Let's Get Crafty!

 RHYS BOWEN:  Sorry about publishing two blogs on the same day by mistake yesterday! Busy week with Thanksgiving and John's birthday. 

Anyway, I've been talking about everyone madly shopping and scoring bargains on Black Friday. I remember my youth when Christmas presents were smaller and simpler. IN those post war years in England everything was still very austere so some of my presents were often home made. I had stuffed toys, dolls, a wooden train all home made.  When I got older a gift was sometimes a hand knitted sweater. I never thought they were less perfect because of this and I have to confess that I still love receiving home made presents.

To me they mean that someone thought about me, got an idea and then took

 time to create something for me. Our son Dominic is the king of home made gifts. Many of his have to do with cooking as he loves experimenting in the kitchen. Last year was lavender lemon curd and limoncello (from our more than bountiful lemon trees). He has created home made beer, other condiments, a lethal spray that kills cold germs.  Also during Covid he made everyone wooden lap desks so we didn't work with our laptops on our knees.  And when the grandkids were small he did audio discs of fairy tales. (He's an actor and they were excellent. I keep telling him to read for Audible).

Last year my granddaughter Mary Clare knitted me a fabulous scarf. It took more time than she had imagined and she sat up until three am on Christmas morning to finish it. I love it, especially because of the time she put into it.

I haven't made anything recently except family photo albums after big events and anniversaries. I love having them myself and glancing through them in spare moments. I also made an album of my sketches that I do when I travel. 

No creative ideas this year yet, but I do find the moment the evenings get longer that my thoughts turn to crafts.

Last year some of you will remember that I made gnomes. This year I have a kit for a holly fairy. I'll show you when it's finished. I also have patterns for caroling mice but that might be a bridge too far as I'm the one who writes all the cards, buys and wraps all the gifts and makes enough food for the family for a week. But I do enjoy the simplicity and quiet of knitting, sewing, with carols being played.

How about you? Who likes to craft? Knitters? Crochet? Anything else?

Thinking Ahead to Christmas food.

 RHYS BOWEN: Apart from buying gifts this is the season when our thoughts turn to food. In my earlier days I participated in cookie swaps. All those hours making cookie dough, cutting into shapes, rolling it, frosting it etc etc. I made Stollen, whcih I adore but nobody else does. It seemed we were overflowing with sugar/butter and everything else bad for us. Now I find there is less interest in sweet things. We always have a Christmas brunch with eggs, bacon, sausage etc, then at four o'clock we have tea (of course, we're British) with lots o cookies, cakes etc but I find not that many are eaten.  Then in the evening we have the big Christmas dinner with turkey and ham and all the trimmings, followed always by apple crumble and Christmas pudding (just for John and me). 

As we have fifteen people descending on us I always try to plan ahead, to make hearty soups and easy dinners that I can free before hand. This is complicated by the fact that I have three gluten free family members, one lactose intolerant and one who doesn't eat meat. I have planned to make a big cocoanut fish soup, a paella one night, but need other ideas. All the pasta dishes I make for a crowd could be made with gluten free pasta, I suppose. But I like the idea of hearty soups. Last year I made a chicken soup with aromatics and chicken breast and then finished it with lemon and spinach. It was quite yummy.

The one thing I always have to make (tradition) is small mince pies and sausage rolls. These are very simple... short crust pastry cut and put into muffic pans, mincemeat inside, brushed with egg white and sugar and then baked. For the sausage rolls I've recently switched to puff pastry and Jimmy Dean's sage sausage meat, the closest I can get to English sausage. 

So any suggestions for easy meals to feed up to fifteen people will be most welcome!

Rhys on Black Friday

 RHYS BOWEN:  It's Black Friday. So who has just returned from standing outside Best Buy or Target since four this morning? 

 Uh, not me. Not now. Never.  At least, I confess John and I once got caught up in Black Friday, before we knew better Many years ago when money was tight we did go to Fry's electronics and bought several Christmas gifts at greatly reduced prices. Then when we went to pay for them we saw that the checkout line went around the whole four walls of the store. We put the stuff back and said nothing is worth that amount of inconvenience. We've never been back since.

I suppose Black Friday was a bigger deal before the internet. The only occasion when parents could score Christmas gifts for their kids at a price they could afford.  Now so many things are advertised at Black Friday prices online that it's easy to get bargains without leaving the house.  I remember from my childhood the whole spectacle of the January sales in London. Prices stayed the same all year in those days until January when all the winter items suddenly were reduced. Women (never men, you notice) would line up outside Selfridges and all the big department stores. They opened on the dot of nine and the crowd of hysterical women surged forward, not caring who they trampled underfoot, grabbing stuff they didn't really want just to get it before someone else did.  

My family never went to the sales and only watched it on the TV news that night. I suppose we've never been that much into stuff. We now have two large TV sets, but only because our kind children have bought them for us. I've never owned anything by Gucci, Prada or any of those.  Correction: when my first YA novel came out, back in 1980, I got a small box at Christmas time from my publisher, Bantam. I put it under the tree, thinking it would be a plastic something because it was so light. When I opened it on Christmas morning my jaw dropped open when I saw the Tiffany box. Inside was a silver heart that said, "We wish they all could be California Girls" (the title of my book).  It's one of the nicest gifts I've ever received.

Actually I have a story about Gucci. We were on a flight and John was sitting across the aisle from an older woman, fashionably dressed. When we landed he got up and said, "Would you like me to get your bag down for you?"

    "It's the Gucci," she said, waving a dismissive hand.

    My British aristocrat husband said, "Madam, I have no idea who or what a Gucci is."

    She was speechless!

So if you didn't go shopping today and the weather is fine do what I'm going to do and get out into nature. Go and breathe fresh air and relax after all that turkey and pumpkin pie. You'll find the trails and parks are empty because everyone else is shopping!

But do tell if anyone scored bargains today! I love hearing about others successes.