Update about shopping and ultra-processed products

 During January, I tracked all our grocery shopping, and even took photos. I was following an unofficial 'challenge' to see how long we could go without buying anything other than fresh or minimally processed foods.

I updated this at the end of February, listing the processed (possibly ultra-processed) products that we had bought during the month. They were still minimal. And by that stage I was taking more notice of the ingredients of even standard products which we had previously bought: packaged tortillas, for instance, or pitta bread. 

I did try making pitta bread early in March, but it wasn't very successful:

Quite apart from the strange shapes, there were almost no pockets on the inside. And it was a lot more complex than naan bread, which I do make about once a month; my recipe makes eight, so we use two and freeze the rest in twos. 

Third week of Advent

Sunday 14th December was the third Sunday in Advent. It was also a special anniversary for us: 48 years exactly since we went out on our first date, and 46 years since we got engaged. 

But there was no chance to go out to celebrate. I didn't go to a church service, either, as I knew I had to do a lot of cooking and baking in the morning. Every other Sunday our friends come over for an afternoon of games (with a DVD for the teenagers), followed by a shared evening meal. I always provide bread and a dessert, while they usually bring cut up vegetables and protein such as cheese, eggs and tuna.  Through the cooler months, I also make soup. 

In addition, I was hosting our local writing group lunch on the Monday. I wanted to ensure there we had enough variety of food, so I planned to prepare some of that on Sunday morning as well. And our Sunday lunch, which wasn't complicated as I used a previously frozen chicken dish, so I only had to prepare roast potatoes and veggies to accompany it.

I started around 10.00am after a leisurely breakfast and shower... and I tried not to rush, so I wouldn't get muddled. I first started the carrot and ginger soup, one of my favourites; I add previously boiled chick-peas in too, to give it some protein. Then I started preparing some chicken breast with a slightly spicy thick sauce, to serve cold on Monday. And put the ingredients for a loaf of bread in the breadmaker.

Then I leafed through all my recipes looking for something to make for dessert in the evening; nothing really inspired me, so I tried a lemon blondie recipe I had previously downloaded and printed. I had quite a lot of lemon juice which I had frozen last year from an excess of lemons, so it was good to use some of that up. 

By this stage, the kitchen looked like this:

I also wanted to make mince pies... so I had to tidy up a little, to make room for the food processor, and for rolling out the pastry. 

Christmas Eve 2021

 As has become a tradition, I'm writing a post on Christmas Eve to wish a very happy Christmas to anyone who might read this.  I don't suppose I'll turn my computer on at all tomorrow. 

So in keeping with the annual posts on this date, I'll begin with a photo of our Christmas cake which I iced this morning and decorated in much the same way as I have every other year. I was tired - it's been a stressful year, and a surprisingly busy December - so didn't feel like anything more creative: 

Richard and Tim took over the kitchen after I had done that, preparing and cooking the turkey. We always do this on Christmas Eve now; after it had stood for half an hour or so after being cooked, Richard carved it and it's now in the fridge in a roasting pan, so it can easily be reheated for an hour in the oven tomorrow. That way it can be served hot, rather than cooling down as everyone waits for it to be carved.

I'm not sure why I'm quite so tired this year; perhaps it's just my advancing years meaning I can do less. I've tried to limit extra baking and cooking to just one thing per day, and have not turned the computer on until after lunch. This means I've been slightly more productive in the kitchen than usual, but considerably less productive at the computer.  

In the early part of the month, other than making some mince pies (as mentioned in my last post) I didn't do much extra cooking; instead I focused on writing and posting cards, and organising Christmas presents for the extended family in the UK. However on December 9th I made three Christmas puddings, seen here in the steamer:

A couple of days later, I tried out a recipe which claimed to be 'failsafe' (a politer way, I suppose, of saying 'foolproof'), lemon bars:

I used dairy-free spread instead of butter, of course, and half wholewheat flour in the base, and made exactly three-quarters of the given amount to fit my tin. But other than those modifications, I made it exactly as given... it was very tasty, but quite messy to get out of the tin. I wished I had greased it although the recipe specifically stated that an ungreased tin should be used. 

