Post-Christmas Christmas

I do hate sitting here waiting for the electrician. They always give you a large space of time in which they might drop in and see what the big problem is. Hence sitting here, not in pyjamas, with a vaguely tidied apartment, waiting. So I'm looking through some recent photos. On Sunday Josh's mother's side of the family had their usual post-Christmas Christmas get together. It's a pretty good idea. Take away the stress and compacted necessary activity of Christmas eve and day, but keep the decorations, good food and good company. Even the music. Though someone axed that pretty quickly. Wolf was surprisingly well behaved and napped properly even though he was in an unfamiliar house and it was quite noisy. Leaving him his dad's smelly t-shirt in the cot definitely helped!

Perhaps the oddest thing of the day though something only mentioned between Josh and I, was the fact that the room Wolf slept in houses 2 or 3 snakes (I'm not sure really. I saw two but there were three tanks and one had a very impressive shed skin in it). Sure they're well locked up and properly fed and everything, but it's a funny thing, to think of putting your nearly 7 month child to sleep in a darkened room with snakes for company. Wolf of course didn't register any danger. I would have liked to show him the snakes but we forgot. He didn't much like the dogs though. Dogs and baby stared at each other not knowing what to do. Wolf touched one and then freaked out. I think we're just lucky he didn't try to pull it's hair or it's ears or try to bite it.

Josh bought me a beautiful trifle bowl from Queen Vic market on Friday so I thought I'd honour it with yet another trifle (but technically it's the first one of the year!). Christmas day's was a Peach Melba trifle, so this one comprised sponge fingers soaked in rum sugar syrup (this Christmas I think I'll make my own sponge), egg custard, strawberry fool and sliced mango. It went down well! I think Josh's grandmother had three bowls.

I also made some pudding truffles. I'd been eating a lot of commercial ones during Christmas but figured it's a pretty simple thing to do. Citron peel and sultanas soaked in brandy for a week with a hefty dusting of cinnamon. Puree and mix through a dark chocolate ganache. Roll in proper cocoa. They admittedly look like little turds. Many jokes abound about them coming out of Wolf's nappy (if that was so they would have been orange or green, not brown). The flavour is pretty good. Not to sweet and a bit more pudding-ey than chocolate. I definitely made too many because I took some to mother's group as well and I still have a boxful of them sitting in the fridge. Must learn not to automatically double recipes before I've attempted them. I think I need to ban myself from baking and confectionary because eating this stuff is not helping my baby weight go away. But work is less than a month away and that will include a lot of running around and riding my bike to and from, so perhaps I'm off the hook. That's what I'd like to think anyway.