WWII Eggless, Fatless Gingerbread

Eggless, Fatless Gingerbread

A couple of years ago I got inspired by the BBC programme 'Wartime Farm' to try out some recipes from the WWII era, the whole plan was to grow veggies and try to live a 1940's lifestyle, sadly I found that my life wasn't wholly compatible with the 1940's, cooking everything from scratch required a lot of effort and after just a few months, my efforts bit the dust, along with the blog I set up. However it's still there so I thought I'd take what posts were still relevant and add them to my "warts an' all" blog, then I'm going to delete the WWII blog.

The problem I have found is I have a lot of hobbies and interests, the primary one is herbs which will never change, I've started blogs for my love of France, for crafting and even slimming, they all start out well, but with so many interests their isn't time to keep them all going and do the day job and look after the home, hubby, cats and garden. So slowly but surely French posts will be culled from the French blog, diet recipes may end up here but herbal stuff will always go on my herby blog. If I have almost everything in one place, I have more to write about which means I can blog more often when my work schedule allows ::whispers to self 'Good luck on that!'::

So lets cast our eyes - and mind if you've a half a mind to - to 28th September 2012 and look at my Eggless, Fatless Gingerbread recipe that I made when my copy of Wartime Farm arrived, I'll add some [bracketed annotations] to the text if things worked or didn't....

My copy of Wartime Farm arrived at the beginning of the week and I began reading it with relish, I'm fascinated by the herbs used during the wartime information that's in the book although for a true herbaholic like me the section could have been bigger, but more of that in a later post as I've been doing some research on the WWII herb gatherers, what they gathered and they used the herbs for.

Watching the Wartime Farm series has kindled in our household a desire to do more for ourselves [honestly it did, we did try to be more self sufficient for almost 4 months]. Mr C announced last night he wants to learn how to make furniture, in particular bookshelves, we've been coveting a pair that would cost us almost £1,000 they're oak and rustic looking, something Mr C reckons he could achieve himself for a lot less money [he got as far as buying chisels and a few technique books!]. Don't get me wrong he's a dab hand at lots of things, he can fix plumbing and electrical problems and he's made me raised beds, potting benches and the like for the garden, but they are a little 'Heath Robinson', he wants to learn how they made furniture "in the old days", my comment that they probably took lessons from Heath Robinson met with Mr C's classic 'pickled onion' face lol!

So he's decided that as he doesn't know how to do dovetail joints and that kind of thing, and as there are no surviving family members to teach him, he's off to do a woodworking night class [never happened, we took French classes instead!]. He'll go for a 10 week course, downside is he's missed the start of the September course and has to wait until the next one starts in January! He's disappointed, shades of the allotment here, I said no allotment, until he proves he's willing and able to take it on, so a delay for his grand scheme there to. On the plus side if all goes to plan he'll be able to build a shed on the allotment when we get it lol!

Luckily not everything has to wait, well at least not very long anyway.... The picture of the Gingerbread Cake in Wartime Farm looked so yummy I just had to make it, the fact that it's a fatless and eggless recipe was an added bonus. I had to do a double take though, I thought there had been some cheating going on for the photo because in my mind, no way can a cake be that spongy without fat and eggs! I looked at the ingredients and I had everything in the store cupboard to make it, super thinks I, cake for Mr C's pack up tomorrow.

So I assembled the ingredients...

1/2lb Self-Raising Flour
6oz Golden Syrup
2 Tsps Ground Ginger
1 Tsp Bicarbonate of Soda
1/4 Pint Tepid Water

I also added....

2 Tsps Milk Powder

Making the cake is simple, you put the flour and syrup in a bowl, mix the rest of the ingredients in a jug and then pour the jug contents into the flour and syrup mix until you have a nice creamy batter, you can see the effect of the bicarb almost immediately the batter starts to become foamy, that's the bicarb doing it's egg substitute thing, bicarb is a natural raising agent and that makes the cake light and airy or spongy.

The next step is to turn the batter into a greased tin they say 11" x 7" in the book, but I didn't have one so I used a 9" x 9" tin instead. Next bake the cake in a moderate oven (gas mark 4, 180 degrees Celsius, or approximately 350 degrees Fahrenheit) and leave it there for 45 mins to 1 hour, check it after 45 mins to see if it's done or not.

