Our scrumptious Christmas Eve dinner

We had a lovely hot summery Christmas Eve here in New Zealand. Just perfect for having a cold collation of Christmas treats for dinner.

We buy our favourite foods each year. This year we added marinated mussels to our assortment of goodies. There was smoked salmon, salted herrings and roll mops as usual

Cherry size mozzarella, cherry tomatoes, green olives stuffed with feta and Guzzardi Kalamati marinated olives.

A selection of Italian cold meats.

And a cheese selection which was yummy. Dad and I enjoyed sampling the different cheeses at the delicatessen. We selected quite a range this year including fromage de meaux, fromage d'affinois (delicious!), Munster (too smelly for me but dad loved it), Mount Scott Havarti, Whitestone Lindis Pass brie, Old Rotterdam gouda (my favourite) and English stilton.

We had fresh fruit for dessert...melon, mango and cherries. Plus mince pies and homemade pfeffernusse biscuits.

It was a very enjoyable evening. I love this tradition we have.

I hope that you are enjoying your Christmas holidays as much as I am.

Love Rose x

Santa sack reveal - I couldn't wait!

It is the night before Christmas Eve and I couldn't stop thinking about my Santa sack. I kept looking at it, but resisted the urge to peep inside for hours. But after an extremely busy day at work, and feeling sad about it being my final day today, I succumbed to the temptation of opening it.

Inside my Santa sack was a lovely selection of things that I had collected that put a smile on my face:

- A selection of Bennets chocolates, including reindeer noses, chocolate Christmas trees, 3 chocolate truffle Christmas puddings, and some delicious handmade chocolates.

- A large Scent 5 Pomegranate and orange candle.

- A Bonne Mere L'Occitane soap.

- A box of Belgian cherry liqueur chocolates.

- 2 heart soaps.

- 3 hand embroidered padded coat hangers.

- 4 Scent 5 pomegranate and orange scented tea candles in glass holders.

- L'Occitane lavander scented bubble bath

- L'Occitane peony scented soap

- A bag of chocolate coated cherries

- A lemon scented soap

- And last but not least a really big surprise, mum had snuck a lovely T-shirt into my Santa sack, all wrapped up nicely, without me knowing :) Mum is so sweet.

I am really happy now, especially after eating the chocolate coated popcorn reindeer noses while writing this!

I hope that you are enjoying yourself too. Do you still have a Santa sack for Christmas?

Looking forward to seeing you again soon.

Hugs Rose x

Christmas wishes from the Happy Ramblings blog

I hope that you are having a great time preparing for your Christmas celebrations and have had a good year this year.

Things were rather hectic for me this year with one thing and another, so I temporarily put my blog to one side, but I am still here and ready to start blogging again :) I really missed your lovely comments and sharing with you what I have been up to and what makes me smile.

My Christmas present shopping is completed ahead of time, so no battles with the mad Christmas shopping crowds. I just need to wrap everything up which is my favourite thing while listening to Christmas music. My family are now asking me what they could buy everyone else for Christmas. Do you find it easy thinking of what to buy everyone?

I didn't buy things for my Santa sack during the year like I normally do, but I decided that I will have one after all and have started filling it. I really need to get into the Christmas spirit and I think that this is just the thing to help.

Looking forward to hearing from you again.

Have a wonderful Christmas.

See you again soon.

love Rose x

Wishing you a Happy New Year for 2015

Best wishes and Happy New Year for 2015!

I hope that this season has brought you and your family joy, peace and blessings. May the New Year be the brightest yet!

Lots of love

Rose x

A walk through my vegetable patch

It has been a strange Summer in Auckland this year, cooler and cloudier than normal. This means that my vegetable plants are very confused.

Usually by now I have an abundant crop of tomatoes forming, including cherry tomatoes. However they are only just starting to flower now.

The grape vine at the back of the vegetable patch is full of lush new grapes. I think we will have a bumper crop this year if the blackbirds leave them alone.

My sweetcorn is growing well and the pumpkin plants have turned into giants, they are escaping the vege patch onto the lawn and over the compost heap.

