Utinam logica falsa tuam philosophiam totam suffodiant!

I don't know if I've ever blogged about my mother's family Christmas traditions before, and as work seems to have FINALLY calmed down I thought I'd take the opportunity.

My maternal grandfather is Lithuanian and we follow many of the Lithuatian Christmas traditions. I am actually not sure how much is Lithuanian and how much is just our family now.

We celebrate on Christmas eve, not on Christmas Day.

We used to go to my grandparents house, but this year we have started going to my aunt's instead and Grandma and Grandad are getting a bit too frail to host.

We arrive around 4:30pm and have drinks and snacks while my cousins and I all catch up with each other since that last time we met (usually Father's Day in September.) We put the Christmas presents under the tree, when we were younger Grandad used to cover all the presents with a bedsheet and tell us if we even peeked a fairy would make them all dissappear.

At about 6pm my grandfather brings out a piece of whole, flat-bread, like a communion wafer. We say a prayer and he breaks it in half and gives half to Grandma, who breaks it in half and gives it to someone else, and so on until everyone has broken bread with everyone else there. This is meant to symbolise family togetherness, and also meant to symbolise forgiveness for any fights or disagreements during the year, so that the Christmas table will be one of peace (in theory...)

We have dinner. Dinner is 13 dishes (to symbolise the people at the Last Supper.) All dishes are cold and biblically meatless (so seafood is okay.) This is a Lithuanian tradition that translates very well to Australia!These dishes change from year to year, but some are always there, including a traditional Lithuanian fish casserole that is AWESOME, tiger prawns, hard boiled eggs, rollmops and rice salad. This year for the first time I was allowed to contribute. I made what I make for Dad's side when we get together: a cold roast vegetable salad with spiced cous-cous and pomegranate. Everyone seemed to like it and my fussiest cousin went back for seconds- the only thing she had twice! So I was happy.

After dinner we congregate in the loungeroom and all the grandchildren (and Seamus as a grandchild-in-law) stand in front of the Christmas tree and sing carols (no carols- no presents!) I think we've improved over the years, we know most of the words now, don't get so distracted, and some of us can even harmonise.

After carols Grandad used to sit under the tree and pass presents to the grandkids, who would deliver them to the adults before falling on their own pile with glee. Grandad can't get under the tree anymore, he now walks with a stick, so my cousin Emily took his place and my younger cousins handed out the presents. Seamus and I did very well, we got wine, dvds, bunning vouchers, pot plant pots, a beautiful windchime and lots of other things besides.

Now looking back on it I like that as a kid we had to wait til the very end for presents, it prolonged the enjoyment.

The rest of the evening is spent in conversation, with platters of fruit and Pfeffenusse (sp? ginger biscuits) and coffee.

And now I am off upstairs to have my Christmas lunch with everyone else at Air Ambulance today, Merry Christmas everyone!!

I love the fact that in Australia the Christmas season and cherry season coincide. We may not have sleighbells in the snow, we may need our eggnog iced, or drunk VERY late at night, we may view the traditional hot Christmas lunch with horror, I may be getting more and more jealous of some of the cooking blogs I read, but damnit, cherries are here and yummy and a deep red and like the scent of sunscreen and pine needles will always say "Christmas" to me.

On Friday mc_shamo and I drove to Castlemaine and it's surrounds in search of cherries. Unfortunately the inclement weather of late has meant that although it's cherry season the glut usually experienced around Christmas won't happen. Quite a few of the places I'd planned that we'd visit were closed. However, the silver lining for me of all this is that at Peelers Family Orchard in Harcourt they were willing to sell me a box of water-damaged cherries for $18. This box would have held about 8 kilos of cherries (for overseas readers and those who don't buy cherries, at the moment in shops cherries are ranging from $10 to $17 a kilo) I was stoked. We bought the box plus a kilo of eating cherries (only half a kilo made it back to Kensington, and we may have been a little sticky and had red stained lips by the time we got home) and then headed to the Maldon Cherry Farm where they were also experienceing difficulty with the rain but had a few varieties for sale. We bought a bag of the firmer, less sweet cherries and a bag of sweeter cherries (which I actually think had less flavour, kinda wish we'd just bought two bags of the firm ones) and after a detour into Maldon itself for scones, cake and coffee and to pick up a cherry stoner we called it a day.