The final stage is very important to note when you want a cake for serving after tea or for the hubby's pack up the following day... Wrap in greaseproof paper and store in a tin and do NOT cut for 2 days!!! There's logic in that instruction, when the cake first comes out it's a bit dry looking, leaving it to stand for a couple of days lets the syrup work its magic and make the rest of the cake turn into the sweet sticky texture we know and love when we think of gingerbread.

Taste test.... Gingerbread when all said and done is supposed to be more bread like and less like a cake in texture, so don't expect a sponge cake. We couldn't wait and did cut some and eat some an hour or so after it came out of the oven, it tasted okay but a bit 'dry'. By the following morning it was moister and tasted a lot better! In all honesty I can 'taste' the bicarb of soda in the cake, but it isn't unpleasant so don't be put off.

As for the over all taste next time I think I'd add 5oz golden syrup and 1oz of treacle, this gingerbread was a little 'pale' for my tastes. I think I'd also pop in a little cinnamon or mixed spice as well. But overall it's a hit especially when you take into account that WWII housewives could save their precious egg and fat rations and still have cake! Mr C took a slice in his pack up today and we have gingerbread for the weekend with a nice cup of tea, bonus! Just need to remember to make it a few days before we want to eat it in future lol!

The cake cuts into 15 slices doing the maths on the calories in the syrup and flour it works out at just 90 calories a slice you can check the calorie values in other WWII recipes here.

August 2014 Addendum: As this blog evolves I'll be making and sharing recipes from not just WWI and WWII but from other periods in history, some will be authentic, some will have a modern day twist. One thing we did learn from our short WWII cooking adventure in 2012 was that some of the food was not to our modern day tastes, somethings we couldn't eat, others were pleasantly surprising. The whole point of doing this is to save money, and whilst I appreciate that my Grandmother and Great- Grandmother and their families had no choice but to eat the food that was put on the table, today because of their sacrifice I can chose to eat what I want and if it tastes like wallpaper paste and looks like frogspawn I'm NOT eating it, sorry Nanna!

My aim is to make more things for the home, get back to basics and cook from scratch and generally make do and mend, eat with the seasons and revisit old school methods. I'm not going to start wearing a pinny and hair rollers and listening to the Andrew's sisters or Al Jolson, and I know some of my friends do live 'retro' lifestyles, they're happy and I learn lots from them, but I'm a 20th century girl and no amount of mock duck will change that. So onward and upward...

1914 - 2014 Trench Stew

I know its been ages since I wrote anything for this blog, work and herbal things have been keeping me busy. Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of England going to war with Germany in WWI and around the country people held candlelight vigils, their were ceremonies and services and people remembered the those men and women who sacrificed their lives to build a better future.

My hubby and I watched the BBC2 programme 'World War One Remembered' it focused on honouring a lost generation, which were silenced for ever amid the hellish cacophony of the WWI battlefields, and were remembered on the 100th anniversary of Britain’s First World War declaration.
War is never glamorous or pretty, but when you look back it does fill you with awe, battles were fought overseas and here to keep food on the table and some semblance of normality going for those left behind.

I wanted to do more than just watch the programme and light a candle so I decided to cook a WWI inspired menu for our tea yesterday. I chose a dish that was called 'Trench Stew', it evolved to be called Corned Beef Hash where I grew up in Manchester, with additional ingredients and flavourings. In the days of Thai Green Curry and an array of world cuisine foods that we eat on a weekly basis, in many ways basic cooking and English recipes have been left behind in our house.

I made a few dumplings to go in the stew, although I'm sure the soldiers in the trenches didn't have those, I made a simply suet pastry and turned 1/3rd in to dumplings and the rest into a jam roly poly that we served with custard. It was made all the more special because the jam in our roly poly was a homemade jam or 'Dark Red Plum' that had been made by my hubby's auntie and gifted to us along with a lot of other homemade jams and jellies. How I miss making chutneys, pickles and other yummy and tasty homemade items, I think last night has reawakened the urge to get creative in the kitchen again, watch this space!

