Day 322: Having sampled every flavour, taste, food and experience that in my memory constitutes a good Christms, PLUS the same for what constitues a good German Christmas, I think this photo is as much detail as I care to share. At least you can see me glowing with inner peace and very little guilt!



Day 321: A very definate 'not in Kansas" moment, walking through the foggy forest on Christmas day. My second Christmas outside Australia (without my Mum!), but it was one of the best Christmases ever. I felt more like a grown up AND more like a kid than I have for years, really fantastic, thanks to my Christmas Angel who fortunately flits down more than once a year.


Day 320: Christmas Eve, the big family celebration day in Germany. Here I am presenting the pudding, which is an entirely new phenomenon for my German family. In Australia, Auntie Queenie made 2 puddings every year, in August or September I think. One for Christmas day, one for my mother's birthday on the 28th. I was the one appointed to take over cooking the pudding but Queen died before she could pass on the recipe. So, i followed the Commonsense Cookbook to the letter and it was an unbelievable sensation to taste the pudding, exactly as I remember it. A slightly different texture but taste was so close it was very exciting. I could hear my grandmother and her sister chattering away in the background as I made it so perhaps there was assistance from above throughout the process. We never set the pudding alight in Australia, but since it was around 0.5 degrees and very dark, it seemed a good idea. Another cooking success was getting the baked potatos extremely crispy, only to have my father in law tapping them suspiciously and cutting off every scrap of crispy crust! Oh well.


DAY 319: ALMOST Christmas! Very organized, and rather childish. Doing a lot of shaking of presents from under the tree.