Christmas already?

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  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    edited December 2024
    Darda wrote: »
    From our local news online:

    Shock as man scoffs three mince pies at (name of church deleted) in ‘world record’ time

    The vicar apparently issued a challenge at a *Beer and Carols* service, and a man with (as he himself said) a *big gob* won...

    Good to see that the true message of the Incarnation is being so well expressed, although, in all fairness, most people seemed to enjoy this rather offbeat service. Maybe that's not a bad thing.

    Our place had a Beer & Carols service last Saturday (with brass band, beer & mulled cider) and the church probably had more people than it will for any of the other Christmas events. No mine pie competitions though!

    O yes - it's a Good Idea, giving the church a chance to welcome those who attend infrequently (or never!), and to pass on the Christmas message.

    The encouragement to gluttony was not a Good Idea, as it's that which has excited press attention. They wheeled out their best words - *shock*, *churchgoers*, *scoff*, *gob* etc. etc., having very small vocabularies...

    Bah humbug.
  • jedijudyjedijudy Heaven Host
    I just put my Christmas fruit cakes into the oven.

    It's still Christmas for a few days!!
    :joy:
  • TrudyTrudy Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Thanks to Covid, we finally had our Christmas turkey dinner on December 30. For the rest of this week I’ll have to post on the Leftovers thread, since that’s our entire meal plan until Old Christmas Day.
  • I am planning a 12th-night party for a few friends.
  • According to the lady in our local supermarket (who was busy putting out hot cross bun) it is already Easter. 'But it's not even lent', I expostulated. She waved her hand at display upon display of choccy eggs. I could only agree.

    A new thread, methinks.... is it really time to wake the Easter Bunny from his (or her) slumbers?

    Mrs RR informs me the grandRR's eggs have already been ordered. Oh, and mine.

  • Well, HCBs, and some eggs often associated with Eostre (the C*d*u*y Creme ones) are available all year round, which is a Good Thing IMHO.
    :yum:

    I noticed in our local Tess Coe yesterday that the *Seasonal* shelves were mostly full of Chocolate (which is also a Good Thing IMHO), along with a smallish amount of Valentine's Day tat. That will have been removed by tomorrow (yet another Good Thing...).

  • The heritage railway, here in the heart of the weald has already started advertising its "Santa Specials" for 2025. 85 requests for bookings made on Monday.
    Mind you it is necessary to book early as there is quite a demand for these specials.
  • That's fair enough, and I suppose people will also need to book winter holidays soon, too...

    FatherInCharge has today given me the list of Our Place's Holy Week & Easter services, so that I can update our website. The schedule is the same as for last year.

    He likes to call Good Friday *God's Friday*, as that is the true meaning, so I'm tempted to refer to Easter as *Eostre*...
    :naughty:
  • I am leaving our twinkle lights up until Easter. This was the first year since I lost my family that I put them (or anything) up.

    I always thought that dark winter days need twinkle lights no matter what the festival, and was always disappointed when people took them down.

    This year I will not disappoint myself. I may even see how I feel about them during Holy Week - leaving them quiet from Holy Wednesday to Sunday of course.

    It's a decision I don't have to make right now and I'm loving their cheerfulness too much.

    AFF
  • I’m waiting for Lent Madness to start.
  • Priscilla wrote: »
    I’m waiting for Lent Madness to start.

    What form(s) does it take?
    :wink:
  • NenyaNenya All Saints Host, Ecclesiantics & MW Host
    I was in Wells, Somerset, for a few days last week and at their lovely cathedral gift shop I managed to purchase some Easter-type ornaments. This means that for the first time this year I will be able to have an Easter Tree. I hope to be able to purchase a small "tree" of branches and lights for the purpose... if not, it will be a twiggy branch from a real tree, possibly painted white or sprayed silver.

    I too am interested in what Lent Madness looks like @Priscilla.
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    I have a confession to make: I failed to resist a packet of C*db*ry's mini eggs the other day.

    Mea culpa.
  • Piglet wrote: »
    I have a confession to make: I failed to resist a packet of C*db*ry's mini eggs the other day.

    Mea culpa.

    At least it's not Lent quite yet...
  • I am leaving our twinkle lights up until Easter. This was the first year since I lost my family that I put them (or anything) up.

    I always thought that dark winter days need twinkle lights no matter what the festival, and was always disappointed when people took them down.

    This year I will not disappoint myself. I may even see how I feel about them during Holy Week - leaving them quiet from Holy Wednesday to Sunday of course.

    It's a decision I don't have to make right now and I'm loving their cheerfulness too much.