As we're trying to pay off our mortgage faster and save for a rainy day plain, simple meals seem logical as they make economical sense. I worried about the use of lard and butter for example in wartime dishes, but then realised my parents and grandparents ate them and turned out just fine, so over the next few months I'm dusting off my wartime cook book and seeing what I can find to feed me and my darling hubby that will fill our bellies without emptying our bank account!

I have to say that as I chopped vegetables, mixed everything together, stirred my pan of bubbling stew and watched the dumplings and pudding rise, my thoughts kept turning to wondering what people were thinking that night back in August 1914, hours before the country went to war at 11pm? My Great Grandmother, Sarah Jane Webster could have been making stew for her 4 sons and 3 daughters none of them older than 8 years of age, so safe from drafting but not safe for the perils and dangers that war could bring.

This morning I woke up to my two cats, not a care in the world beyond making sure the days work got done and my article was submitted to the garden magazine I occasionally write for, what a contrast to what my Grandmother woke up to 100 years ago, I've seen films, read newspaper articles and books but nothing compares to the reality.  I find that I cannot celebrate what happened but yesterday did make me realise just how incredibly lucky I am today. To everyone who made a sacrifice, no matter how great or small I am humbly in your debt and eternally grateful!

1914 - 2014 Trench Stew

• 3 Medium Potatoes (1914 - 1 Turnip), peeled and chopped
• 2 Medium Carrots, peeled and chopped
• 1 Medium Onion, peeled and chopped
• ½ Tin Corned Beef, cubed into 1" pieces
• 2 Beef Stock Cubes (1914 - I'm not sure if they would have had access to stock cubes in the trenches, our great grandmothers would have made their own stock and adding stock to this stew certainly improves the flavour.)
• A few generous dashes of Worcestershire Sauce (1914 - I think the same applies here as stock cubes, I would hazard a guess that the soldiers used whatever they could obtain to add flavour to their food.)
• Salt & Pepper to season
• 1 Pint of Cold Water

The method is simple, add the potato, carrot and onion to your pan of water along with the stock and Worcestershire sauce and bring it to the boil, turn down the heat and simmer the stew until the vegetables and cooked through and tender. 15 minutes before the end of the cooking time add the corned beef and season to taste with salt and pepper. If you want to add dumplings add them at the same time as the corned beef.

Serve in bowls with pickled beetroot, cabbage or onions.

2013, That Was The Year That Was - Part 1

How do you see a year when it's past? A whole twelve months have just whizzed by and I have some memories, but its fuzzy in parts. In previous years I've had a tendency to focus on only the negative aspects of the previous year, and sometimes, I've even forgotten when something happened, or that it ever did! I find it useful to look back on the previous years photos, its said that photos never lie, I don't think that's the case, how often have I put a smiley face on in a photo when I feel like crap, I hazard to guess.What photos can do, is remind you of places, dates, meetings and moments be them good or bad. So here thanks to my phone and digital cameras is a look back at 2013, its highs, lows and in-between bits.

January 2013 started out like most years have done since I was about 30, my seed boxes and gardening books come out and I started making plans for the new years growing season. By January I'm usually mentally starving for growth and greenery. Last year the bright fragrant flowers of my bargain witch hazel shrub greeted me on my birthday and there were rose buds on the rose bushes, they didn't last mind, the bitter cold weather we got and the snow saw to that. Plans were made for writing a variety of new articles for Garden News magazine and my contract got renewed, albeit for a shorter time than I thought, but that's life.


February 2013 saw the 3rd and final part of the article I wrote for the Herb Society on their founder Hilda Leyel, her life and the books she published be printed in the society's journal 'Herbs'. The article was well received and I really enjoyed writing it. So much so, it inspired me to get back into my research on the lives of Dr W.T. Fernie and several other late 19th and early 20th century herbalists.

