘Shrooms

Ingredients

Ms Dirty's Wild Woodland Mix

Wild Woodland Mix with home-grown onion and garlic

              220g/8oz butter
1 onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
Handful of dried porcini/Wild Woodland Mix
450g/1lb chicken livers, trimmed and cut in half
1 tbsp brandy
3 tsp wholegrain mustard
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 bay leaf, to garnish

Preparation method

Soak the mushrooms in boiling water. Melt 110g/4oz of the butter in a pan over a medium heat, then add the onion and fry until softened, but not coloured.

Add the garlic and chicken livers and fry the livers until golden-brown all over and cooked through.

Place the liver mixture and 55g/2oz of the remaining butter into a food processor, swirl out the pan with the brandy for a couple of minutes, then add this to the blender with the mustard and blend until smooth.

Drain the mushrooms (keep the mushroomy stock juice - excellent to add to earthy stews or soups) and chop finely. Stir into paté .

Season, to taste, with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Transfer the pâté into a serving ramekin or small dish and decorate with a bay leaf.

Melt the remaining 55g/2oz of butter in a clean pan. Skim off the froth and pour the butter over the pâté. Transfer to the fridge to chill, then serve from the ramekin when ready.

Serve with toast and red onion marmalade.

The scrapings from the bottom of the blender went on a slice of toast so I could check it was ok. Honest.

After I’d made sure it was ok… yes, it was fucking amazing if I do effing say so myself, it was on to the next dish to be made.

Boozy Bakewell Tart

Ingredients

PASTRY
125g plain flour
75g unsalted butter, cold and diced
25g caster sugar
1 egg, separated

FILLING

The last spoonful was all for ME!

2 heaped tbsp Papa’s Necro-fucking-tastic Plum Rum Sauce
150g unsalted butter, at room temperature
150g caster sugar
3 eggs, beaten
1 egg yolk
150g ground almonds
Zest of one lemon
1 tbsp flaked almonds

Preparation

To make the pastry, sift the flour into a bowl, then add in the sugar, then cut the butter into cubes and add to the flour with a pinch of salt. Rub in until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

Add the egg yolk and 1 tsp of cold water and mix until the dough comes together. Don’t work too much! Flatten into a disc, cover with clingfilm and chill for no more than 1 hour.

Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface to about 3mm thickness. Line a 20cm tart tin with the pastry.

Prick the base with a fork and chill for 20 minutes. Heat the oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4.

Line the pastry case with baking parchment and fill with baking beans.

Cook for about 20 minutes until the pastry is a pale golden colour. Take out the beans, brush the inside of the pastry case with a little egg white and cook for a further 2 minutes. Cool slightly.

Spread the plum rum sauce in an even layer over the base of the pastry case. Cream together the butter and caster sugar. Gradually add the beaten eggs and egg yolk. Fold in the ground almonds and lemon zest. Carefully spoon the mixture over the jam and spread level. Bake for 20 minutes. Scatter with the flaked almonds and continue to cook for a further 15-20 minutes until golden and set. If the top looks as though it’s going to start burning before it’s baked all the way through, cover the top with some grease-proof paper or tin-foil.

Cool to room temperature, dust with icing sugar and serve with pouring cream or custard.

Or as I found out, you’ll probably want to serve it with a second helping of itself.

Last to be made that day:

Nana’s Chocolate Yule Log.

(I found this recipe on a torn out piece of yellowed newspaper tucked in her last diary. Fitting. This is just as it written on the newspaper.)

Ingredients

1 oz plain flour

1 dessertspoon cocoa

Pinch salt

3 separated eggs

Large pinch Cream of Tartar

4 oz Caster Sugar

2-3 drops vanilla essence

Icing sugar

Preparation

Grease and flour a Swiss roll tin, 8” x 12”. Sift the flour with the cocoa and salt. Separate the eggs and whisk the whites with the cream of tartar until stiff, then gradually beat in half the sugar. Continue whisking until the mixture looks shiny and will stand in peaks.

Cream the egg yolks until thick and then beat in the remaining sugar and add the vanilla essence. Stir the flour into the yolks and pour this mixture over the whites. Using a metal spoon cut and fold carefully until thoroughly blended.

Turn the mixture into the prepared tin and bake at 325° F for 20-25 mins. Turn at once onto a sugared tea towel and roll it up with the towel inside the cake. When it is cool, unroll the cake carefully and fill with either a chocolate butter cream or Chantilly cream and roll up.

Cover the cake in chocolate butter cream and use a fork to mark in bark effects. Add green marzipan holly leave and red marzipan berries as decoration. Dust with icing just before serving.

Incidentally, this was so good, I got talked into making another one to take to the in-laws for Christmas day.