The cabbages are still growing, though getting a little bit munched by caterpillars. And the celeriac in this bed are doing really well. I will have to trim off the side leaves that are growing parallel to the ground now to make the celeriac roots grow nice and plump. I love celeriac soup!

The Goliath snow peas are growing huge. The plants are over 6 feet tall. I have been harvesting the snow peas over the past 5 days and they are delicious. I used some to make the cold salad for my Boxing Day feast. I also used the 2 courgettes which I picked for this salad.

I noticed today that there are some flowers starting to open on my beans....yaaay!

My cherry tomatoes are growing slowly but surely. It is time for me to trim off the bottom leaves to prevent mildew from setting in. These are bush tomatoes, so I won't be cutting off the laterals as this is where the tomato fruit will form.

This is my little strawberry patch. The blackbirds have been enjoying them as much as I am, so I bought new netting to cover them over. But now the slugs have moved in so I will need to pinch some of dad's beer to make some beer traps for them.

I have more celeriac growing behind the strawberries against the garage wall. These ones are growing slower than those in the other patch even though they were planted at the same time.

My lemon grass is growing really well. I planted it last year using a couple of stems of lemon grass from the supermarket after rooting them in a jar of water. I didn't think that it would work, so I was pleasantly surprised.

There are still some vacant patches of soil in my vege garden, so this weekend I will be sowing more to fill the spaces up.

I love gardening.

Lots of smiles.

Hugs Rose x

A Boxing Day Feast

We have been eating non-stop for the past few days.

It started with a yum char lunch at the Grand Harbour restaurant in Auckland, totally delicious, and ended with a cold meal for our Boxing day dinner. A real feast for us.

I decided to experiment with ingredients for a cold salad and made this one by grilling sliced red capsicum and thinly sliced courgettes.

Then I thinly sliced a few garlic cloves and grilled them with oil for 3 minutes to make garlic chips.

I also used snow peas which I had picked fresh on Boxing Day and boiled for 5 minutes, then cooled the snow peas in cold running water to stop them from cooking further.

These were all arranged on a platter and sprinkled with the little garlic chips.

Finally I squeezed a little lemon juice over and drizzled it with Italian red wine vinegar made by Acetum (aceto di vino rosso selezione).

We had rollmops and salted herrings.

And I made a clotted cream sauce using leftover clotted cream, wholegrain mustard and a squeeze of lemon juice. I wasn't sure if this combination would work, but it was mouth-wateringly yummy, if I may say so myself, and went really well with smoked salmon.

We also had a potato salad made with new potatoes, capers, gherkins, fresh dill and chives from the garden, green olives and mayonnaise.

There was a small selection of meats, prosciutto, mortadella and Calabrese salami, which we bought from Farro, my favourite delicatessen.

Mum made a lovely olive focaccia and dad made a green salad with avocados.

And this was followed by a cheese board which included emmenthal, Old Rotherdam gouda, roquefort and Jarlsberg cheeses.

It was a very relaxing meal, made slowly over the afternoon and eaten leisurely. Bliss.

Now it is time for dinner again. Leftovers from yesterday. I will have to get out in the garden to exercise all of this feasting off.

See you soon

Hugs

Rose x

Christmas dinner at my sister's

We had another amazing Christmas feast at my sister's house this year. We started off nibbling on melon wrapped in prosciutto, pistachios and home made olives that my sister grew. Then we had smoked salmon, hot smoked salmon, garlic prawns and mussels with a garlic aioli sauce. Yum!

This was followed by a mouth-wateringly delicious roast beef and a roast ham, served with a dish of asparagus topped with sliced snow peas, leeks and chopped boiled egg. A salad of potatoes, and new green beans and a roast pepper, cherry tomato and basil salad.

For dessert we had a lovely lemon syrup cake.

Plus a yummiest limoncello trifle. Both of which my sister's friend made

After the leisurely meal we sat in the sitting room and were served mini strawberry pavlovas, panforte, mini mince pies and Lindor chocolates while we opened our Christmas presents.

It was a really relaxed and pleasant day with lots of chatter and laughter.

I wish the same for you.

Lots of love this holiday season

Rose x