However they seemed to be appreciated by the Larnaka Christian Writers' Group; the December meeting was held at our house, followed by our usual pre-Christmas potluck/shared lunch. Much food was enjoyed by nine of us. 

When I made the lemon slices again a few days ago (they really did taste good, definitely repeatable...) I used a silicon sheet underneath and greased the sides, and they came out rather better. 

I made other things to freeze for Christmas, managing to find space in the freezer although it's not easy, and did some extra cleaning, including Tim's room after Richard did significant amounts of tidying.  Yes, despite Omicron and increased Covid restrictions, our younger son was able to fly here on Monday. He said the flight was crowded and rather scary as several of the passengers were not wearing masks, or not wearing them properly. But he's here, and has finished the few days of isolating with us (Cyprus distinguishes 'isolation' from 'strict isolation', the latter only coming into play if someone tests positive).

We went to the Post Office yesterday to see if there was any mail and were surprised by quite a number of Christmas cards. Usually the majority don't arrive until after Christmas, so we keep them and then put them up the following year.  But we've had quite a few now, which is nice:

We send most of our Christmas greetings by email, with an update of a few significant events from the past year - most of which can be found by browsing this blog, despite the distinct lack of entries for the year. 

Tomorrow we'll be going to St Helena's for the morning service, where Tim will be playing, then back here to finish lunch preparations. Our friends will be joining us, with four of their children - not really children any more as the youngest is eleven . We'll eat too much then play board games, and then eat some more. And we'll try to remember the real reason for Christmas amidst the light-hearted indulgences of the day. 

Wishing every blessing to all who read this, with a safe and happy celebration in whatever form it takes. And praying for a more hopeful New Year. 

First eight days of December

Although Advent started on November 29th, I wasn't quite ready to start thinking about Christmas preparations until December started. Well - other than making our cake a month ago, and feeding it a couple of times with extra brandy.  And something else I order online for a selected few people, which had to be done before the end of November.

Then I realised I had to think about Christmas cards. Many people are not sending any this year, due to extremely slow postal deliveries. The number of cards we send out has reduced significantly over the years: from about seventy ten or so years ago to just thirty-five last year. That's partly due to losing touch with some folk, for various reasons (including a small number who, sadly, have died), and partly because more and more people are now sending Christmas greetings by email rather than in the post.

Since we didn't go to the UK in the summer, I had no chance to buy Christmas cards for this year; I've never much liked those I can find here (and it's not easy to find them at all - or maybe I'm looking in the wrong places). I discovered that I had a handful of reasonable cards that I was willing to send - but nowhere near 35. So that made the decision easy:  I wrote just six cards, to relatives who are a generation above ours - even though most are on email anyway. 

I even had six UK stamps in my desk. So last Tuesday, the first day of December, I walked to the Post Office, and put the cards in the letter box.  I have no idea if they will arrive in time for Christmas... 

Something else I usually do early in December is to make a batch of mincemeat and some Christmas puddings. But we still had half of last year's mincemeat in the fridge, and one Christmas pudding - so as we won't be doing much entertaining this year, I didn't need to make any more.

On Wednesday, December 2nd, we spent the morning with a local friend helping her publish her collection of forty-two short stories via Amazon KDP.  We have been very impressed with this method of self-publishing and have helped various people this year to publish their work. The quality is excellent and 'print-on-demand' means that there's no need for a publisher (or writer) to risk anything in advance.

In the evening, back on the Advent theme, I attended a short Advent service via Zoom, offered by St Helena's Church. 

I'm not entirely sure where Thursday disappeared to. We shopped on Friday, but only at the froutaria. We met our friends in the evening for a shared meal, as we usually do, and on Saturday I cleaned the house fairly thoroughly. 

On Sunday I did quite a bit of baking: some bread rolls, a pan of gingerbread, and some different biscuits for our shared afternoon with friends, and for Monday. And in the evening we went to the Christingle service at St Helena's. 

We weren't sure whether there would be room - there were strict limits on numbers of people who could attend any church service in Cyprus, and the maximum permitted in the St Helena's building was something like 28, with distancing between unrelated people or groups, and of course masks on all the time. However the service was streamed, and there was the possibility of seating outside. 