Baking done, it was time to clean down the kitchen, wash up, dry, put away, and get my head down - veg prep and soup making the following day ready for the BIG DAY itself. Which will be in part three, because you’ve heard quite enough from me for one day. Go off and do something magical. Shoo. Yes, you too. Arse off chair, now go. GO!

Midwinter Challenge - Holy Supper Part I

It’s now January, and I think I have lived in my kitchen for the last four weeks. I have magic chore whored my ARSE off so much that if I sit down, I’m fucking balancing on my ribs. And there's a whole lotta New Year magic shit to get going, so I have to finish Midwinter before I can possibly start on any of the 2012 magic chores (my fucker of an OCD demon won't let me!)  So, here’s the low-down on the Old Kitchen Witch’s Magical Midwinter. Grab a drink, get someone else to fix you some food because we may be here for some time, my pretties *cackle*.

To recap: the a-fucking-mazing Ms Dirty set up the Midwinter Magic/Holy Supper challenge, and right from the start there was no way I was chickening out of this one. First things first - the ancestors. I know very little about my ancestry, as I said here, but I do work with my Nana on a regular basis (I’ll do a whole post on my Nana one day, she was one helluva woman) and I wanted to honour her first and foremost. Then I thought of my Great-Uncle and Aunt, who were very close to Nana (and completely mad as hatters - my favourite kind of people), so they should be included too.

So, the menu. Well, it really should have been goose. Nana used to buy two goslings in the spring and raise them all summer. At Christmas she would slaughter and prepare both for roasting - one would be our Christmas dinner and one would be sold to pay for the next year’s goslings. But I wimped out - I’ve never roasted goose before, so I went for a beautiful organic duck instead. It still fits: we would all travel to my Grandparents a couple of days before Christmas and she always did roast duck for the afternoon when everyone got there. So duck it was. Goose is for next year! (Oh yes, there WILL be a next year!)

Seeing as Ms Dirty got us into this, it was only fitting that some seriously superb Ms Dirty produce was included in the meal, so I planned home-made paté using some Wild Woodland Mix of ‘shrooms, and a Boozy Bakewell Tart with her Necrofuckingtastic plum rum sauce.

We needed to include the Witchlets as much as possible - this is a tradition I want them to grow up with, and remember with fondness when they reach my advanced age (and hey, maybe do it themselves!) so the meal was planned for early afternoon - too late in the evening and we would have had children snoring face down in the gravy (the Witchlets are early risers; neither seems to be able to stay awake past 8pm which is FINE BY ME) and I’m told snorting roast meat juices isn’t desirable at their tender ages.

The finalised menu looked like this:

Leek & Potato soup (our home-grown potatoes, our neighbour’s home-grown leeks)

Chicken & Duck liver paté with wild mushrooms

- both served with fresh soda bread

Roast organic duck

Rosemary roast potatoes cooked in goose fat (I got a bit of goose in there!!!!)

Sprouts and chestnuts sautéed in brown butter

Honey-roasted parsnips (neighbour’s garden again)

Thyme buttered carrots

Yorkshire puddings (because there would be a family revolt if I didn’t serve yorkie puds with a roast dinner. They’ll forgive me many things, but lack of yorkies and I’d be history.)

Chocolate Yule log (to keep my resident chocoholic Witchlets sweet)

Boozy Bakewell Tart

Local cheeses with Port (obviously I wasn’t giving any Port to the Witchlets before ANY OF YOU LOT THINK ABOUT CALLING SOCIAL SERVICES!)

But what about ye olde traditional element to the dinner? That carefully researched dish from ye dim and distant past of ye dim and distant ancestors? Yeah, I guess it could look a bit like I’ve missed the point - AHA!!! THAT’S WHERE YOU ARE WRONG!!! The plan includes all four of used parading out to our lone apple tree (grown from a pip, ten years old, never flowered or fruited) and wassailing the hell out of it, hanging toast dipped in Lamb’s Wool (a traditional spiced mulled ale or cider) from its branches and scaring away any evil spirits that are stopping it fruiting by banging drums, tambourines and shouting. (I was pretty certain the kids would be up for this bit.)

Menu sorted, I could turn my attention to decorations. As usual, our main living/dining room was decorated with as much red, gold and green as could be stuffed in the place. I can’t help it; I realise that black, pink, blue, red fake trees seemed to be the in-thing this year, but it’s just not right - sorry!  

