‘twas three nights before Xmas
And all through the land
Stress levels could be heard
louder than a brass band

A Hatchimal for the child
Or a tablet to make them go wild
And for Uncle Cyril, some socks
Filled with extremely hard candy rocks

Turkey, Chicken or Ham
Have to be better than tinned spam
Or throw tradition out the door
And a seafood BBQ sounds quite phwoar

Oh the decisions to make
As I munch on Xmas cake
And let’s add some Gin
Hey this is me and my world you are in

I think we should forget
The reason we fret
tis a season for love and for caring
For warmth and for sharing

May your bellies be full
And your hearts even fuller
Don’t forget those who are alone
And try your best not to moan

Merry Christmas to you all, my dear friends
With the best of wishes, this poem ends

I can't compete with Irene's poem, but I would also like to wish my fellow foodies Merry Christmas, and all the best for 2018.

Ditto Margaret - it's very clever! And I'd like to wish FL a very Merry Christmas and the best year yet, from across the Ditch - at the moment in Perth.

Ditto re Irene's poem from me as well. Irene, I think I'll just drink the gin instead of adding it to the cake......just joking, I seldom drink gin.
I expect a lot of FL posters are very busy, right now. I took the opportunity to look in while the visiting whanau are out and about.
Merry Christmas FL. wishing you a happy and healthy 2018.

And MerryChristmas from me too. The advice I get here is invaluable, and I so enjoy the sense of humour of many of the members *pointing at you, Irene!*

Best wishes to everyone here for a festive and hopefully relaxed Christmas Day.

And here's one for you Irene -

Twas the day before Christmas
and the cook's in the house,
preparing for the family
while it's quiet as a mouse.

Tomorrow will be buzzing
with family all around,
but for today there's no time
for cook's feet to hit the ground.

The taties are cooking,
the pomegranate's deseeded,
toasted nuts are all chopped,
Indeed, salads to be needed.

Recipes cover the table,
For desserts to be cooked,
Passion fruit tartlets, chocolate log,
Pavlova mustn't be overlooked.

The lawns are all mown,
The Big Oak tree's all ready,
to shelter us from the sun -
prevent us from getting heady.

The big man in RED
with whiskers galore
checks over his toy bag,
Reindeer lined up near the door.

The rehearsal's been done,
The Reindeer are primed,
Count down has begun,
Gift delivery on their mind.

Merry Christmas to Irene,
May you have the best one yet!
And to my fellow foodies,
MERRY CHRISTMAS - don't forget!
xx

Dawn I absolutely love your poetic efforts. I hope everyone had a lovely Xmas Day. Any flops or disasters?

I will tell you about my disaster. I saw in the supermarket, jelly with edible glitter, which I thought would be lovely for the grandies (and us oldies that love bling). So I did two packets and prepared it in a lovely mold, and upturned it on to a serving plate. It looked quite impressive. Well at dessert time, I went to remove the plate of jelly from the fridge - and the whole damned lot slid off onto the floor. Lock, stock and smoking barrels, the entire jelly graced the floor - looking very pretty and sparkly, albeit a tad broken up

Oh Irene. I can empathise with you.

A few days before Christmas, I was putting one of the 10 cheesecakes I needed to make. in the fridge(my cheesecakes are world famous in Ashburton)_. Opened the fridge door, and down came my pasta maker, hit the cheesecake, then my foot - it is a heavy machine. A few "golly goshes" and "botherations" later I managed to save most of the cheesecake - albeit extreme mangled - but don't wish to EVER have to clean up the mess again.

My d-i-l and her family profited by an unexpected, but still edible, messy dessert.

Here (almost) ends my tale of woe.

Christmas Eve the dreaded lurgy decided it was time I had a visit, so Christmas, for me, was a total non-event.

I do hope that all my foodie friends had a lovely, and less eventful, break.

Margaret, I am so sorry to hear you have had the flu and on Xmas Day of all things. Hope you are now on the mend? These weather changes don't help at all do they?

I'm a bit slow with this so I will have to wish everyone a happy New Year! Argh, Irene, how sad about your jelly. My Christmas disaster, well, not really a disaster, let's say a disappointment: a few years ago I bought a kit for making a cookie Christmas tree. Every year I plan to use it, but always have to cross it off my list as I never have time. This year I had more time than usual so I finally got the cutters out and made the dough. Alas, I was stymied YET AGAIN because it was so hot that even though my dough was thoroughly chilled, by the time I'd rolled it and cut the first, largest stars, the dough was so floppy that I had no way of getting them to the baking sheet without the points getting all droopy. No cookie Christmas tree for me! I re-chilled it in smaller lumps, rolled and cut it like lightning using much smaller cutters and ended up with a massive batch of cookies, as you need a lot of dough to make a tree. Fortunately I managed to give most of them away as they were far too delicious for safety. I guess the Christmas cookie tradition comes from the Northern Hemisphere where they don't have this problem unless they turn up the heating. I'm going to try and do a tree for a midwinter Christmas instead - given my freezing villa it should be a lot easier then!