In the event, while twenty people watched online (and many more afterwards) exactly the right number of people turned up at St Helena's, and it was a pleasant service. I am very thankful we were able to go, because today new pandemic restrictions have been announced in Cyprus: there will be no more church services with congregation present until at least January. So the Carol service, Crib service and Christmas Day service will be online only.  That will be strange, and quite disturbing not to go to any church service at Christmas. 

On Monday the local Christian writing group had to meet in two groups, as there were eleven or twelve of us who wanted to meet, and no more than ten people can be present in anyone's house. We usually have a shared potluck-style lunch in December, but decided it was best not to do that this year. Perhaps we'll celebrate at Easter instead. Or whenever we are finally able to meet again as one group.

In the afternoon I went to the local book discussion group where we did have some Christmas nibbles to share during the meeting - there were eight of us, spread out in a distanced way around the table which was full of finger foods. 

Then on Tuesday, my friend Sheila and two of her daughters came over to help put up and decorate our Christmas tree. When I say 'help', that's how it was when the girls were smaller. But now they put the three together unaided, and decorate exactly as they wish.  They do an excellent job, and I rarely move or change anything. 

I started ordering presents for family members yesterday too - so much less stressful not struggling through Christmas crowds (not that it would happen this year). 

And in the evening, we watched that Christmas classic DVD 'Love Actually', which we hadn't seen for eight years. I had reservations about it when we first saw it, but enjoyed it a lot more last night.

Muffins or cupcakes?

Our two years in the United States (1992-1994) made us somewhat bilingual as far as British/American words and phrases go. On the whole I use British phrases - a lift rather than an elevator, trousers rather than pants, car boot rather than trunk, and so on, although I don't necessarily even notice when friends use the other versions, or when I read them in books. And with globalisation, and popular culture, and of course having had several good friends from the US, there are some words where find myself adopting the American usage. 

So, for instance, movies and films are pretty much interchangeable, in my mind. I use both words, for variety, if I'm writing about one. And I realised recently, when asked a question by an online friend, that I use the word 'cupcake' to describe small cakes (often iced/frosted) in cases, whereas, growing up, I would have said 'fairy cake', or possibly just 'little cake'. 

And then there's muffins. 

As a child, I knew muffins as bread-like flattish things, a bit like crumpets, which would go in the toaster or under the grill, and could be eaten with butter. However I had almost forgotten they existed until we heard that, in the United States, they are known as 'English muffins', because their 'muffins' were baked items that resemble cupcakes - or fairy cakes - in appearance, although they tend to be larger, and can be savoury. 

Nearly three decades later, I haven't seen an 'English' muffin in years, and now use the term 'muffin' to refer to the American items. I've seen them in supermarkets (in the UK), and even in some restaurants or cafes, sometimes referred to as 'American-style muffins', but sometimes without any adjective at all. 

I mentioned on Friday that we had bought some silicon muffin pans. This led to some discussion with our friends about the difference between cupcakes and muffins. Apart from the fact that muffins can be savoury and are never iced (or frosted), what is the essential difference between, say, a chocolate cupcake and a chocolate muffin?  The fact that muffins are usually bigger isn't an essential difference, since one can buy 'mini muffins', and there's no reason why one shouldn't make large cupcakes. 

I knew that muffins tended to be denser, but it's been a long time since I actually made any. So today, as our friends were coming for the every-other-Sunday games afternoon and shared  evening meal, I decided to try out my new muffin pans. I checked various books and found a couple of recipes that sounded rather good, and for which I had the ingredients; one with oats and cranberries, the other a triple chocolate muffin recipe. 

I made the cranberry one first. The recipe involved putting the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl (flour with quite a lot of baking powder, oats and brown sugar, then mixing in the cranberries), then lightly beating eggs, oil and quite a bit of milk together, and pouring them in. The instructions said to stir with a metal spoon until just mixed, not beating or over-mixing. So I did that, and divided the mixture between the twelve muffin pan holes, and put them in the oven at 200 degrees. 

