Merry very belated Christmas Post

Okay, so we are literally six months from Christmas and six months to the next one. Oops. But since I'm playing a bit of catch up with the blog I thought I'd share some photos of our first Christmas both together and in the depths of winter - where at least having a giant roast makes a bit more sense than it does in New Zealand.

Firstly, on Christmas Eve I left work slightly early to go and lose my pavlova virginity. Something about a pav that always frightened me. Add to the fact I've been long regaled with stories about the time my Mum tried to impress my Dad's mum making one and failing miserably.I started with lots of eggs. A tip I learnt from lemon meringue pie, chilled eggs are a lot easier to seperate.Egg whites to soft peaks and the rest of the ingredients are introduced.Glossy and stiff means it's ready to be slow cooked in the oven.Nearly two hours later, my first pavlova ever is done.

I was then faced with what to do with the unused egg yolks and so made lemon tarts along the lemon meringue pie recipe with shortcrust pastry and some artistic flair.I thought they were pretty impressive and delicious I might add.It was then off to bed so I could get up bright and early to prepare our massive leg of lamb. Oren was still recovering from a cold so I let him sleep in while doing strange looking things with herbs.Oren finally arose so we could open presents from under our awesome tree. I skyped with my parents, in particular to point out to my own mother that she did not know my actual name.
Then it was lunch time!

All and all, it was a fairly successful day and with our central heating it was easy to ignore it was about -1 degrees outside all day. I still prefer Christmas in summer, being forced to take leave in the middle of winter and use your own heating doesn't seem fair.

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In other catch up news - Oren has moved to a new HMV store to work at, which coincidently is even closer to our flat that his previous one...and that was only a twenty minute walk at most. My work's been a bit better too and I'm heading to Milan, Italy next week for a business trip. It's also a year this weekend since we moved into our wee Kiwi flat which now has a token Australian Kim who is lovely.

Now if we could only decide what to do with our summer holidays before it's suddenly winter again.