    AFF

    Ours are up too, as I couldn't face taking them down in view of the political weather here. They may well stay up till Easter!
  • I am leaving our twinkle lights up until Easter. This was the first year since I lost my family that I put them (or anything) up.

    I always thought that dark winter days need twinkle lights no matter what the festival, and was always disappointed when people took them down.

    This year I will not disappoint myself. I may even see how I feel about them during Holy Week - leaving them quiet from Holy Wednesday to Sunday of course.

    It's a decision I don't have to make right now and I'm loving their cheerfulness too much.

    AFF

    Lost your family? :O Sending love and hugs and prayers. 🕯
  • Another house with twinkly lights still up - a small antidote to general gloom and despair. I have to take joy from where-ever I can find it!
  • Diomedes wrote: »
    Another house with twinkly lights still up - a small antidote to general gloom and despair. I have to take joy from where-ever I can find it!

    It used to be people would make fun of you if your Christmas lights were still up in February, not even lit, just up. But now with LEDs their power usage is so low, it's economical to run them all year round.

    I love driving by a place whose shrubs are covered in snow and the twinkle lights are glowing beneath the coat of white.

    Winter can be so magical I wish we would just run them the whole season.

    AFF
  • I think we could all use more joy!!
  • I have fairy lights in my bedroom window all year long. They act as night lights when I go to bed. Love them.
  • PuzzlerPuzzler Shipmate
    I ate my first hot cross bun of the year yesterday. They are in the shops all year round- that’s my excuse. Mr Puzzler would have been outraged.
  • MarthaMartha Shipmate
    I was still eating mince pies on Sunday! (They'd been in the freezer.) Haven't succumbed to the hot cross buns yet.
  • Do people eat Hot Cross Buns all through Lent, or save them for God's Friday and Eostre?
  • Our local major supermarket has loads of different flavours of hot cross buns. The salted caramel and chocolate ones I can do without but the red leicester and cheddar ones are very nice. No doubt they aren't proper hot cross buns but I don't have a problem with that.
  • Cheesy HCBs? Not come across them, but they sound tasty...
    :wink:
  • I like unusual hot cross buns, we have fig ones at the moment and I like the chocolate orange ones. I would definitely buy cheese ones.
  • I have never eaten a hot cross bun. I'll have to see if they sell them anywhere here... (I'm in the US in Florida.) I just vaguely assumed they were bread and not especially interesting, but a quick Google search tells me they are more interesting to me.
  • @Heavenlyannie said
    we have fig ones at the moment

    Figs? Unexpected crossover (well, synchronicity) with the fig tree thread in Kerygmania! ;)
  • la vie en rougela vie en rouge Purgatory Host, Circus Host
    I make my own hot cross buns. Since the demise of Marks and Sparks' European operation, I don't know of anywhere I could buy them.

    They are made strictly once a year on Good Friday. Any other day it's plain old currant buns.
  • The Rogue wrote: »
    Our local major supermarket has loads of different flavours of hot cross buns. The salted caramel and chocolate ones I can do without but the red leicester and cheddar ones are very nice. No doubt they aren't proper hot cross buns but I don't have a problem with that.

    Is nothing sacred?
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    RockyRoger wrote: »
    The Rogue wrote: »
    Our local major supermarket has loads of different flavours of hot cross buns. The salted caramel and chocolate ones I can do without but the red leicester and cheddar ones are very nice. No doubt they aren't proper hot cross buns but I don't have a problem with that.

    Is nothing sacred?

    Cheese covers all manner of sins.
  • jedijudyjedijudy Heaven Host
    ChastMastr wrote: »
    I have never eaten a hot cross bun. I'll have to see if they sell them anywhere here... (I'm in the US in Florida.)
    Check out the bakery in Publix! We should be seeing them soon!

  • ChastMastr wrote: »
    I have never eaten a hot cross bun. I'll have to see if they sell them anywhere here... (I'm in the US in Florida.) I just vaguely assumed they were bread and not especially interesting, but a quick Google search tells me they are more interesting to me.
    You’re unlikely to find good ones in an American grocery store; at least that’s my experience, and (fwiw) opinion. The buns are meh, and the crosses are piped on with too-sweet icing rather than baked in. There might be bakeries that do a better job.

    I tend to make them late in Holy Week to have around Good Friday and Easter. I’ll have to think through what to do this year—we’ll be traveling Easter weekend, as our daughter is running the Boston Marathon on Easter Monday.


  • NenyaNenya All Saints Host, Ecclesiantics & MW Host
    Hot cross buns are being consumed on a regular basis in our house at the moment. In fact, I think I'll have one toasted with my morning coffee.
  • I made bread and butter pudding from 2 hot cross buns yesterday.
  • NenyaNenya All Saints Host, Ecclesiantics & MW Host
    Now there's a thing I haven't eaten for decades. I think my Dear Old Mum used to make it; though not from hot cross buns.
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    Bugger - now I'm wishing I'd bought some HCBs when I was in Tessie's earlier!