March 2013 was a sad month, we had to say goodbye to our elderly cat Fuzzball, he had wormed his way in to our home and hearts back in 2006. He was old when got him, although we never knew just how old he was, but he was a sweet little character, who could be a bit of a thug, especially to his sister Poppy. I still miss him, and as sad as it was to let him go, I know we did the right and kind thing. RIP Fuzzy <3 March also saw me meet James Wong for a second time and he remembered me and my rose geranium cake :)

April 2013 was a first for my hubby, he got his first ever brand new car, nobody but him had ever driven it before and it had that new car smell. It wouldn't have been possible if I wasn't working now, and it felt good to be able to go and pay for something knowing that we had the money to do it. We timed the purchase to coincide with his birthday, he was grinning like a loony the day we went to collect it and the smile stayed on his face for days after. Money well spent :) It was scary to witness being so grown up though. We'd made cut backs to save up for ages then spent it in an instant.

April saw Poppy have to make some adjustments and not for the first time last year, for a good few weeks after Fuzzy was no longer with us she mooned around at a loss. It hadn't been easy getting the two of them integrated, Fuzzy just didn't want another cat at all, which is ironic as he came in to the house when we had Pyewacket, so being a two cat family wasn't an alien concept. Poppy slowly adjusted, although she did take to sitting in Fuzzball's favourite spots for a while.

May 2013 was a busy month, spring had finally arrived and we started getting out and about again, after the very damp start to the year and the dreadful weather of 2012 it was nice to start being able to make garden plans. My first big outing was to Oxford, it was a duel visit, the hubby met up with some R2D2 robot building friends who were having a gathering not far from the National Herb Centre in Warmington. Lots of new herbs were purchased and ideas for articles blossomed.

The following weekend I had the pleasure of finally meeting the Lemon Verbena Lady, she and I became herbal sisters several years ago via our herbal blogs and kept in touch via emails and facebook. When she came to the UK for a holiday it was the perfect opportunity to get together, and where did we get together? A place where herbs abound lol! I met up with her at Hardwick Hall in Hardstoft, Derbyshire for a wander around the herb garden and hall. Then back to my house for tea with my homemade Lemon Verbena Cake made in honour of my special guest's visit.

The 26th May saw the icing on the cake of the month of May, along with my hubby I went to the O2 Arena in Birmingham to see my favourite band of all time play an outstanding concert. Their 'Clockwork Angels' tour lived up to all my expectations and left me glowing inside.

I've been a Rush fan since I was about 15 which is coming up to 35 years now and I've seen them in concert 7 times and every time was an experience, you feel, see and taste the music as well as hear it when you're in the same space and time as the band.

June 2013 arrived and we had some glorious sunshine, my young niece Zoe came to visit for a week, we had fun going to the beach, visiting National Trust properties and going for walks. On the walks I taught her how to recognise some wild herbs and trees. We baked, and I taught her how to blanket stitch a felt doll. Zoe was also keen to help me with a herb project and posed for photos for a series of blog posts that I'm working on 'Herbs for Children', over on my Herbal Haven blog.

The fine weather continued and in late June I attended the Discovering Herbal Medicine seminar on the subject of "Nutrition and Herbal Medicine for Allergic Conditions", as ever I had a superb time, learned new and interesting things about herbs and enjoyed wandering around a wonderful garden of unusual herbs. I was gifted with a lovely Vitex Agnus Castus shrub, more on that in part 2! I'm halfway through the year so will take a break now and work on July - December next. More from me soon... :)

Sweet Things

I've been talking about making gifts for friends and family for years and this year instead of just talking about making them, I actually set to and drew up a plan and made some gifts for some of my hubby's family, making sweets was sort of his idea after we'd found a book by Annie Rigg entitled "Sweet Things" in a book shop a few months ago. We went through it looking for ideas, and in the end we drew up a list of 4 items to make, Cherry Brandy Fudge, Chocolate & Stem Ginger Fudge, Turkish Delight and Chocolate Peppermint Creams.

We collected together items we needed like a sugar thermometer, moulds, packaging items and of course the basic ingredients which included enough sugar to sink a ship. The downside was all the items we'd chosen to make had to be made as close to Christmas Day as possible due to shelf life. Not to be deterred we decided that the weekend before Xmas eve was perfect, we tackled the fudge first, the Cherry Brandy Fudge came out perfect, but despite reheating and whipping the chocolate & stem ginger fudge to within an inch of its life, we couldn't get it to set despite following the recipe to the letter. We ended up with a product that had the consistency of chocolate spread, which was a real shame as it tasted heavenly, its on the list to perfect for next year!