As I wanted to cook the chocolate ones fairly soon afterwards, I had to take them out of the pans while they were still warm, which wasn't a great idea; I knew they were meant to be left in silicon pans until cold,  A few of them did break slightly, but seven of them came out perfectly, which is good as there were seven of us eating together in the evening:

The recipe was quite different from a basic cake recipe - flour was the main constituent, and the only fat was 6 tablespoons of oil. The sugar content was fairly low too. Mixing the wet ingredients into the dry ones is typical of cakes such as gingerbread, but mixing only until JUST combined is unlike any cake I've made - and I've baked a lot of different recipes over the years. 

The chocolate muffin recipe started with melting 175g dark chocolate with some butter (I used dairy-free spread, of course), and again the amount of butter/spread was very small, only 50g, whereas there was 275g flour plus 50g cocoa in the dry ingredients. And, again, egg and milk were added (dairy-free milk for us as we don't use cow's milk).  And chocolate chips. 

Here they are, out of the oven:

And here are the seven I put out for the end of our evening meal:

They were good, I thought, quite dense and a little chewy; not as sweet as cupcakes, and more filling, though that might just be because of the size. A basic cupcake would have equal weights of butter/spread, sugar (usually white sugar), flour (usually white flour) and egg,  with no extra fluid, whereas these muffins had more flour than anything else, mostly wholemeal, and a significant amount of milk. 

The addition of cranberries or chocolate chips could work in cupcakes, of course, as could using wholemeal flour, and brown sugar, and there are many varieties of cake, some of which don't use any kind of butter or spread.  But I think I now have a better idea of the difference - and on Googling to see if there's anything official, I found this interesting discussion.  Many of the points made are similar to the conclusions I had come to, and one of the experts states that muffins are technically a form of 'quick bread'. 

I have made muffins in the past, using cupcake-size pans, with cupcake cases (since I only had metal pans) and recalled that the muffins tended to get stuck to the cake cases far more than little cakes do. So using these silicon pans is a great improvement as they mostly came out very cleanly, and of course there were no paper cases to dispose of. 

Making our Christmas cake

We're sadly resigned to the fact that we won't be able to see our sons, or grandchildren, or any other relatives at Christmas this year. But the cooler weather reminded me that it's time to bake this year's Christmas cake. We hope we'll still be able to have local friends over during the Christmas period and early January - if not, we'll be eating it all ourselves. I usually only have a couple of slices... 

I thought about making it on Tuesday, but I didn't have enough dried fruit. I bought some more on Wednesday morning, thinking I would make it on Wednesday... then remembered that the fruit has to be soaked overnight in a few tablespoons of brandy.

So I weighed the fruit and left it soaking overnight, and for most of Thursday:

The recipe I use every year is, approximately, 'Delia's Celebration cake'.  I say 'approximately' because:

1. I use dairy-free spread rather than butter
2. I use half wholewheat flour rather than all plain
3. I use ground almonds rather than chopped
4. I can't easily buy dried currants here, other than at vast price, imported, and there's no differentiation between raisins and sultanas. So I use all raisins
5. I use grated zest of two lemons rather than one orange and one lemon
6. I don't bother to sift the dry ingredients
7. I don't use the brown paper and extra baking parchment on top

But, other than all those, I follow the recipe fairly closely. 

I did remember to use a large mixing bowl, something I have forgotten at times n the past. Here's the first stage, after beating the spread with the brown sugar:

At that point, I realised I had to find a suitable cake tin, and line it. I checked last year's photobook and saw that I made a square cake last year. So, for variety, this year's is round.  I only have one deep 20cm round tin, and it doesn't have a loose base, so it was important to line it.

One of the few things I recall clearly from 'domestic science' at my secondary school is the way to line a cake tin, by folding greaseproof paper in half, then clipping a little trim all the way around to make it fit neatly underneath the round piece cut for the base.