At home we moved the coffee table out of the lounge, then mc_shamo turned on the television and dvd player while I got an old towel from upstairs. We put the box of cherries on the towel and got out two large mixing bowls. I started de-stalking the cherries, keeping my eye out for ones too bruised to use or mouldy (I was actually surprised how few there were I had to chuck) and Seamus de-stoned them, putting the stones and stalks in one bowl and the cherries in another. We continued like this while having a West Wing marathon until about 3am, with me getting up periodically whenever there were enough cherries and making jam, in the end we had 17 jars of the stuff. I've earmarked a jar for each of our relatives to whom we usually give presents, which takes us down to 7 jars, which should see us through to the next cherry season.) I also had a brainwave when I realised just how MANY cherries we had and spread about 3 kilos of them out in our food dehydrator. It took over 24 hours but we've ended up with about 500gms of dried cherries, which are like cherry-flavoured sultanas.

Yesterday, with West Wing still rolling (as I said on Facebook, I think I had dreams about the defecit last night) I de-stoned the firm cherries we'd not eaten and put them on a foil covered baking tray (and there was a little bit of "one for me, one for the tray, two for me, one for the tray" going on I admit) which I put in the frzer. After two hours they were frozen solid, I picked them off and put in a freezer-safe container. Apparently they keep quite well like this and can be used to make cherry sorbet or cherry sauce in winter. I then de-stoned the sweeter but less firm cherries and put them in a large jar with some sugar, over which I poured brandy. This will make both cherry brandy and liquere cherries, ready in about 3 months, perfect in about 6.

There is now about half a kilo of cherries in the fridge for eating and that's it! The rest have been disposed of in what I hope are yummy, yummy ways.

And after all that, I forgot to bring any fresh cherries to work with me. You'd think I'd be cherried out, but no. So I guess I'll have my orange and just think about cherries until I get home.

I've been having a break from work for the past few days, and that means I've also avoided the internet. A good thing too, since having four days worth of posts to catch up on gave me a way to fill in an hour this morning after completeing my work.

Christmas was great. We had dinner with Dad's relatives the weekend before Christmas, then the traditional Guzys family Christmas Eve (at my grandparent's house for the last time- next year it'll move east) which felt more relaxed than it has for a while. My grandmother has been slowly off-loading her old knitting patterns on me as her arthritis has stopped her knitting as much. This time instead of the usual jumpers and glove patterns it was toys, and baby booties. Subtle Grandma, real subtle.

On Christmas day we opened our presents under the Christmas tree. Seamus got me an entire outfit from Ecowear- one of my favourite shops- includinga scarf and bag. I got him some antique rose gold cufflinks with his initials engraved on them (and I didn't get the initials engraved- they came like that- fate!) then we had a breakfast of buckwheat pancakes, bacon and maple syrup while watching the cats run around happily with their new toy mice.

Christmas lunch was at Seamus' Mum's place with his sister Morg and her partner Doug. A very laid back meal. Seamus went on to his Dad's relatives afterwards, but I stayed home to sleep in preparation for my night shift. In the evening we had those that once were MUCAAS over for the annual Christmas wind-down party which was a lot of fun. I left at about 1130pm to go to work.

It wasn't too bad working overnight on Christmas night. I managed to get to sleep about 4am and didn't wake up until about 7:30, with only half an hour to go on my shift. Seamus and I hit Highpoint early to spend the money we'd received for Christmas (we now have a food processor!) before I fell into bed and Seamus went off to visit his Dad with his sister.

Apart from that the last couple of days have involved watching DVDs while knitting on the couch, reading, eating blood plums, having family and friends over for meals and going out to family and friend's places for other meals. It's been fantastic, and a wonderful break.

