Merry Christmas

I know I said that I would probably not get into the whole Christmas spirit this year, but to my own surprise, I was wrong. I met up with a friend of mine at Borough market on the 23rd. I wanted to buy some nice sweets for Christmas Eve. I had planned to make our own Christmas Tea. Boy, the selection was amazing and I had a hard time choosing, but in the end I think I did get some nice pieces.

The market is really not that big, but it was super crowded and we were exhausted after navigating it for about an hour. So we decided to grab some tea. We ended up also sharing a cupcake because looking at all the sweets made us hungry!

Look at the size of this cupcake!

The cupcake was actually not that good. The icing was more like a butter cream. It tasted ok, but was totally not what we expected.

Christmas Eve was a quiet day for us. We headed out in the morning to buy some groceries we still needed and some more plates and glasses. As my bf's dad and stepmom are in London over the holidays we needed more than just the two plates we used to have. Luckily the store still had the same plates we bought in October. They were on sale then, but still had some left so were even cheaper now. Score! I think we paid a pound per plate. Also picked up some wine glasses.

So this is our nice Christmas tea that we had in the afternoon. Some nice scones with clotted brandy butter and raspberry jam and some sweets (Baileys and chocolate cheesecake, marble cake, chocolate eclair and those two Portuguese sweets filled with custards). And no, we couldn't finish it all. We saved some and had it for dessert in the evening. But it was amazing! I really liked the brandy butter. Might have to stock up on that before it goes out of season.

The next way was spent preparing for the bf's dad to come. We pre-cooked a steak and ale stew and pre-boiled some potatoes to roast later in the evening. In the afternoon we headed out to pick them up at their hotel. Because no public transport was running in London we walked. It was actually a pretty nice walk. Not a lot of people out. The wind was chilly, but walking kept us warm. Only took us a bit over an hour and we didn't hurry or anything. Their hotel turned out to be pretty nice. We stayed for about half an hour and then ordered a cab.

Once home we started cooking again. Made roast potatoes, reheated the stew, made some brussels sprouts and some salmon. Boy, that was an amazing dinner. I forgot to take pictures, but all the dishes turned our really nicely. As a started we had ciabatta bread with roasted aubergines dipped in olive oil, vinegar and some herbs. Amazing! We need to host more dinner parties. So much fun! Then we had some wine and beer. And coffee as a dessert. Nothing else because we were stuffed! It was a really lovely evening.

His dad is into photography and he gave us some photos from home and now wants to buy us some frames and hang them up. That should be nice as our walls are empty at the moment.

I don't know. Sitting together and sharing a meal really made Christmas feel like Christmas. It's a shame we didn't have candles or decorations. I will definitely remedy that the next time we have a Christmas at home.

Hope everyone else had a nice Christmas as well. Here's to a good New Year!!!