The rest of the cake is fairly standard - beat in the other 'wet' ingredients, gently fold in the dry ones with the fruit, and spoon it all into the prepared tin. I use a silicon spatula to make sure every last scrap of cake mixture is used:

Since, by this stage, our evening meal was in the oven, cooking at a rather higher temperature than is appropriate for a cake, I left it sitting on the work surface for half an hour or so, then put it in the oven at around 6.45pm when we started to eat, after turning the heat down appropriately and waiting a few minutes for the oven temperature to reduce.

The recipe says it should take four hours - in mine it says not to look until at least three hours, although the one I linked to says not even to check it until it's been in for four hours. But I've had Christmas cakes rather over-cooked and dry, in the past, even starting to burn on top. We prefer ours rather moister.  So I checked it after just two hours, and it seemed to be almost done.  It was firm on the top, slightly springy, and coming away from the sides. I turned the heat down a bit more and left it in for another half hour or so,  and then took it out to cool. 

I certainly hope it's sufficiently cooked, but it's never been a problem in the past.  I left it overnight in the oven (turned off) to cool down fully, then this morning wrapped it in foil and put it in an airtight container to mature. I'll pour a little brandy into the bottom a couple of times - if I remember - and then put almond paste and royal icing (home made, of course) on in the week before Christmas.

That's about all I need to do at this stage. I still have a Christmas pudding left from last year, and over half the mincemeat I made last year, so I won't do any more. All family presents get ordered online, and I usually make calendars for a few folk, so those need to be organised and ordered.  But there's no urgency there. I hope.

We went to SuperHome Centre this morning to buy a couple of things, and were startled to see Christmas displays everywhere - but shouldn't have been surprised, really.  There were lots and lots of little scenic models with moving parts, some of them at extortionate price, others more reasonable. However none of them appealed. All the cute (and the not-so-cute) Christmas scenes, with skaters, or playgrounds or other snowy (and entirely un-Cypriot) scenes seemed to feature large, jolly caricatured Santas along with the other little figures.

Our cats would probably be fascinated by something like that... which is another excellent reasons for not having one. 

Over half way through December...

The weather was still pretty warm right up to the end of November, and even the first few days of December. It simply didn't feel as if Christmas was coming, despite decorations, of varying degrees of gaudiness, appearing in our neighbourhood and downtown.

The writers' group had our now traditional Christmas get-together followed by bring-and-share lunch on December 2nd, and one of our members was efficient enough to have printed newsletters and written Christmas cards to hand out.

I was not that member.

Still, I had sorted out almost all our family Christmas gifts at the end of October before our trip to the UK. I felt quite pleased about it, despite feeling that it was somehow too early. I made our Christmas cake at the start of November... and since we are not into partying, or wild decorations, it didn't seem as if there was much to do.

And yet, I have this uncomfortable memory of spending the last few days before previous Christmases desperately trying to bake, and getting stressed, and thinking of all the things I really wished I had got around to earlier...

So when my friend Sheila started telling me about her family's Advent 'calendar' idea, I wondered whether I could find ONE thing to do every day in December, in order to prepare for Christmas. Which, after all, is part of the point of Advent. I was slightly stymied by it being already December 5th before I heard about this, but I reckoned that I could write off the first four days since I had already bought AND wrapped the presents, and made the cake.

So I did a bit of brainstorming and came up with about twenty things I wanted to do. Some were very quick (like 'feed the cake' or 'order the turkey') and some slower ('write the newsletter'). One or two were not precisely related to Christmas (such as 'clean all the windows').

One of them was to buy a poinsettia, something we forgot to do last year. But then a friend visited and brought us a lovely specimen:

So that was very easy.

On December 5th I made our Christmas puddings, which steamed all day and are now in the fridge.

On December 6th I made our mincemeat:

Then the weather took a very cold turn. Cold enough that it was actually a degree or two warmer in the UK than in Cyprus. Richard serviced our central heating and the gas man came last Monday.. but the radiators did not come on. And in a house with big rooms, high ceilings and tiled floors, it was COLD. We piled on layers of clothes, and actually went out to buy a couple of electric heaters, but they had limited effectiveness.

Then a wonderful, wonderful man came and fixed the heating. And we started to feel as if our bones were beginning to thaw out.