Bring on 2010!

My Christmas was lovely.

I worked Christmas Eve. I work in emergency services, so you can imagine that working Christmas Eve could be a little disheartening (I was hoping I would not end up like Turk from the first Christmas episode of Scrubs) Luckily it was quiet, so apart from feeling very sad for two young motorcycle riders it was okay.

mc_shamo came and picked me up at 11pm when my shift ended. He drove me home where he had laid out a candlelight supper on the table. There was organic stilton cheese and a spanish dessert wine and two little french puddings being steamed on the stove. By the time we'd finished it was midnight, and we exchanged gifts. I gave Seamus a pair of Etiko high-top shoes (think Converse but fair-trade with renewable rubber and organic cotton) and he gave me a truly beautiful amber and silver bracelet. It's really gorgeous, and it shows that he has excellent taste and also pays attention to what I like, as he got it to match my favourite amber necklace.

We got up on Christmas morning and had a breakfast of fruit and yogurt and cereal. I finished making the food for lunch and we drove to my parents place.

We had a really lovely afternoon. My parents live in Beaumauris, about three houses up from the beach. It was us, my parents, my brother, my paternal aunt Moira and uncle Michael and their daughter- my cousin Tess- and her husband Andrew. Small and manageable. Mum looked a bit disconcerted by my food; she'd forgotten that I was bringing the roast, but relaxed after she took the gladwrap off the salad and said , "Oh, it's cous-cous!" She'd thought I'd made a rice salad and was a bit hurt because she always makes the rice salad at Christmas and everyone always says how nice it is. I assured her that I would never have made a rice salad and was really looking forward to her one. And that there? That was the stickiest moment the entire day, for a family Christmas I believe that's incredibly good going!

For lunch there were four different salads, including mine, then roast ham for the meat eaters, a huge seafood platter and my vegetarian roast, which I'm sure at least my parents and mc_shamo really liked, I certainly did :-) We did well on the present haul too. The night before was my mum's side of the family's Christmas thing, which I couldn't go to as I was working, I'd just sent cards for everyone except my cousin Emily, for whom I'd found a framed Degas print in an op-shop (which Mum said she watched Emily open and she obviously loved, yay!). Mum informed me everyone had disobeyed my "no presents please" request and Seamus and I were inundated with towels, crockery and booze. All of which are welcome. From Dad's side we were given beer glasses (Tess is teh awesome) and some gorgeous serving plates and I got some accessories to jazz up work outfits (Tess again- she is teaching me how to make one expensive outfit actually look like five for work wear). My brother gave us the entire Monty Python's Flying Circus and upped his cool points something chronic. Because we're hippies we gave everyone organic wine, except my brother, who we gave a JB voucher and a keyring of an ugly man who has snot coming out of his nose when you squeeze it. Being my brother David thought this the height of hilarity.

We sat round and vaguely helped with the clearing up and drank coffee until mc_shamo was positive he was right to drive (not that he would have got much over .05 at any point in the day anyway) then drove home along Beach rd. I was really happy. My parents both seemed relaxed and well, and everyone has accepted Seamus as a member of the family. They all like him and include him, and I'm proud of them, because it's the first time someone in this little part of our family has had a "partner" they live with as opposed to a husband or wife. We weren't treated any differently to Tess and Andrew and there are now vague plans for my aunt and uncle to visit us soon for afternoon tea (I wasn't actually sure they'd been told Seamus and I live together). So all was well, and happy. :-)

Christmas night our traditional MUCAAS party was small but cosy and chilled. We had round cows_might_fly, clappamungus, jpom40 (who quickly succumbed to the cat hair he was allergic too, poor thing!) and pseudo-Cambridge-Sam. We talked, watched Monty Python and drank. Lovely. It's a really good way to round off Christmas.

