Tuesday 22 December 2015

Happy Christmas Everyone

A very Happy Christmas to all my readers!  I hope the festive season is filled with joy for you.

I will be spending Christmas with my daughter and her family - I have two boisterous grandchildren to keep me occupied!  It is a wonderful time for children and always takes me back to my childhood in Ireland.  We didn't have a lot of material things but we certainly knew how to enjoy what we did have.  My mother made the Christmas cake and the Christmas pudding in November and I can well remember the excitement of watching her mixing in the ingredients. If I close my eyes now I can get that unmistakable whiff of whiskey - a very rare thing in our house as none of my parents drank much alcohol.  Us children were allowed to stir the pudding and make a wish - I don't recall what I wished for or if any of my wishes ever came true.  More likely I had forgotten about them by the time Christmas arrived.  On Christmas night the neighbours came to play cards with my parents and we were allowed to stay up late which was a treat in itself.

I'm not going to say that things were better or worse long ago.  We were often told by the older generation that we "never had it so good".  Looking back now, I have to smile a little - we didn't even have television until I was a teenager but we listened avidly to the radio.  Radio Luxembourg was the station for pop music and innovative quiz shows!  I think Christmas is still a very special time and from what I have observed when walking round the city, children are still awed by the lights and the Christmas tree and all the trappings.  Long may it last!

God bless you all this Christmas!

Saturday 12 December 2015

Small Talk for Beginners

This is the festive season, the time when you are invited to lots of gatherings, the office party and the department get-together.  Most of the time it's fun but:  Have you ever sat next to someone at a dinner party and found that  you couldn't strike up a conversation with them?  No matter what you said, they always came back with a syllable or a short sentence and never provided an opening of any sort for the next bit of conversation.  And the person on your other side is so engrossed with his/her neighbour that you can't escape that way!   It goes a bit like this:
 "Isn't this soup delicious?" (OK not a Booker Prize question but you're trying)
Answer from non-small talker:  "Yes, it's good."
Silence.
"Have you seen that film XYZ, everyone seems to be talking about it?".
Answer:  "No".
Silence.
And so the whole meal progresses with everybody else - apparently - enjoying scintillating conversation with their neighbour.  In the past I have always felt that I must be boring, dull, a torture to to have to endure my company for a three-course meal.  Not any more, though.  Now I still try to talk to my neighbour at dinner, but if I don't get much of a response, I simply wait and see if they try to be sociable and if not, well the food is usually worth concentrating on!

Do you know people who are able to engage with total strangers?  They are worth their weight in diamonds, rubies and gold!  They hold forth about anything and nothing - usually some story from their day, some little contretemps which has everyone laughing as they tell it. And everyone feels included.  These are the people you gravitate towards at parties where everyone else has formed into little groups of those who know each other and you are left holding onto your wine glass as if it would save you from drowning.

Small talk is an art, there is no doubt about that.  Small talk means having a ready store of little anecdotes which make people smile.  Not everyone has the knack.  There are those who think it is being superficial.  I reckon it is being a life-saver.  But making conversation with the person sitting next to you is a necessary part of a dinner party, however shy you are and however hard it is to break the ice.  It requires practice, of course.  But a good tip is to watch those who slip easily into conversation with strangers.  Yes, it means a bit of hard work to be entertaining but as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it "good manners are made up of small sacrifices".

Monday 7 December 2015

Glorious Food

Since the beginning of December I have been seeing TV and magazine advertising intended to make us all buy, buy, buy for the Christmas festival up ahead.  Food so temptingly displayed my stomach rumbles.  And those lovely families where everyone is in complete harmony and everyone gets the right present and no one thinks "geesh, I am knackered after all that cooking and Aunt Katherine has left half the food on her plate again..."  And outside it is snowing, perfect snowflakes falling into perfect gardens and not a traffic jam in sight.   Fairy tale world.

This weekend there were two supplements with my Sunday newspaper, one was from a supermarket chain and one from the paper's publishers.  I browsed through the tips and recipes and put both magazines on one side because I just might try those ideas for roast potatoes some time.  Of course I will not be at home for Christmas.  I will spend it with my daughter and her family and I don't have to do any cooking whatsoever.  Admittedly I will spend New Year's Eve at home and a friend of mine is staying over so I am having two people to New Year's Day lunch.  I love cooking for friends, I must admit, I even enjoy experimenting with recipes just for myself, even if it means eating a warmed up version for most of the week.  So you never know, I might serve up roast potatoes for New Year's Day lunch or then again...

All of which reminded me of when I was undergoing chemotherapy and I stayed up at night because it wasn't worth going to bed and having to race to the bathroom every couple of hours for the first few days following each treatment.  I do believe that I have never seen so many food programmes on TV as I did at that time.  I still associate the hiss of frying steak with the nightmarish chemo feeling.   Even last month when I was nursing a septic throat and watching daytime TV I didn't have to flick the remote past more than three channels to discover some famous chef or other doing remarkable things in his/her kitchen.  It made me wonder how many people actually sit through these programmes and nod their heads sagely, muttering "ah yes, that extra bit of sea salt coupled with the dash of red wine will make all the difference".

No, I am not a domestic goddess. I like simple, fool-proof tips and plenty of instance sauce packets. I gave up baking when my children were grown up.  Mainly because although my efforts tasted great -  according to the other mums brave enough to try them  -, the cakes themselves always crumbled somewhat and looked like mice had been at them.  But hey, you can't be good at everything, I tell myself.