Season's etc

[juliet]

A mere 17 days till Christmas, & still I have only a very small number of Christmas presents sorted. Help. Ah well, I have *plans* for them all, so that's OK. Knitting like a very knitting-obsessed thing, I am.

In other news: just to let y'all know that I don't send people Christmas cards. They're expensive & they represent many trees & they just sit around for 10 days or whatever then go in the bin, so I've never quite seen the point. General happy-seasonal-wishes to everyone, and I hope you all eat a vast number of roast potatoes (assuming that you like roast potatoes, that is. If not, please send your share in my direction, cheers).

However, what I *do* still have to do is construct paper-chains from bits of the Guardian! Hurrah! And resuscitate the Christmas-tree Pete made me (I was sorrowing quietly, the first Christmas we spent in the Paddington flat, that we had no Christmas tree. So while I was peeling vast piles of potatoes for roasting, he cut one out of paper & stuck little shiny star-stickers on it & blutacked it to a wine bottle so it stood up. Which I thought was lovely. He was somewhat shocked when it came out again last year :-) ).

Bored of working now. Can I go home yet?

Comments

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

Roast potatoes shiny. Alas, my oven has a shortage of shelves :(

[juliet]

There is never enough room for enough roast potatoes. One of the great tragedies of our times.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

My oven is big, and there will be plenty of room for roast potatoes. But you can't have any because you're vegan and mine will be roasted in duck fat because I'm having duck for Christmas. Sorry!

[juliet]

Bah. I will make sure my mum makes many many roast potatoes. It has been established that I can only manage about a kilo all by myself (with all the other roast-stuff), so...

[fluffymormegil.livejournal.com]

My cooker appears to only have one shelf :( and that's going to have a roasting tin full of chicken on it.

[juliet]

You can buy extra shelves, if your oven has the little nubbly things to put shelves on. Or cook potatoes around the chicken. Or both!

[the23.livejournal.com]

when did you become a vegan? my wife is a vegan (in meat loving america no less), so i know all about how tricky it can be.

[juliet]

2 1/2 years ago or so. Mostly it's not too bad over here, at least in Oxford & London which is where I've been living since I went vegan.

[the23.livejournal.com]

i suppose it depends how strict you are about it here, but the american food industry likes to put whey (as well as corn syrup) in almost every product it wouldn't ruin.

we don't have milk or eggs or butter in the house any more so my consumption is now limited to cheese (no rennet), ice cream and all of those minuscule portions of whey and so on.

there are certain places here where people have never met someone who doesn't eat meat, but this state certainly isn't one of them.

[juliet]

Lots of whey in things here, as well, but it's quite rare that I eat prepared foods, & they haven't yet worked out how to put whey into loose veg, tinned tomatoes, or rice or dried pasta :-) Bit of a nuisance that almost all the decent veggie sausages etc have either egg or whey in them, but I can now construct myself a storming veggie-sausage-mix involving lentils & other such excitements, though the roundness tends to be a bit lacking (they go cuboid when I fry them). Margarine is a nuisance. It makes me *cross* that most marge has whey powder in. Thankfully the local Tescos sells Pure. And rather to my surprise, the corner shop now sells soya milk, which is handy.

I remember being in Texas & having trouble with the vegetarian-ness - people in restaurants thought I was *peculiar* in the extreme. Good job I wasn't vegan at that time, or I'd have eaten nothing but chips for a week (as it was I ate nothing but chips and omelette :-/ ). I was very glad indeed to get to California.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Note to self: take full advantage of oven. There is no such thing as too much practice. (Unless taken to extremes.)

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

Dude stick them in the same pan as whatever else you're making! Easy! Trust me, there will Be Enough.

I am doing roasted sprouts in bacon whenever I can get the chance to GET HOME argh.

[reddragdiva]

I tend to keep my Christmas cards.

[juliet]

Are you not knee-deep in the things by now, then?

[reddragdiva]

I regard them as letters from people I like.

[juliet]

Well, I can see this in the case where people actually write stuff in them, but mostly they don't (you know, beyond [name] [other name] etc).

I would consider sending cards with more writing in them to my extended family, who I don't see very often, but I saw them only 2 weekends ago, so haven't got much to say.

[abi]

Hurrah, I'm glad somebody sees Christmas cards the same way as I do - it's such a waste of paper / card manufacturers' con. I've been trying to persuade people round to my way of thinking for ages. Certainly in my family my mum & dad send Christmas cards to loads of people they *never* phone/email/whatever in the entire rest of the year. If you're going to keep in touch with old friends you should do it all year round, not just at Christmas when you feel you should out of duty. I haven't sent any Xmas cards since primary school and don't usually bother at birthdays either (if I've got the person a present then a card is redundant, and if I haven't I'll usually wish them happy birthday in some other way).

Merry Christmas, Juliet.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I only bother for relatives/friends I'm not going to get to see any time soon (or don't know whether I am) and would send a letter to anyway. This year totalled 8 cards. Writing 50 to people you don't see is just an exercise in following the herd.