Thursday 1st January 2026 - Early Present and Cooking Something Different

Welcome to 2026, with best wishes for a Healthy New Year.

It’s twelve days since I wrote my last blog, before Christmas, so time for a catch up. I had, what I consider to be, an early Christmas present.  A couple of days before Christmas, we were out for our morning walk and I was thinking how nice it would be to see Lunar again.  Lunar is the part feral cat who lived with us for a time before becoming totally feral.  She is our cat’s sister and after she left us, I continued to feed her, that was until about three months ago when she disappeared.  Not knowing what happened to her, each morning I have continued to look out for her.  It was as we passed where I used to feed her, when I heard a meowing.  Turning, there was Lunar running along the road behind us and so very pleased to see us and full of affection.  Delighted to see she was well and not emaciated, since then, I have returned to feeding her each morning.  But where has she been? I don’t believe I will ever know the answer to that question but her return was definitely an early Christmas present.

Our Christmas day, started with our usual walk, followed later by a family WhatsApp video link up.  I wanted to cook something different for our Christmas dinner this year.  Over the years we have eaten a number of different meats but this year, after much deliberation and consideration, I opted for a nut roast.  Using a Hairy Biker’s recipe, which incorporates a good selection of vegetables, fruits and nuts, with a creamy mushroom and sherry sauce, along with a cranberry sauce; this made for a tasty alternative to meat.  To accompany the nut loaf, I cooked roast potatoes and purple sprouting (the latter from Peter’s vegetable plot).  Keeping with tradition, we followed this with Christmas Pudding, using a recipe from Peter’s mums 1920’s Mrs Beetons.  We prefer to eat our main Christmas meal in the evening, opting for a selection of cheeses, all made by ladies, and sourced from Fine Cheeses in Bath for lunch.  It was a beautiful sunny day and by having a light lunch this gave us time to take a walk in the afternoon before darkness descended. 

I’m going to leave my catch up here and resume next time.  Today’s photo was taken on our afternoon Christmas Day walk.