In the heat of the moment

I know from Sky News that those in the UK were spared a White Christmas. Personally, I'd love to be subjected to a White Christmas, but that is my British roots shouting at me...

I mean, seriously, how many people would like to cook their Christmas dinner in temperatures like this:

Clicking on the
image will reveal
a temperature of
31oC at 2.20p.m.
on Christmas Eve
- in the shade

I definitely cannot light up the Rosie in that kind of heat - the additional heat it would produce indoors would be suicidal!  So, we use our outside barbeque as an oven - and leave the heat outside where it belongs.  This works well and normally, within 2 - 3 hours, our turkey is perfectly cooked.  However, Christmas pudding is 100% out of the question.  Far to "starchy" for our temperature.  If we could celebrate Christmas in winter, when one needs the additional starch intake in order to create warmth within the body, then it would definitely be on the menu.  I have wonderful childhood memories of helping to boil 6d's (and even a tickey in the early years immediately after immigrating to this country) and hiding them within the pud, prior to cooking it.  I wonder if that still happens overseas?

But, strangely enough, Mike, our grandson who spent the weekend prior to Christmas with us, commented that "Christmas isn't Christmas without snow".  Seems as though the concept of a cold, white, snow-bedecked Christmas, either originating from the traditional Christmas images reproduced on Christmas cards, or his grandmother's roots, are rearing their head within him, and leaving him feeling a yearning for a White Christmas - just like his Nana :)