It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Yesterday was definitely the beginnings of festivities at our flat. My flatmate and I were having friends over for dinner so to start with we had all the ingredients for a roast dinner. Being close to Christmas, I decided I would make stuffing as well. I've never made stuffing before. And I didn't have a recipe. But I think it all worked itself out and I was pleased with the results.

Here's what I put in:

6 'happy' sausages (outdoor reared ones)
cranberries
apricots
walnuts
sage
thyme
salt & pepper.

Apart from the sausages, I have no idea about the quantities - although there were lots more walnuts than apricots and there were more apricots than cranberries. That's about as exact as I can be I'm afraid. Anyway, I mashed the whole mixture up and then rolled them into balls before roasting in a separate pan for about 45 minutes.

In addition, my flatmate has been talking about chocolate covered pretzels a bit recently: she was given some by one of her clients at work. Well, thought I, that can't be too difficult to sort out. So with the rest of my shopping, I bought some pretzels and milk chocolate and basically just dunked the pretzels in before chilling to dry the chocolate. Mmmmm

This was them before they dried properly. I put them on greaseproof paper and they lifted off really easily. Nom-nom-nom!

What else? Well.... My flatmate discovered a Christmas Tree made out of books on www.bookshelfporn.com yesterday morning and that became our inspiration. I have been looking for a tree that is nice but not out of my budget range and had been despairing that I would never find one. But our tree is MUCH more inspired than a normal Christmas tree...  And we have a mutual favourite book at the top of it too (It's Bulgakov's Master & Margarita if you are wondering)

And then I got all excited about it being nearly a Christmas dinner... so we had crackers, chocolate coins and candy canes in all the places at the table...

And there you have it: our flat now looks a little more festive, I can make up recipes ad lib (Masterchef here I come) and we had a great evening with just a bit of Christmas cheer. I absolutely love our slightly wonky and squat pile of books that make up our tree and keep walking into the living room thinking 'ahhh'.