Cherry Brandy Fudge

This recipe makes about 40-50 pieces of fudge depending on how big you cut the pieces.

Sunflower oil for greasing
100g (3½oz) dried cherries
3-4tbsp cherry brandy
½ a vanilla pod
450g (1lb) caster sugar
50g (1¾oz) golden syrup
2tbsp liquid glucose
170ml (6fl oz) evaporated milk
170ml (6floz) full-cream milk
50g (1¾oz) unsalted butter


Grease the base and sides of an 18cm x 18cm (7in x 7in) baking tin with oil and line with a sheet of baking parchment. Place the dried cherries in a saucepan and add the cherry brandy. Cut the vanilla pod to expose the seeds and add to the dried cherries. Set the pan over a low heat for about 3 minutes to warm the brandy but don’t boil. Remove from the heat and leave to cool.

To make the fudge, tip the remaining ingredients and the brandied vanilla pod into a saucepan and set over a low heat to melt the butter and dissolve the sugar. Pop the sugar thermometer into the pan and raise the heat to bring the mixture to the boil – as it reaches the required temperature, it will turn a rich caramel. Stirring frequently, continue to cook on a steady low-medium heat until the fudge registers 114°C (237°F) on the sugar thermometer.

Slide the pan off the heat and plunge the base into a sink of cold water for 20 seconds to stop the cooking. Using a fork, remove the vanilla pod and leave the fudge to cool for 3 minutes. Beat with a rubber spatula for 3 minutes until it thickens. Add the brandied cherries, then spoon into the prepared tin. Leave to cool completely then cover with clingfilm and leave overnight before cutting into squares.

Next we turned our hands to making chocolate peppermint creams, this recipe isn't from Sweet Things its from a magazine from a few years ago. N.B. you can also make chocolate peppermint creams using beaten egg whites, which is the way I always made them when I was younger, but these days a lot of people worry about eating raw egg whites, so the recipe given below is a safe alternative.

Chocolate Peppermint Creams

450g Icing Sugar, sifted
125ml Condensed Milk
4 Teaspoons Peppermint Extract
Green Food Colouring
200g Plain Chocolate (70% Cocoa or greater)

Sieve the icing sugar into a mixing bowl, then add the condensed milk, peppermint extract and a few drops o
f green food colouring and mix thoroughly until you get a smooth but firm 'dough' and the colouring is blended in evenly, use a wooden spoon to begin and then use your hands to knead the peppermint 'dough'.

When the dough is ready, roll it out on a clean surface that has been dusted with icing sugar to about 4-5mm in thickness and use a small cookie cutter or a milk bottle top to cut shapes or rounds. You can also take a piece of dough about the size of a large marble and roll it in your hand and the squash it flat with the back of a fork to give texture.

Leave the peppermint disks to dry out over night, next day, melt the chocolate in a glass bowl over a pan of hot water, once melted, dip each of the peppermint creams in the chocolate to half cover and put on to greaseproof paper while the chocolate sets. Once the chocolate has set firmly, pack into bags or boxes.

Turkish Delight

The recipe we followed from the Sweet Things book was for a traditional Turkish Delight based on cornflour and sugar, the texture was lovely and it tasted divine, but we noticed that it went 'sweaty' very quickly. In this You-Tube video it shows keeping the delight in a large amount of icing sugar, which would work, but it doesn't look very attractive. The cornflour recipe contains no gelatine though, making it suitable for vegetarians.

A word of warning regarding rosewater, some brands just taste like water with a slight citric acid edge and hardly any rose flavour, as was the case with the rose water we purchased from Tesco. Luckily I had in a bottle of Rose Extract we'd picked up from the Lakeland for making an Indian dessert. When I find a brand of rosewater that is rosier than Tesco I'll update this section, but for now be fore warned!

Next time we make Turkish Delight we're going to use a recipe like this one for making a gelatine based Turkish Delight and see what happens when you come to store gelatine based recipes.The plan is to experiment with recipes and variations over the next 12 months and to improve the sweets, hindsight is a wonderful thing, if we'd had more time we'd have tweaked and played to perfect the recipes. As it stood we gave the gifts warts an' all and explained that it was our first time.

