Goal # 12 – Cook Christmas dinner

I have always loved cooking so wanted to give myself a bit of a cooking challenge as part of my 30 list, and I thought taking on the challenge of cooking a full Christmas dinner for me, my mum, my brother and sister-in-law would be a suitable goal.

As I am a vegetarian, my mum sorted the turkey, but I made a chestnut roast from scratch for myself and also took care of the carrot and turnip, sprouts, parsnips, roast potatoes, yorkshire pudding, stuffing and bread sauce!

I have to admit, the night before I almost chickened out and asked my mum if she would do it (after all, people had been looking forward to this meal for a year and I didn’t want to let them down!), but I decided to give it a shot and, actually, it was easier than I thought! The hardest part was planning all the timings for everything the day before, to make sure everything would be ready at the right time. And the good news was, everyone enjoyed it and ate (almost) every bit (it was a huge meal)!

Unfortunately, everyone was so busy tucking in I only remember afterwards I should have taken a photo … Ah well, maybe next year 🙂

Goal # 5 – See the sunrise, and Goal # 6 – Create my own ice cream flavour

After three failed attempts at seeing the sunrise, where I had waited right through from dark to daylight at ridiculous o’ clock with no glimpse of the sun, I was beginning to come to the conclusion that my part of the world must actually be operated by a dimmer switch! I was definitely beginning to believe that this one was not going to be easily ticked off the list.

However, despite my sceptisism, I was determined to tick this off, so I kept an eye out for a cloudless morning and, last Sunday, I ventured out once more for attempt number four of my sunrise mission. And I saw it!

Yep, at roughly twenty past 7, I finally got my glimpse of the sunrise. Here’s the best photo I could get, although it looked a little better in real life:

I also ticked off another item from my list yesterday, and that was creating my own ice cream flavour. The flavour I came up with was white chocolate ice cream with strawberry sauce and chunks of shortbread and white chocolate. And it was really nice, if I do say so myself!

While it took quite a while to make, what with making the ice cream itself, the shortbread and the strawberry sauce, it was definitely worth the effort.

I’m not a food photographer (as you can see) and do not own an ice cream scoop, so while it doesn’t look quite as appetising as it tasted, here’s a photograph to document my first ice cream invention: