Food

Hope everyone's prep is going well.

Main task for today complete - the brininating^ of the pork. Tomorrow it will receive a bacon and jalapeno BBQ rub, and then smoked for 2-3 hours. Interior meat injected just to be sure.

^ - Trogdor reference.

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Great shout, these are cute

Horrendous experience at the supermarkets this morning as expected.

Think I have my menu confirmed now, aiming for a blend of top quality where it counts and ease/cheating where I can get away with it. So, nibbles instead of proper starters, no-cook dessert, and as little doubling up of meat/veggie things as possible. Which means no pancetta in the sprouts sadly.

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Love this and not diss-similar to ours! Might do a menu now ☺️

So far realised that there's not enough space in the fridge to brine the turkey and I never got round to buying poultry shears to spatchcock it.

I checked out fentimans curiosity cola in Sainsbury’s and was disappointed to read on the back it contained sweeteners and stevia

I think I over ordered, this mfer about twice the size as my usual

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Amusingly Waitrose online was fully sold out of regular coke, treacle and mustard powder whereas Morrisons had all of them.

Clear to see who does the ham in coke.

envy is setting in already.

Fennel pollen? Posh bastard.

Looks really good.

Here's some more inspo, although perhaps not christmassy, once you've had all six martinis, anything is festive.

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That Martinez is on the list to try, don’t have the bitters but everything else is in the cabinet.
White negronis tonight (made with luxardo bitter bianco not Suze)

The Puritan was the biggest hit among our testing panel, fwiw.

Found this one from the guardian from a couple of years back not the sabor one, but probably pretty close..

https://amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jul/02/20-best-spanish-recipes-part-4-ofm-stew-gazpacho-ice-cream

On that high grade 🥴💨

6 cocktails and some pasta is my kind of menu.

This pasta bake, in case you're curious. Tend to do a bit more sausagemeat: https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/jan/19/yotam-ottolenghi-recipes-traybakes-pork-mushroom-pasta-spicy-chicken-chickpeas

Stage one of the wellington complete. Pastry can wait until the morning. Got presents to wrap now. Hope you all have a good one

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Burp!
I’m all for this European Christmas Eve dining,
Moroccan spiced leftover beef pie tomorrow which isn’t going to mean 5 hours of the day spent cooking.

Crouch end Waitrose was fine.

Could message me and I can lend you a bone cleaver.

Just the polish and they have carp. Have had carp in Poland and it was lovely.

Also loads of Europeans do gifts when jebus did.

Also I fucking hate Christmas. Live the food, and not a turkey fan.

I have a Lidl delix turkey crown, also got a pack of 500g of turnips that weighs 1.3kg all big turnips too.

Tho to Yorkie pud or not?

Impossible. It's almost always awful. At least in part because of the lack of space to exit after the checkouts. All the fault of the dodgy extension Woolworths built. At least Woolies had the back entrance onto Crouch Hall Road open.

The decline started when Clocktower Toys was replaced by the Haelan Centre.

the Haelan Centre

that must have been late '70s or early '80s?

i remember getting severely reprimanded by Woolies security guard for trying to steal a single sweet from the pic n mix when i was about 10.

I hear you, today was fine. Marks and sparks was worse with the unmanned checkouts.

Tho no one has Bailey's squirty cream.