This was our first real Christmas in the USA, so we decided to celebrate in slightly unconventional fashion. Back in the UK I have to admit to being lazy; we have a store called Marks and Spencer where the food is very good and you can order pretty much aall the parts of your  Christmas dinner. There’s still a lot of cooking to do, but the risky bits are done for you.  It usually tastes fantastic, the down side is that you have to place your order sometimes as early as October (or some items are sold out) and you have to go an collect it, which means standing in a long queue of  harassed people in a crowded shop on Christmas Eve. Not the ideal start.

This year I decided things would be different; after a year of financial doom and gloom it seemed wrong to have one of those dinners where there are huge amounts of leftovers, I thought we’d try and get things right, partially by having things everyone liked, rather than sticking to tradition.

How did it go? I think I can report partial success.  My children requested a complete absence of turkey, so we settled for what seems to us to be the most American of meals,  hamburgers, but home made.  My husband likes the staples of brussel sprouts and roast potatoes, so we had those with the hamburgers, along with an assortment of chutneys and sauces. For dessert we had the traditional English favorite, not plum pudding but Christmas trifle. Made entirely from scratch we could add as much or as little sugar as we liked, and my new food processor, a Christmas gift from my Mum, made short work of whipping the eggs for the custard and later the whipped cream.

Usually, after a day on my feet cooking I feel a little empty. Tradition has been served, but despite all the preparation that goes into it, Christmas dinner is a little flat. The kids are just not THAT excited by Turkey and the trimmings, my kitchen is full of dirty dishes and my refrigerator full of leftovers which noone particularly wants to eat. This year there’s a little of the trifle left, but everything else is long gone. Tradition has not been satisfied, but our appetites were, and really who cares about the rest? In our first Christmas in a new country, its a time to make new traditions.  We were together.  That’s one Christmas tradition I’m firmly in favour of.

The choice, must of course be Earl Grey, drunk in the English fashion with sugar to taste and a splash of milk. (though with tea with honey and lemon might also be possible).  Imagine my joy then when I found the perfect tea pot, the ideal accompaniment not only for my morning cup of Earl Grey, but for my robe.  Happy Aladdin is only one an amazing range of stunning hand blown glass teapots from french tea specialist Mariage Freres. The names, as well as the designs and descriptions, and completely irresistible, and an absolute must have for the serious robe owner!

I was expecting great fruit, after all, Florida is the orange and grapefruit centre of the world, but I didn’t expect the onions.  The red onions which are readily available here are potent but delightfully sweet, as well as being extremely good nutritionally. This, I must say is not always top of my list when it comes to reasons to eat something, but if something tastes terrific AND is good for you then you’d really have to be an idiot to turn it down.

So here’s the recipe for ‘sleepwear salad’ – tastes equally good whether you’re wearing a nightgown, pajamas or a robe!

• 1 cup pineapple chopped
• 1 cup red onion chopped
• 3 tablespoons of blue cheese dressing

Mix together and enjoy! (Variations  – add parmesan cheese)

Makes a great breakfast or lunch and tastes great as a salad with dinner.

What you eat in your nightgown?

I have a friend called Andy who makes the best breakfast in the world – the perfect thing to eat while wearing a luxury nightgown! There’s always bacon and usually superb sausage ( think he gets them from a market near Covent garden) but actually the thing I miss most about eating an Andy cooked breakfast is the mushrooms, so when I was browsing a list of ‘ideal presents for him’ recently this bag  caught my eye.  Specially designed for a the mushroom picker, it has four pockets to store different types of mushroom AND a bag. What is this second bag for? Well to store the first bag in of course! (Yes, my handbags all come in ‘other’ bags too, but this is a $17 dollar nylon mushroom bag, not Fendi’s latest creation)

Of course you might enjoy a spot of caviar for breakfast (I’d say it depends very much on the season) and if so, we all know there is nothing worse than warm caviar, so you might be intested in this caviar bowl at only $45 (#27)  which holds plenty of ice, but don’t forget the spoon which is very important. If you can tell your Osetra from your Sevruga then maybe something a little more ostentatious? How about the bowl in the picture? It comes in blue, green,clear, aqua and red. I think I’ll have the red one, to go with my robe.  How much does it cost? You know what they say, if you have to ask …..

(I just bookmarked the page on delicious, and it said there were ‘no recommended tags for caviar bowls. What is the world coming to?)

Caviar Bowl from Varang

Apriums (or should it be apria?) can be used in most circumstances where you would use apricots, but the slightly sharp taste of plum makes them a particularly good accompaniement for cheese, especially blue cheese.

Here is a list of recipes where apriums can be used, but we’d suggest poaching them very slightly in brandy and honey (esepcially lavender honey) and then filling them with soft blue cheese.

Aprium Muffins- from foodreference.com

Aprium-peach cobbler from harvest to table

Apriums are a good source of vitamin A and will ripen if placed in a paper bag at room temperature. Keep them away from bananas which will make them ripen too fast and don’t handle them too much as the skin discolors. Look out for new varieties of aprium, such as the miniatures which are extremely succulent and make an excellent accompaniement to cheese of all kinds.

This idea was given to me on a day when I found myself hosting a dinner for my sons godparents. Dinner was at 7:30, I found out about it at 12. Don’t ask why, it’s a very long story.

A friend gave me this idea when we discovered that I had no time to prepare AND my guests were vegetarian.

You need:

Salad leaves

A log of goats cheese

Demerera sugar

Crusty bread

variation – tomatoes.

Slice the cheese quite thickly log and sprinkle sugar on each slice. Blowtorch or grill the cheese until the sugar forms a caramel crust. Serve the cheese on the crusty bread on a bed of leaves.

If you find this a little bland, do the same thing with tomatoes and add these for additional colour and flavour.