I spent the next couple of days writing a family newsletter; never an easy task, but some people appreciate it, so we keep up the tradition. It was a particularly difficult one this year and I played around with several possible formats.

Then I had to wait for a day or two as we needed a new cartridge for the colour printer. So by that stage already I had lost the impetus of doing one thing each day, and never regained it. I did manage to write all the cards - two days later than planned - and post them the following morning, although I'm not certain if they will arrive in time.

Six cards have arrived for us, so - as has now become a tradition in our home - I found last year's cards, most of which arrived late December or early January, and hung those up instead.

Last weekend I made our first batch of mince pies:

And then, because we all like it, and often used to make it at Christmas, I made some gingerbread.

Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo until after I had cut it into several parts and frozen most of it, but here's a picture of a small slab that I kept out:

The thing I jotted down for today - and actually DID today - was to put up our Christmas tree.

Or rather, I delegated it to my enthusiastic small friends, one of whom had asked me about a week ago if she could help put it up again. Sheila is much better than I am at putting things together anyway so I sat and took a few photos, happy to have delegated this task once again:

The two older girls had fun decorating the tree with as many ornaments as they could pile on, but Elisabeth, who is now three-and-a-half, was more interested in setting candles out on a bookshelf, and playing with the Nativity set. Here she is, with the finished tree in the background:

I thought I might make a chocolate yule log, something I haven't done before.. but am still pondering that one. Tomorrow we're going to go out and order our turkey (something I had intended doing a few days ago), and I'll also make the marzipan and do that layer of the cake tomorrow. If I get around to it, anyway. At some point I'll put the newsletter online and link to it, and of course I still have to ice the cake. I might make some fudge, although I think Tim will probably do that. And I will ice the cake on top of the marzipan early next week.

But it really does seem as if quite a bit has been done.

Oven door, Christmas cake, and a case of Deja Vu

I always intend to make our Christmas cake around the first week of November.  I don't always succeed; but this year I thought I would get organised early.

Only I thought I'd wait until after I had hosted the Christian writing group early in the month.. we were having a potluck-style shared lunch after the meeting, and as I closed the oven after removing a couple of things from it... this happened:

The inner glass panel had come away from its glue, and slid right down inside the door.

It's not the first time this has happened. As far as we recall, it's actually the fourth time since we moved to this house.  The last time was - we think - only about seven or eight months ago. Richard used a glue that was supposed to be stronger than the one he had previous used... but evidently it wasn't.

So I didn't use the oven for a couple of days, cooking instead with the slow-cooker, or the microwave, or even the halogen oven we bought in the summer but which I really don't like. Still, it did the job. 

And because it wasn't an emergency, and because Richard was extremely busy, we were nearly two weeks without an oven. I did point out that there was no way I could make this year's Christmas cake in anything other than the oven... and, last Friday, Richard bought some heat-proof glue (NOT the kind he used last time!) planning to mend the door this week, since we're having guests to dinner on Thursday evening.

On Monday evening, he finally set to work. He unscrewed the door, removed the glass panel... and realised that while the glue had come away from the door, rather a lot of it had stuck, very firmly, to the glass. 

So he started chipping it away. He had been doing this for about five minutes, and I had wandered away when I heard a different kind of noise, and 'Oh no!' emanating from the kitchen. 

'What happened?'  I called. 

'The glass cracked,' came the reply. 

I rushed through, expecting to find it neatly cracked in two. Or, perhaps four pieces...

Instead I saw this:

The final piece of attached glue had been just too strongly attached, and attempting to remove it had turned the panel into hundreds, perhaps thousands of smithereens. 

The next ten minutes were spent clearing up the glass from the work surfaces (previously-used jiffy bags are extremely useful for this purpose), and the floor, and changing the cat food, and sweeping under appliances, and mopping the floor....

And then we wondered what to do.  

Yesterday, Richard visited the workshop that has cut regular glass for him, for the boat and elsewhere.  They said that yes, they could make a new panel, but it would then have to be sent away to be 'toughened' to make it oven-proof. 

And it would take between ten days and two weeks.