We're both thrilled with the results, and we're inspired to do something similar next year, there were a few minor problems, one small burn from red hot sugar syrup and a little frayed temper from having to do something we'd never done before at the last minute, knowing if it went wrong, we were stuffed! In the end we had some edible goodies to give, our favourites were the Turkish Delight and the Peppermint Creams. The best part of the experience for me was my better half and I worked as a team, we laughed, we danced around the kitchen as we mixed, boiled and decorated.

We enjoyed doing it so much we've vowed that all adults friends and family on both sides are getting homemade gifts in 2014, I'm already halfway through one gift and have a list of other gifts to make, some will be cosmetic, some knitted, some sew, some baked as well as sugared confections, all will be made with love. Some of the best gifts I got given this year were handmade one off's which I truly appreciate and will treasure. Handmade is about the love and effort that goes in to a gift, its about one person giving their time to create something they hope you'll like, my idea of christmas gifts has changed radically and I'm not sure I can go back to the mass produced stuff that everybody gets and gives. The icing on the cake for me was hearing from a friend that myself and a few other friends who make their own gifts have inspired another friend to have a go for next year :)

Guilt And The Craft Stash!

Another 'WIP'!

This week I discovered that despite my denial, I'm a serial buyer and hoarder of crafting materials, I got an email inviting me to purchase more wool on 'special offer', but I have a 'stash' of wool, material, cross stitching thread, rubber stamping goodies and enough card making supplies to sink a ship! To add to my list of materials, I have a selection of works in progress known amongst crafter's as WIP's, it really is getting silly now. I discovered the above wizardly bear in a box, all he needs to finish him is a little back stitching and some 'bubbles' coming out of the cauldron, I think it was going to be a birthday card for someone when the first Harry Potter movie came out, a quick google tells me that was in 2001!!! OMG! 12 years and the project still isn't finished?! Before I ordered more wool, it was suggested by my hubby that I look at what I already have in my stash, I was shocked! I'll post some photos at some point of said stash, its scary, least it scared me!

I opened another box and discovered several small festive cross stitch pieces, teddies and angels intended to make cards and gift tags, but they're still in a box and not put to use. There was a bag complete with pattern and all the wool required to make an authentic Dr Who scarf for my hubby, which I promised to make for him ummm 2 years ago! It still hadn't got on the needles! There's a hat that was intended for one of the menfolk of the family that is 2/3rd's complete and wool to make several other hats for the menfolk. A set of bits for making small knitted witches, wizards and snowmen toys and a part knitted pumpkin which was to be stuffed with coffee grounds and cloves to help keep pins sharp and rust free, why did I never finish it? I started knitting what was to be a set of 2 knitted fluffy cushions to give as a gift, 1 is knitted but not sewn up or stuffed, the other sits in a bag waiting to be started.

I have a scarf and hat set that was intended to be a gift for my niece, it's all fluffy and in candy strip colours, which when I started knitting it in 2008 when she was 5 would have been ideal, she is now a 10 year old Tom boy that would go a whiter shade of pale if I presented her with such a girlie looking gift!

The scarf is complete and the hat needed about 20 rows which included the decrease and sewing up and it would have been done! In another box I discovered some designs for homemade yule cards, a set of bags that I'd stitched intending to turn them in to herbal bath bags and tie with ribbon for gifts. All they needed was the herbal filling and tying with the ribbon!?

How hard could it have been to finish that project off? It's not all bad, at the beginning of the year I used up some of the material stash to make a door stop that is filled with rice and lentils for weight and has a bag of lavender sewn in to the top of the bag which releases a sweet aroma when the bag is moved about. I also made a matching draught excluder and a lavender filled heart to hang over the doorknob so when the door is open and closed, the scent is released. These projects were all started and finished on the same day and were put to use that very evening, and have been in use ever since! I knitted several 'ruffle' scarves that were donated to the local Cat's Protection and some scarves out of eyelash yarn that are in my 'present' stash.