I’m so ridiculously anally retentive about my decorations that I only do them when everybody is out of the house and I’ve told the Witchlets that the Yule Fairy comes and does them. It’s my OCD demon - all the decorations have to go up in a certain order, in the same place each year, and don’t even THINK about suggesting anything different. I felt quite bad that I JUST CAN’T let the Witchlets get involved that I bought them a mini-tree each, with multicoloured lights and lots of sparkly baubles for them to decorate in their bedrooms. (They adored that, by the way.)  I even fake-leaded and snowed the windows.  ALL of them (here's just the back door and window!)

Just as I got the decorations down from the roof-space, I got a call from the tree-surgeons we’d spoken to about removing two hulking great Leylandii trees from our front garden. Initially they couldn’t do it until January, but suddenly they had some spare time - did I want them down now? Too fucking right I did. They left me with a beautiful off-cut of trunk for a Yule Log, and I got an awful lot of greenery for the house (and to dry for incense - much as I hate the rapid growth of Leylandii, I do love their smell). The gods were working with me already.

In the roof space I found a second 7ft narrow fake tree that I’d completely forgotten I’d been given by a friend last year. Considering I was about to be spending one hell of a lot of time in the kitchen over the coming few days, I put it up next to the fridge-freezer for some added sparkle. I had a string of 200 lights to go on it. I’m not stupid, you know (stop laughing in the back, I can throw knives) so I plugged it in to check they worked before spending a ridiculous amount of time winding it around the tree. Plugged them in - nothing. Absolutely fucking not working. I went from one light to another, twisting and pushing, but still no fucking twinkle. Luckily I had a spare set, and they went on, worked perfectly without any trouble. Just to be sure, I plugged the first set in again as they lay on the kitchen floor… yeah, you guessed it, the fuckers lit up. If I tell you that tree is dead opposite The Old Man’s altar - you know who I blame for the whole sorry affair. He’s got a fucking sense of humour on him, that’s for sure. Why it’s nearly always directed at me, I’ll never know. (It’s ok, he’s taken pity on me and said I can have a shot of his spiced rum now.)

*glug* So anyway, lounge/diner decorated, kitchen tree up, I then remember that I bought some glass icicles earlier in the year, so they went up on the herb drying pole above the kitchen window. Just the altars to do at last. The Old Man got really giggly and silly when he got two Green Man cards (one from me; one from hubby and the Witchlets) and an arrangement of ivy and fir cuttings for his altar. I’d also got him a pyramid candle (it’s black, and as it burns down it has red wax in the middle - we’ve got some serious workings to do in 2012 and the candle is a big part of it) and some Cadbury’s Snowball sweets. (He almost regretted the whole fairy light thing then…. almost).

The seasonal altar got decorated, and I remembered the beeswax Yule candle I’d bought a couple of years previously (and forgotten about in the bottom of a box). The Green Man bronze plaque above the seasonal altar was still my Autumn one - the Winter should have been put up at Samhain, but something stopped me this year, and I decided we’d put up Winter as part of the ritual of the Midwinter Feast.

That just left Hekate’s altar. I was going to petition Her to escort the Ancestors back for the festivities, and She has Her moments of being a bit prickly, so I left her altar until I’d done a midnight divination to see whether She was amenable (the fallback plan was to ask The Old Man; I knew he’d be more than happy to bring back the ancestors, but he might add a few others on the way and I’d rather he didn’t for this one - he’s such a party animal at times.) and thank Her, She was. More than amenable, I actually caught her being rather swept away by the whole thing, so she got some pine cones and a bit of tastefully minimal gold decorations along with more fir and ivy from the garden. I also added Nana’s wedding photo to Her altar, and checked that it would be ok for me to serve the Ancestors their meal on Her altar. At this point I might just have mentioned to Her that I wanted to splash out and treat myself to some new crockery for the meal. Low and behold that afternoon, in walks hubby with a box.

“New plates,” he said, “Poppy design. Red, black and white. Do you like them?”

Do I fucking like them? I love them! (Red, black and white… hmmm, I think Someone has had Her hand in this one!)

Now I had menu, I had crockery, I had decorations - time to get cooking. It's not just time to plan Holy Supper, my friends, but with two Witchlets now in school, I had buns and cakes and treats to bake for school parties (and it's WAR in the playground about who can bring the best home-made cupcakes!)

But you are going to have to wait. I’m dead on my fucking feet, I need another drink and to go remind my husband I still exist. The Midwinter Meal/Holy supper story will continue (with recipes! And added Spirits of the Dead!  Stay tuned!)

In which I decide to really UP THE PRESSURE!

Today, Ms Graveyard Dirt wrote this

And my sucker-for-fucking-punishment-ass thought "I'm in."

Which is probably a good thing, so I can cook and celebrate the FUCK out of Yule before having to do the in-laws thing on the 25th. 

Sleep is obviously for the weak, and those not of a mad, bad and dangerous to fucking know persuasion.