Oh no :-(

So in the evening (after cooking our meal on the stove top and microwave again), we decided on a temporary compromise solution. Richard removed the oven door from our guest flat oven, since there isn't anybody staying there at present.  The oven looks identical to our oven, and we tried this once before when the door was broken; unfortunately it's not exactly identical... and the guest flat door doesn't seal very well in our oven. 

But it's a lot better than nothing.

So today, finally, I made this year's Christmas cake:

I put it in the oven, and quite enjoyed the warm air that escaped through the top... no doubt it makes it a great deal less efficient, but at this time of year a little extra heat isn't a bad thing. 

After a few hours, the cake smelled - and looked - cooked so I took it out:

This whole episode has a strong sense of déja vu about it, which is unsurprising because, when I searched through the archives of this blog, I discovered that the first time the oven door broke was almost exactly four years ago... just when I wanted to make our 2008 Christmas cake. 

The baking of a bundt

It all started a couple of weeks ago. Our good friends locally asked if we had the DVD of 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding'. Since moving to Cyprus, they had been told repeatedly that they should really see it - and more recently, had come across references to it in various books.

We did, and since it must have been about six years since we watched it, we checked with someone who was staying - he had never seen it, and was happy to see it too - and arranged a DVD evening on Monday of last week. We all enjoyed it. The film pokes fun at both Greek and American culture; living in Cyprus, we particularly appreciated the Greek family humour which is caricatured - but not much.

Then we got into discussion of the 'bundt' which was taken to a party by the nervous American mother. I produced my ring pan - and said I'd find a recipe and make one for the next cell group meeting. I did some research, and came across several recipes that sounded rather good. A bundt pan technically has sloping sides, so I was actually going to make a ring cake... but we didn't worry too much about that.

So, on Friday a week ago, since I had three apples that needed to be used up, I made a Dutch apple bundt cake. It was quite easy, and smelled good.

I didn't think there would be any problem getting it out of the pan - it's a loose-bottomed one, coated with teflon; I greased with butter and floured as the recipe told me to. And, indeed, the side came away easily. But the middle part didn't...


Since it was quite big, I was worried that trying to force it out would make it break.

However, when Richard got home from work, he was braver. He loosened it, and then flipped it upside down onto a serving dish, and shook it out:


Some of the fluted parts were a bit dented, but it looked fine.


Meanwhile, our friends called to let us know that their children were all in various stages of an unpleasant (albeit short-lived) stomach bug. Since the friends staying with us did NOT want to be exposed to it, the cell group was cancelled. And, tempting though it was to eat the ring cake, our friends (the ones staying) decided to take us out to our favourite local meze taverna to eat.

So I decided to keep the cake for whenever we next ate with our other friends. Which meant that actually I needed it on a plastic container, so that I could freeze it. So we transferred it to the lid of my Christmas cake container:


.. and wrapped it in foil, and froze it.

Fast forward a week. All were recovered from the stomach bug, and although our friends from the UK had both returned home, we were meeting again at our local friends' home for a cell group in the evening. So I got the cake out in the morning to thaw. I didn't think about the fact that it was actually upside-down - and it hardly mattered, since in fact it looked slightly better that way around.

Anyone who's seen the aforementioned movie will no doubt appreciate this photo:


Then Richard cut it into twelve pieces (even though it should theoretically have served 14). They were fairly good-sized pieces:


We all enjoyed it, including eight-month-old Elisabeth:

Mincemeat is now made

This time last year, thinking that I might be away for the first week of December, I was more organised for Christmas than I had ever been. It was a little scary, and in the end I wasn't away. I still seemed to have lots of last-minute thing to do, so I'm not sure there was any real benefit to such efficiency.

At least, that's how I see it now, when - until yesterday - the only single thing I'd done towards Christmas was to make this year's cake.

This morning, I decided to take my second step. I made a couple of kilograms of mincemeat, using our traditional family recipe.


It doesn't even take long - about fifteen minutes, I suppose, including peeling and grating apples, grating lemon rind and squeezing the juice.

So, at least that's done. And it's still only November.

(And the temperature is still 25C during the day. A stark contrast to the UK where there is, currently, ice and snow....)