    I'm a bit of a traditionalist about them though; all these fancy flavours don't appeal to me at all. Raisins and mixed spice (or whatever the usual spice is) are all that's required.
  • (some of) The fancy flavours do appeal to me, but I won't buy them before Easter week, by which time there's not much more than the 'normal' HCBs left in the shops.
    Serves me right for being such a pedant about not eating festival foods out of season I suppose.
  • (some of) The fancy flavours do appeal to me, but I won't buy them before Easter week, by which time there's not much more than the 'normal' HCBs left in the shops.
    Serves me right for being such a pedant about not eating festival foods out of season I suppose.

    I'm inclined to agree with you and with @Piglet about the *traditional* flavour, but I'd happily give the CHEESE varieties a try...maybe Tess Coe will have some, when I visit tomorrow.
  • PuzzlerPuzzler Shipmate
    I prefer sometimes to eat a chunk of cheese with my HCB, not have it built in. Eating cheese with fruit cake is one of life’s pleasures, something I learnt in Yorkshire. There, cheese is also eaten with apple pie, especially at a Harvest Supper. Not a custom I adopted, but I can’t actually remember when I last ate apple pie, much as I enjoy it.
  • NenyaNenya All Saints Host, Ecclesiantics & MW Host
    I bought some gluten free hot cross buns for Mr Nen the other day and he says they're so awful he can't eat them. I tried one at lunchtime and understood why. I toyed with the idea of making bread and butter pudding with the remaining one, à la @Heavenlyannie , but decided against because it would be only me who ate it and I'm the last person who should.

    @Puzzler , I shared a house with a couple of girls from Yorkshire and Lancashire (and no, they didn't get on :lol: ) and was introduced to cheddar cheese with fruit cake, which is wonderful. I'm not sure even cheese would have made the gluten free HCBs palatable.
  • CHEESE with Fruit Cake, and/or Apple Pie, is truly food of the gods - and I'm a Man of Kent...

    I completely forgot (of course) to look for cheesy HCBs in Tesco yesterday.
    :disappointed:

    Worth trying an HCB alongside a piece of CHEESE, though.
    :wink:
  • NenyaNenya All Saints Host, Ecclesiantics & MW Host
    CHEESE with Fruit Cake, and/or Apple Pie, is truly food of the gods - and I'm a Man of Kent...
    So how did you find out about it? I'm a Kentish Maid and didn't know of such a thing until I went to university in Birmingham and started Fraternising with Northerners.
  • Nenya wrote: »
    CHEESE with Fruit Cake, and/or Apple Pie, is truly food of the gods - and I'm a Man of Kent...
    So how did you find out about it? I'm a Kentish Maid and didn't know of such a thing until I went to university in Birmingham and started Fraternising with Northerners.

    The first Mrs BF was a Northerner, so I think I learnt about the joys of CHEESE with other Foods from her maternal grandmother, who lived near Lancaster...
  • Darllenwr makes bread and butter pudding with hcb and fruit infused in rum. He is going to make it with some saffron buns.
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    edited February 25
    I was well into adulthood before discovering the joy of fruitcake with CHEESE but then I'm from about 400 miles North of Yorkshire, and David was from about 300 miles South of it. He did however have a grandfather from Yorkshire, which apparently explained his mother's fondness for tripe - a trait he didn't inherit. 😳
  • I love anything with dried fruit, pudding, cake, hot cross buns all delicious to me! Personally I'm not a fan of the modern options for hot cross buns, but then I am not their target market!

    We did buy some buns at the weekend from one of the big warehouse type stores, perhaps a teeny bit yeasty, but still delicious and we are slowly working our way through them. I have to be mindful to not eat more than my share, unless another of the family declare their share up for grabs, we have to limit ourselves to 6 each (and not all at once!!)
  • My father loved tripe (my parents were Lancastrian). My mother would boil it and serve it with vinegar and onions for him. He once drove from Luton to Manchester because he fancied some tripe and he couldn’t get anything decent locally (he used the excuse of visiting an elderly aunt).
  • No cheesy HCBs in Sainsbury's, but have ordered one pack of a marmalade version in tomorrows delivery. No idea why, as I already make a B&B pudding with marmalade which we both enjoy. (That pud has a name, but at the moment I cant recall it, it has been quite a long time since I made it).
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    If it's got marmalade in it, I'd suggest it be called Paddington Pudding. 🧸
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