I am sorry but I don’t have any Christmas recipes as such. I wish I had! But I can tell you about our French Christmas.
When we get together at my mum’s for Christmas eve, the 6 couples that we are, share bringing and preparing the food for the 35 of us : We have oysters, foie gras, smoked salmon and other shell fish as a starter, then we often have duck magrets with roasted vegetables followed by a very large platter of French cheeses and a fruit salad to wash it all down. As for the drinks, we start with Champagne followed with some good wines…. There is nothing there that needs preparing for months ahead. No-one has an oven large enough to cook a capon big enough to feed all. Mum certainly doesn’t have one.
Our Christmas eve goes like this: Everyone arrives in the late afternoon and start preparing the meal, tables, decorations...etc. The children are running around exited and happy and everyone is busy with some task or another. At some point all the children need distracting away from the tree in the sitting room, (where all the sleepers have been placed in a circle under the tree,) so we organize a small firework session outside for a few minutes while the parents dash about getting their children’s presents to put under the tree. When it is announced that Father Christmas has been and gone, all meet in front of the sitting room closed double doors and the excitement is palpable. When finally those doors are opened, it’s like a tornado of screams, laughter, camera flashes and so on…. By the time the noise level has died down a little it's time for our meal. Through the dining room and the large hallway, a long table has been created, that has given us such a headache to decide on how to have it to fit all, as it needs extending every year….The meal is fun given that this is the only time of the year when we are all there around mum. After the meal and around 11pm, what we do and have done for years now is something called “the numbers”. Geoff would collect games, gadgets and small interesting, silly or unusual items from car boot sales in England, or “vide-greniers” here in France, wrap them up in newspaper, number them, put them in a big bag and once all are gathered around him , he would get the parcels out of the bag one by one, slowly and with great timing, hand them out until they would all be gone. The game would then be to swap your item until you’re satisfied with what you get. It’s great fun in that you have to convince people that this object in your hand that you don’t want is really something they want! So a lot of persuading, cajoling, demonstrating, hard selling…takes place. This is what all the children have been waiting for, for days on end before Christmas. At the end of the evening and before the children go to bed, shattered, we would let off those Chinese lanterns with all our wishes for the new year, written by each family and we would watch them take off with wonderment and follow them for ages as they travel through the black sky and disappear. A fabulous way to complete yet an other memorable family Christmas together….
Martine
Mal has read the post and just said " ask her if we can come and have Christmas with them" it sounds great fun
Mal has read the post and just said " ask her if we can come and have Christmas with them" it sounds great fun
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