Christmas cake, after much procrastination....

I don't like to think about Christmas until at least the beginning of November. But my first sighting of a Christmas tree, a week before the end of October, reminded me that it's a good idea to buy suitable ingredients for traditional British Christmas food in good time. We only do a big supermarket shop about once a month now, so when we went towards the end of October, I bought some extra raisins, some currants, some glacé cherries, and even some veggie suet (since a quick glance at the ingredients reassured me that they've stopped using hydrogenated vegetable fat).

I put it all away in my cupboards, intending to make my Christmas cake within the first few days of November. As I always intend to. Last year, I did manage to bake the cake on November 7th, which I think is the earliest ever. One slight problem (or excuse?) with my favourite 'Delia' recipe is that the dried fruit and peel has to be soaked in brandy overnight before making the cake. So it was no good waking up on Saturday morning feeling inspired to make the cake (which did happen...) since I'd entirely forgotten about soaking the fruit the night before. And I didn't want to do it then, as I knew that Sunday would be rather busy.

I was fairly occupied on Monday, too, with the monthly meeting of the Larnaka Christian Writers' Group in the morning, and friends to dinner in the evening. But after the friends had gone, and the kitchen was tidy, I remembered. So I weighed the fruit and sprinkled some Cyprus brandy over it. This morning, up reasonably early, I made the cake. I remembered to use the oven in its non-fan setting. I decided to be really radical and forget about the instructions to wrap the tin in brown paper and string (partly because I couldn't find any string... and partly because I'm never sure what difference it can possibly make).

A wonderful smell emanated from the kitchen all morning, while I was chatting with adult friends, playing with smaller friends, reading stories, colouring... and after four hours I turned the oven off, leaving the cake inside for a further hour.

I'm going to leave the side grease-free paper around it when I wrap it in foil for the next few weeks... but here, anyway, is my now traditional annual Christmas cake photo:

Baking in November

During the Summer in Cyprus, I do minimal baking. If I do need to make a dessert for some reason, either I cut up some fresh fruit and make a fruit salad, or I throw together a basic bar cake in a roasting pan.

But now the weather's a little cooler, I like pottering in the kitchen a bit more, and I also like trying out new recipes. Yesterday might have been a lazy day for the cats, but it wasn't for me. We were expecting our good friends - a family of eight - and two other friends who are staying with them, for the evening. We get together every couple of weeks for a cold meal; they bring cut up salad veggies and cheese, while I make some bread, and some kind of dessert.

Making bread is easy with my breadmaker. I now have a recipe that's pretty much foolproof, so long as I remember to adjust the temperature depending on the season. Here are the first two loaves I made:


Sometimes two is sufficient for this group, but I thought I'd make a third anyway. Just as well I did, since they brought two other teenage girls with them, making us a party of thirteen at the table (the youngest member of the family is not quite five months old, so doesn't have a seat to herself).

I was thinking about making some kind of apple cake, since I had about four small, soft apples in the fruit bowl. Since my non-citrus juice extractor is broken, and the one on the food processor isn't great, I've only been making orange juice recently.

So when, browsing Google Reader to see what my favourite bloggers had been posting lately, I saw a recipe called Marie-Helene apple cake, I knew I had to make it... particularly since two of the people in the family who were coming are called Marie and Helen.

It came out pretty well, although I think I used rather too much apple:


I wanted to make something else as well, since I realised that it wasn't very big. Browsing more cake recipes on the same blog,
I came across a chocolate banana cake. It looked extremely good. At the last minute I decided not to use my largest loaf pan (which was not quite as big as the one in the instructions) since there appeared to be a vast amount of mixture. Instead, I used my seven-inch square cake pan, which turned out to be exactly the right size:


Slightly to my surprise, the apple cake proved to be the more popular. Everyone thought it extremely good. The chocolate cake was very chocolatey, with only the faintest hint of banana, but rather dryer than I'd expected. I'm not sure why.

Since I also cooked lunch for Richard and myself, and had a fair amount of cleaning up to do after all the baking, and then our friends arrived around 5.00pm, it was far from a lazy day from my perspective.