Carolyn, good on you for having a go - and at least your efforts weren't wasted! I wonder if you made the cookie dough when the humidity isn't so high, and baked the tree, and then froze it - would that work?

Reading CarolynC's post about the cookie Christmas tree reminded me of a similar (semi) disaster a couple of years ago. We were in Brisbane at Christmas and daughter in law had bought the items and recipe for what should have been a beautiful cookie tree, to be made and assembled by Grandma and grandsons while she was at work.

I chilled it but the heat and humidity had a similar effect, as did Carolyn's, on the shortbread dough. We ended up rolling it onto baking paper, marking shapes and we decorated it with everything festive that we could find in the pantry. The kids had fun and the end result was enjoyed, even though it didn't quite look like the picture shown on the kit.

Margaret, I hope you are now feeling a whole lot better now.

Irene, I have a friend who always quotes, "If you are going to have a crisis, you may as well have a good one".

My last spectacular crisis was a Xmas Day one as well. Thank goodness I had just removed a roast (can't remember what it actually was) from the oven, and the light bulb shattered in the oven - and yet the door was intact. I ended up with pretty crystal shards of glass throughout the oven (absolutely unique one of a kind Xmas decorations). We knew we were renovating the kitchen the following year, so rushed out on Boxing Day and purchased the cheapest wall oven we could find as a stand in, until we knew exactly what we wanted/needed for our new oven and the reno's were due to start.

Carolyn - if you want to give it a try another time.. what you can do is roll your dough out on a baking tray size/shape piece of baking paper, cut the shapes out, then remove the excess dough, leaving the cut shapes intact on the baking paper. Slide the paper onto a tray and put in the oven.

Another option, if you have a chest freezer, is to again roll out your dough onto baking paper, then put it on a tray(s) and into the freezer to re-chill. Then when it has cooled off again, prompty cut and move the pieces, only taking one tray out of the freezer at a time.

I've done both these methods before for silly northern traditions transferred to a southern climate! You'll often find me loudly cursing said traditions while I try to deal with pastry for Christmas mince tarts in mid-late December heat. I still continue doing it though! It is disaapointing that it wasn't what you'd hoped for after so long waiting - hate that.

Irene - so pleased the bulb didn't shatter into the Christmas dinner main course!

We didn't have any unexpected challenges here, thankfully, just a quiet day with my husband and sons, and lots of ham

Jenna, that's such a great idea! Obvious when you think about it, and yet I didn't think about it. I did think about trying to get the rolled out dough in my freezer, but it was so stuffed with a turkey and other bits and bobs that there was zero room. My mother is the mince pie maker in the family and she was definitely swearing this year about trying to deal with a very short pastry in the heat.

Better late than never. I have had a major health issue this year and have lost the sight in one eye. I am still on masses of medication which makes my brain foggier than usual. Anyhow, was traveling from Auckland to Mount Maunganui for the holidays. I carefully placed my beautifully iced, well, the icing was on the cake and was as beautiful as one eye will allow, cake in the back of the ute and covered it with a tea towel. We arrived at the Mount and I went to get the cake. All that was there was the cake board. The cake had flipped upside down and fallen off the board. Luckily the tea towel had stopped any dirt getting on it and it had changed shape from a square to a diamond. All I could do was laugh. After a horrible year I have decided that there are much more challenged in life than a squashed cake.

Hi stephanie...I have PMd you..I hope you dont mind...Jan

Stephanie sorry to hear about your health problems. But you obviously have retained your sense of humour. I hope 2018 is much better for you

Stephanie D - so sorry to learn last year has been such a dreadful year for you. You have certainly been through a lot health-wise and I can see how a squashed cake pales into insignificance despite all the effort and love you put into making it. The cake's recipients/eaters will be all the more appreciative!

I do hope this year is kind to you and you are soon able to reduce medication intake. Keep positive and I hope we can see more posts from you on Foodlovers this year.
Kind regards,
Dawn.x

Stephanie D, despite your health problems you've done wonders to maintain your sense of humour.
Here's hoping 2018 is a much better year for you and for all who need a little miracle in their lives.

Stephanie, I was so sorry to read that you've not been well and I hope that the new year will bring you good health and happiness. I bet that 'munted' cake tasted just wonderful - never mind the shape!