just desserts

Christmas Day was a good time, with church in the morning for Bronwyn and I, followed by Salena and Steve joining us as planned along with housemates Nick and Hayley to make six. In hindsight we agree that we may have over-catered just slightly... We were keen to ensure that we had a good quantity of leftovers, with a collective recall that we were disappointed they had not lasted as long as we'd wished last year. Well, we succeeded in that, for sure, and two days on we are yet to cook anything.

In particular, we overshot somewhat on the desserts. I said in my Christmas Eve entry that we had around four plus desserts, but it was a few more than that. For the record, served on Christmas Day were:

• Nick's outstanding alternate Christmas cake
• Baileys and Chocolate Cheesecake
• Chocolate Brownie
• A rice-flour based Hayley-friendly Star Cake
• Chocolates
• ...and some sort of nice Berry Ice Cream.

Other desserts we had also prepared, but decided in the end not to serve included:

• Christmas Pudding
• Two varieties of Christmas Mince Pies
• Hayley-friendly rice flour-pastry Apple Pies
• Two varieties of Cheese, with Crackers
• Panatone
• Lemon Sorbet
• Custard
• ....and Vanilla Ice Cream

To work through all this we are implementing a carefully strategic plan, including having multiple desserts per day, and focussing our efforts on those items that have an early expiry date (e.g. Cheesecake, Brownie) while others at this stage remain unopened... The Panatone tells us it will keep till June, while the Christmas Pudding may at this rate be slated for a Christmas 2005 release. One of the things we've discovered is that my Chocolate Brownie seems to be a poison, for which the only known cure is a slice of Nick's Christmas Cake. I'm not used to being on the dark side...

We should perhaps be ashamed of ourselves. We will at least take the opportunity this holiday period to realise that we have many many blessings, beyond the mere gustatory. And we are humbled and grateful. May we generally use them more wisely...