islandhippy

Sandy's parents and elder sis drove down from KL to join us for Christmas. Olive was happy as she loves to play with her godmother Hueh Hueh. Who else will dry her hair with a blowdryer instead of holding her under the ceiling fan like mummy and daddy normally do?!

Olive received a crazy number of presents. I can't wait for her to go to bed so I can start playing with them all.

I slightly misjudged the size of the turkey, or the number of guests, and bought a 7kg turkey to feed five people. That's a lot of turkey. It took six hours to cook but was delicious. Instead of the usual turkey stuffing, we made a wild rice stuffing with pancetta, brandy-soaked cranberries, walnuts and sage, and we served the turkey with mum's homemade crabapple jelly. Sandy did a fantastic job with roast potatoes, parsnips, pumpkin and beetroot, carrots and delicious turkey gravy. My brandy butter contained six times more brandy than Delia asked for and had teetotal father-in-law asking for more.

Obviously we're going to be eating turkey for the next few weeks although we did manage to deliver two plates of Christmas dinner to our neighbours who'd spent the afternoon in A&E with dengue fever!