Why are they in the stash? Because I was worried that given as homemade gifts they'd go down like lead balloons! As I look at the array of items part made, its beginning to look more and more like I bottle out at giving my homemade gift because I feel like they're not good enough and something shop bought would be better. I'm not the worlds best knitter, seamstress or stitcher but really what I produce isn't that bad is it? Suck it up women and get these projects finished, if you can't finish projects and use up your craft stash, stop bloody adding to it!

Taking Back Christmas

Tudor Pomander photo © Debs Cook

Oh dear... It's been a while since I blogged on here, lots has been happening in life but I'm making a promise to myself that I'll be adding to this blog more from now on. I've been enjoying watching 'Tudor Monastery Farm' over the past few weeks, I love historical programmes that show you how things used to be, I learn things that I never knew and get to see a glimpse of a time gone by. The more I watch though, I'm left with a sense of loss, this country of ours, the people, we've lost so much, slowly but surely our culture and heritage are being whittled away things we used to celebrate in merry old England are long gone, replaced by a a red and white suited man who was 're-invented' by the Coco Cola company in the 1930's.

I know Christmas has been around for a long time, but the meaning is no longer understood by so many people, its all about what they want, and its almost always material. The spirit is dead, hijacked by the big corporate stores and industries that tell us we need to have this, we're not doing it right if we haven't bought this or that and we're failing to observe Christmas if we don't buy everything they sell us. For me the feeling is now almost non-existent, I remember that excitement as a child and being happy with a few small toys and a pillowcase (my Mum didn't do the stocking thing!) with our presents and tangerines, nuts and a little pack of chocolate coins.

In our house we're 'done' aside from cooking the food on the day, but boy did I struggle to get anything like Christmas spirit this year. I hated writing a swathe of Christmas cards, I yelled "What's the point?' at the wrapping paper, feeling grumpy that all the effort but in to wrapping the ruddy gifts would be torn off in an instant so people can see what they got! Pffft! I wasn't even going to put the tree up or any decorations, in fact I was on the verge on enrolling in the 'Bah Humbug' school of Christmas. Very unlike me, I'm usually there on the 1st December wanting to put decorations up, getting excited about choosing gifts, wrapping and presenting.

Something was wrong, it took me a while to realise what it was but it slapped me in the face when I read a friend of a friend say on facebook - after a discussion voicing a similar christmas apathy to mine - if you don't like it, take back christmas and make it what you want it to be. Basically take the elements that make you happy and build on them, don't do what you're told to, do what you want to! Never a more true series of words did I read, like the bells that ring out at Christmas, those words really resonated!

It's a little too late to do this 100% for this year, and yes I know back in September I said I was going to make all our gifts myself, but I chickened out, I let the self instilled guilt and commercial sweet talk sway me. All our gifts have been bought again, with the exception of some were making this weekend for my husband's family. Will post about it after Dec 25th though, some may read this and it will spoil the surprise ;)

The turkey is history, we're having pork on the 25th, the cranberry sauce is out, instead the pork is being served with homemade crab apple jelly, and orange sauce, something served at Tudor tables which is basically marmalade, red wine and water. I'm also going to make a traditional mince pie, as the Tudor's would with mince beef, suet, spices and dried fruit. Veg is on the menu, but the sprouts are not, there will be no xmas pudding either, neither of us like it so why do we buy it and force ourselves to eat it? Stupidity that's why, which stops now! I'm thinking that we'll have a trifle or a ginger & syrup sponge with custard instead. We've been given a lovely homemade Christmas cake as a gift from my sister-in-law. I know it will be lovely because last years was, my SIL makes almost all of her gifts, last year I got a couple of crocheted hats, one I adore and will be worn with pride until it falls off my head in bits lol!

And next year.... Aside from my young nephews and niece who won't understand why they aren't getting the latest toy or fad that they're in to, EVERYBODY is getting a homemade gift, we've already drawn up a list based on my skills and my hubby's skills. I'm going to attempt to decorate the house in a simpler way using fresh greenery, herbs and spices like they did in times gone by. I'm even thinking of making some traditional gifts from our rich English past and including information on who used it and why as part of the present. I'm going to give the gift of time, and feel happy at what I do, if people don't like it then they can stay on the commercial train to insanity and I'll take a nice trip along memory lane, wrapped in tradition and reveal in the fact that in my own way I'll be taking back Christmas!