Boxing Day mc_shamo and I hit the sales. Oh boy did we hit the sales. We did Highpoint and the CBD. Our haul:

-Ipod dock
-"All that Alternative" 3 cd set
-men's short sleeved shirts from Jeep
-women's short sleveed 3/4 length summer jacket thing from Jeep
-red zirconia and silver earrings to go with my new bracelet from a jewelers
-a white bra to replace my current one which is now not so much white but grey and has little elasticity left
-two pairs Thai fishermans pants from Ishka
-womens work/casual black pants from Ishka's $10 basket (the clasp had come away from the belt, it took less that ten minutes sewing to fix and hey presto! $60 pair of pants for $10!)
-womens formal/work black pants from Myer
-work top from Myer
-summer dress from Myer (one of those awesome dresses that can be work/formal/casual that Myers is so good at producing)
-mens socks 'n' jocks from Myer
-bananaman t-shirt (whee!I have both now!)
-De Blob Wii game

I also found a perfect suit for jpom40's wedding. Unfortunately it was only available in size 10 or lower. I am a size 12-14. The nice lady at the Cue store in Myers rang around but nowhere in the CBD has it in a larger size. I was bummed, because it was so perfect I was willing to buy it even if James decided he didn't like it and I had to wear something else to the wedding, it would have been worth the suit alone, paticularley at 50% off in the sale. Ah well, cannot win them all. I then found another beautiful one at Antons, but it was $600. I am actually considering it but I'd want James' approval first! It's very nice indeed, the one at Antons, and the jacket could be worn over a dress at later formal occasions.

Today mc_shamo and I are going to his mum's place for Christmas lunch. It should be fun!

All in all, the last few days have been relativley stress free (even the sales are mostly stress-free when done with mc_shamo!) and filled with family and friends and laughter and fun. I have had a wonderful Christmas so far. I know for some people reading this this is not the case, and I truly hope you are as physically and emotionally well as possible and that things improve soon, and that next's year Christmas is better. I'm thinking of you.

Merry Christmas all.

I am helping out tomorrow by bringing food to Christmas lunch. I am very glad my mum is cool with this, as many people aren't. And while I doubt most of my family will eat the main I'm bringing hopefully some will try it and like it. No matter what, this vegetarian will we damned well-fed tomorrow!

I have prattled on and included pictures, feel free to take the recipes, in fact I'd be thrilled if you did! :-D

( Food, glorious food, in different stages of preparation )

I am glad I'm not a chef. I take such pleasure and find such happiness in cooking for people I love when I have the time, I think doing it every day for strangers would ruin it for me.

More pics when it's clothed!

Season's Greetings!



Ok, I know it's now Boxing St Stephen's day, but I didn't get a chance to do this yesterday. Merry Christmas everyone!

I had a very good Christmas. On the 23rd I took mc_shamo to meet the Curtain side of the family and we had lunch. On Christmas Eve he came with me to the Guzys side celebrations and my parents dropped us back at his place after. On Christmas morning we woke up before 7am, exchanged gifts (I got spoilt! I have a red thing and tea things and some of my favourite perfume!) then went back to sleep. We got up properly around ten and mc_shamo made pancakes, then we went to his mum's place to get her and went out for a long Christmas lunch. nice and relaxing. After lunch we went back to my place to look at the kittens (who are cute and adorable and scared as hell) then to mc_shamo's where we exchanged presents with my brother who was home by then. We had a nap, then dinner, then headed over to Helen's for the Annual MUCAAS Christmas Night Party. She has a new cat too, Terence, who is 9 years old and came from a shelter and is very very nice and affectionate. All in all, Christmas has been nicely stretched out (and is still going!)and pretty stress-free.

Oh, and the picture above is of the bauble mc_shamo and I bought together. We've decided that each year in the weeks leading up to Christmas we'd make time to go shopping together and choose a christmas ornament for our tree. This is our first effort. It came from Oxfam and is clear glass with coloured splotches.

And for good measure, here is the whole tree:


Once again, Merry Christmas everyone!

Things are moving around a lot and making me dizzy.

At least I've started on Christmas presents.